Towghiyan

Is The Division Between Fine Art And Applied Arts Real?

Applied Art is a branch of visual art that describing the design or decoration of functional objects so as to make them aesthetically pleasing. It is belittled for always being at the service of people: an art whose aim is to communicate with its addressees, while the consumer is not to supposed to increase the visual or social cultural level of the society.

Applied art’s principles are the artist and the consumer. The result of this relation is a piece of art which is meets the needs of all the two principles.
Applied art is not a field for expressing internal feelings and characteristics. Its goal is to provide a specific communication in a specific time not in a long time and it should be designed in a way that most addressees with fewer attempts can relate to it easily.

As the ancient and medieval conceptions of art were not tied to the notion of beauty, so it needs a new classification of art in an aesthetic context. Fine art refers to the arts that are concerned with a limited number of visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, dance, theatre, architecture and printmaking.
Charles bateaux, in his paper (1746), divided arts into three groups: useful arts, such as different manual industrial products; Fine arts like poem, painting, music and sculpture; and arts which have beauty and benefit at the same time like architecture and eloquence.

In the field of comparing fine arts and applied arts, we can propound two questions:
1. Do we deal with two different cultural categories?
2. If we do, are there any internal differences between these two categories?

The distinction between ‘fine art’ and ‘applied art’ came to the fore at the time the industrial revolution when politicians and economists advocated state patronage for the arts partly at any rate because of the benefits they were expected to confer in industrial competition. Establishing museums and designing schools with governmental support and the founding of museums of applied arts had the same connection with the above-mentioned idea.
Applied arts refer to the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or decorative park bench.
Repetition of familiar forms can be seen in the applied art. It has no connection with ambiguity. Its direction to comfort is stereotyped and it is under influence of commercial aims. Anyway, this does not mean that the artist must have no creativity and or not satisfy his or her client’s demands in the simplest way, on the contrary, artists must, with the use of their knowledge and public taste and culture, produce their work. Fine art has basic ideas and concepts and it is non-multiplication.

Apparently the difference between fine and applied art was introduced in the twentieth century, but nearly Division of art almost exists between Art and styles of art, for example Leonardo da Vinci believes that painting is the more important art than the other arts, even more valuable than poem, music and sculpture.
Sometimes the difference between fine and applied arts is based on the worth and cultural models. We may put it this way, difference in tastes. Existence of addressees with different tastes, knowledge, beliefs, mental approaches, behaviors and values has an intensive effect on the practical art. That the models and communication channels have also affected it and even in some cases the difference in specified communication channels.
On the other hand, this difference can be based on the way of observing artworks and our attitude towards them. Inaccessibility of works of Fine Art has no connection with inherent position of it, but that is the result of the people’s action who called themselves keeper of cultural temples.
Time itself played an important part in taste and need of people. Each period, it absorbs the art, which equal with mentality and specifications of itself.

Applied art is used in distinction to fine art, although there is often no clear dividing line between the two.
There are certainly differences between good art and bad, between "high" arts and, say, folk or common art, but they all are art.
In our day-to-day lives as audience members — watchers and listeners of — the arts, we often deal with sign of arts. This method of classifying the arts is "audience-centered" because it puts us, the audience, at the center of classifying.

Based on the points mentioned above, in my opinion, we can not claim that we are really dealing with two different cultural categories. These groups may be different from each other in artists, mind and aesthetics, but this is not the negation of the other. The categorization should not be described in this way and treat unjustly with them.
Fine art and applied art, each of them, answered their goal and the differentiation between the Arts and separating them from one another should not exist. Although they are two different groups, but each of them is depend on another. This differentiation is in times to an extent that the difference between fine and applied arts is called art versus not-art.
The coexistence and balance of ancient and modern is an important theme in our cultural lives.

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