the term: Fine Art

Chris101 said:
Who doesn't like art? I've encountered people who don't like my art, or so-and-so's art, but I think nearly everybody likes some art.
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That's right. When I walk over an art fair then I don't like a lot of the stuff displayed. But only because I don't like it, I wouldn't deny that this is art.
 
While dictionaries define words so that we can achieve a common understanding of language, I think that many disputes can be attributed to differences in the nuances of meanings of words brought about by each individual's varied and different life experiences around the words in question. For example, for me, I have a hard time with someone calling themselves an artist, because I can remember my father once telling me that "artist" is something that only another person can call you; that it is improper/precoscious as a self-given title. But see, that's just me and my personal lexicon, influenced by my father's opinion that affected me as a youngster quite strongly.
 
Double Negative said:
Fine art? I like to abbreviate it simply as "FART."
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I'm afraid acronym FART is reserved by Ken Rockwell for basic yet powerful technique to take good pictures :)

Art itself is very fuzzy term. Bread or stone, instead, are very exact terms, at least compared to art. I tend to think art starts when necessity stops, but then again it quickly becomes cliche. Because of this art is rare bird, and hard to define. Think about it - when people cat their first caves, it were handicrafts. When they scraped figure of mammoth, on wall, it were artwork. Now they hang on wall abstract paintings or photographs, but they in most cases are not artworks.

I'm mostly interested in fine art nudes...to be exact, in how they approach idea picture isn't plain nude anymore, and even not artistic nude, but exactly fine art nude. Well, I don't insist they are wrong, though.
 
FrankS said:
What think you?
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Honestly ? I think that lately we focus too much on the very detailed meaning of English vocabulary, on a forum where - I am guessing - the majority of members is not English mother-tongue.

For example, "Fine Arts" translates to the German "Bildende Kunst" or French "Beaux Arts", which are classic terms and not controversial at all.

If you look at a good photo - does it matter if the artist or anybody else calls it fine arts ?

Roland.
 
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When I hear the term "fine art" I usually think of a degree someone is getting, like a "Masters in Fine Art" maybe it will involve photography, maybe not, maybe creative writing, or getting commissioned to spray graffiti on bridges or walls.

I like to think all of my art is "fine" if the alternative is not so fine.
 
FrankS said:
Surely it is helpful when marketing oneself, to specify an area of strength? If someone says just photographer or worse yet, just artist, then they could be all sorts with very different abilities.
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I agree Frank, when you introduce yourself as a photographer, it's the same thing as saying "I'm a student." Everyone knows what a student does, but it's incomplete, that's why we say "commercial photographer" or "wedding photographer" or "Fine Art photographer."

If I encounter someone who claims to be a fine-art photographer, my next step is purely subjective, do I like his/her artwork or not. It's not that hard :)
 
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'Fine art' smells fishy to me. It makes sense to me that the term is derived from the European terms though, so ok. I don't even call photographs art anyway, they're photographs.
 
What annoys me is, one does all that work and all one gets is a BA, I supose you'd have to graduate at St Martins or the RCA for a BFA ...
 
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What annoys me is, one does all that work and all one gets is a BA, I supose you'd have to graduate at St Martins or the RCA for a BFA ...
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BFA is an American thing, over here it's all BAs no matter how fancy your university is, or indeed whether you studied art or history (for example).

Or maybe my irony detector is malfunctioning ;)
 
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"The point of this is that sculpture, painting, theater, and dance are arts. Photography, ceramics, weaving, cabinetry are crafts."

How square is that?
 
gdm I agree. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I just looked at RISD's photo degree program, and its a Fine Arts degree in Photography. Not sure why anyone would think differently lol...
 
anu L ogy said:
gdm I agree. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I just looked at RISD's photo degree program, and its a Fine Arts degree in Photography. Not sure why anyone would think differently lol...
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My BFA from Indiana University (1999) was a fine arts degree too. I also studied painting, drawing, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, art history, and took a lot of liberal arts (history, writing, literature, philosophy) classes too. The university required the liberal arts classes as well as the classes in all the other kinds of art as part of the degree. Painting majors were required to take photography too.
 
Whatever you want, Michael... Art is whatever you or any other looking at anything, want or decide to consider art. Van Gogh's paintings were never considered or sold as art in his lifetime: were considered a waste of oil paint, and bought at canvas price by students to paint them white and become a new canvas just about to receive -maybe- real art on it... Were Van Gogh's paintings art? Never in his moment, except for very few people... Are his paintings art now? All of them, to everyone, except for very few people.

Art is what we decide to consider art. Your opinion on what art is, is as irrelevant as mine, because art is related to masses, marketing and centuries. What I mean is that I won't ask you what art means to you because I know what it means to me, and as other member said, we should only care about the things we consider art, no matter what anyone says... In general art is something that makes us feel intensely, and something that can make feel intensely a very different person in a far place and age... And usually, art has a literal reading and another one...

Cheers,

Juan
 
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historicist said:
BFA is an American thing, over here it's all BAs no matter how fancy your university is, or indeed whether you studied art or history (for example).

Or maybe my irony detector is malfunctioning ;)
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it was socratic irony, perhaps ... I really didn't even know there was a BFA, but then I realised it all went to hell in a hand cart many years back anyway :)
 
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