Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Fine art
Summary
In European academic traditions, fine art is made primarily for aesthetics or creative expression, distinguishing it from decorative art or applied art, which also has to serve some practical function, such as pottery or most metalwork. In the aesthetic theories developed in the Italian Renaissance, the highest art was that which allowed the full expression and display of the artist's imagination, unrestricted by any of the practical considerations involved in, say, making and decorating a teapot. It was also considered important that making the artwork did not involve dividing the work between different individuals with specialized skills, as might be necessary with a piece of furniture, for example. Even within the fine arts, there was a hierarchy of genres based on the amount of creative imagination required, with history painting placed higher than still life.
Historically, the five main fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry. Other "minor or subsidiary arts" were also included, especially performing arts such as theatre and dance, which were counted as "among the most ancient and universal." In practice, outside education, the concept is typically only applied to the visual arts. The old master print and drawing were included as related forms to painting, just as prose forms of literature were to poetry. Today, the range of what would be considered fine arts (in so far as the term remains in use) commonly includes additional modern forms, such as film, photography, and video production/editing.
One definition of fine art is "a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic and intellectual purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture." In that sense, there are conceptual differences between the fine arts and the decorative arts or applied arts (these two terms covering largely the same media).
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (3)
MATH-115(b): Advanced linear algebra II
L'objectif du cours est d'introduire les notions de base de l'algèbre linéaire et de démontrer rigoureusement les résultats principaux du sujet.
HUM-394: Manufacturing artistic identities from the 19th to the 21st centuries
L'enseignement propose une introduction à l'histoire de l'art contemporain du XIXe au XXIe siècles, permettant d'aborder les oeuvres selon une approche esthétique et sociale
HUM-321: History of contemporary art
L'enseignement propose une introduction à l'histoire de l'art contemporain du XIXe au XXIe siècle, permettant d'aborder les oeuvres selon une approche esthétique et sociale.
Related lectures (33)
Modeling Heat Equation
Covers the modeling of the heat equation using Laplacian operator and Riemann varieties.
Information Theory and Coding
Covers source coding, Kraft's inequality, mutual information, Huffman procedure, and properties of tropical sequences.
Abstract Variational Problems
Covers abstract variational problems in Hilbert spaces, focusing on boundedness, continuity, and coercivity.
Related publications (6)
Related concepts (31)
Artist
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the term is also often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (although less often for actors). "Artiste" (French for artist) is a variant used in English in this context, but this use has become rare.
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. In art, the term "painting" describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called "a painting").
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines, such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art.