What is "Fine Art"?

[Roger Cole]

It's like a Supreme Court justice once said of obscenity (someone will know who this was, I don't feel like looking it up,) "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it."

That's less true of "fine" art than obscenity, I think, but the definition of "art for the sole purpose of display, not applied art" makes good sense to me.

I agree to avoid the term. The real problem with using this as a descriptive term for one's own work is that "fine" implies excellent quality in most people's minds, even though it isn't meant that way in this term. There ought to be a value-neutral term meaning "art solely for display." Then again, there is - art. Various "applied art" are sub-categories, and if isn't any of those, it's just art. Maybe.

[batwister]

I'll have to tell the Fine Art Dept at our university... Poor souls, I bet they have no idea!

I'm willing to bet that half the students don't!

[David A. Goldfarb]

Three threads, merged and stuck.

[benjiboy]

"Fine Art Photography" to me is what other people aspire to produce, I'm still struggling with photography.

[willy13664]

It means most of them discovered they could put their crayons in a pencil sharpener.

In the case of Photography, I'm sure if Stiglitz Flat Iron building is anything to go by, he forgot to focus first!

What do I know, I'm not a fine art student, just a photography student trying to take pictures people might like, but I don't read the right books, the emperor is naked and his balls are turning blue.

[ronlamarsh]

I see more and more people setting up web sites (I plan to do one myself some day) to show and sell their photographs. A lot of them describe their work as Fine Art Photography whether it is darkroom produced or from an inkjet printer. Some of these people may be experienced and some not so.

So can someone define "Fine Art Photography" for me please? Does it matter how it is produced? Are we all Fine Art Photographers?

Peter

p.s. Apologies if this is in the wrong forum section.

REad James joyces' "portrait of an artist as a young man". Briefly there is didatic art, that which attemps to teach or comment, such as photojournalism: there is pronograrphic art, that which attempts to focus attention on a beautiful object i.e. landscape filled with color etc. and what the hero of the book described as pure art, that which is inspired from an inner knowing and connects with the viewer such that they are similiarly inspired but cannot define it. It is like a Zen spiritual experience in which the meditator experiences reality but cannot define it.
I had an experience once while viewing an original Dali painting. I could not tell you what it meant but viewing it started a chilling vibration in my feet that ran through my entire body.

[Roger Hicks]

Go to Arles, the biggest gathering of fine art photographers in the world. First week in July: this year's has just finished.

Cheers,

R.

[praktica]

It's fine art if it's really good.