Key Takeaways From Fine Art

Art is the combination of the mind and the hand. Art has been a very broad spectrum of human activities including beauty, creativity, emotional power, technical ability, or social critique to express personal aesthetic sense, to express political opinion, or to criticize societal aspects. In recent times, art has been commercialized. But not all commercialized art is created equal. Today, in this global economy, buyers choose works of art based on criteria such as creativity, financial viability, reputation, and impact on society.

Creative insight and aesthetic appreciation are the foundations of art. Aesthetics evaluate the totality of an object and its relation to the surrounding environment. An artistic production may be motivated by an impulse, and thus may have a utilitarian value. The aesthetic value of a work of art lies in the emotional impact it may have on the viewer. The ability to manipulate the senses of sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste enables artists to communicate the innermost feelings and needs of their audience.

Beauty, however, is a difficult concept to define because it involves the evaluation of the totality of an object rather than a single component such as color, shape, and form. We usually refer to elements of a painting as ‘colors’ and ‘shapes’. The concept of beauty lies in the human desire to be beautified. Beauty has been the subject of tremendous speculation since the beginnings of art. The concept of beauty can be separated from the idea of art itself and it may be defined as the quality of satisfying the aesthetic desire of the human species.

In general, the major components of art are the form, content, and technical aspects of a work of art. These three key terms should not be confused with the conventional categories of art as per the four corners (aesthetic, technical, critical, and expressive). We can also speak of major and minor art as well as the umbrella category of the fine arts.

The major categories of art include art as visual art, including painting, drawing, architecture, sculpture, and printmaking; art as a performance art, which includes dance, music, motion pictures, and theater; as literature, the making of books and other written forms; as music, the making of music for speech or entertainment purposes; as visual culture, the making of images and visual works that communicate ideas, impressions, emotions, and concepts; and as literature, the making of written texts. Some of the other categories of the fine arts are ceramics, jewelry, woodwork, metalwork, textiles, and glassworks. These categories of the fine arts also include the application of technology to the production of art.

There are some key points and takeaways that we can learn from the different components of art. The first key point is that art cannot be judged by its appearance, but rather that the appreciation of art depends on its emotional content and its ability to stimulate the senses and to communicate a meaningful message to those who view it. The second key point is that beauty is subjective and that there is no right or wrong in appreciating art. And thirdly, while beauty may be a subjective state, the values and ideals that art contains can provide some important answers to some questions that we all may be asking.