Fine Art Photography

[scrichton]

Am I deluded but as I have been in the whole web 2.0 community structures etc ... is it just me or do some community members personal sites which have emblazoned " Fine Art Photography by XXXXX " as their header lead much to believed as you peruse.

I would like to pose the question where the line between fine art and personal art or dare I say it plain bad art starts and end. I must admit my own pre-conception of fine art photography is of large deep images that are normally of either conecptual story based nature or of very graphic landscapes and abstracts.

Has this become that the true dis-tatse of the nations of the world really do beleive a well taken portrait of their child is " fine art" or is it like bokeh or Boakey (if you are scottish and describing a rising sickening feeling) a term bandied about whenever there is even so much as an out of focus area behind a compositional subject.

I hope we will all have some nice constructive arguments on the situation, just I must admit the more of these sites I find, the polarised nature of them is quite apparent.

Steven

[artedetimo]

To some "fine" refers to the grand effort to conceptualize, craft, create, and breath life into some inanimate object with the full focus of thought and passion that the mind can offer. To others its a word that helps give them a notion of credibility.

The values that works of art have acquired have changed and shifted throughout history, but motivations for creating them have always been tied up in what and who we are as people. I know your post is trying to be provocative, but I think you are just talking about a set of words that place some set of values on the work. The merit of a piece of art goes beyond those words and is related to the underlying motivation. Finding out what motivates an artist is up to you

[Mark Stahlke]

Fine art photography is a grainy black & white print of a mundane subject shot by a dead white guy, printed at 5x7, framed at 20x24 and hung in an obscure uptown gallery where it is admired by pony tailed, black clad cognoscenti who sip white wine from champagne flutes (Tres chic, non? Mais oui, c'est la meme.) and stroke each other's egos by nodding knowingly at insipid comments about the artist's vision.

No, I'm not bitter.

[tim atherton]

Nah I think you're mistaking it for real art, Fine Art Photography is a black and white print of a slightly rounded nude woman laying over the curve of a boulder in a forest/shaping her contours to the contours of a tree trunk; or a series of wooden pilings of the end of a dock taken with a long exposure so the water is slightly blurry; or a desert/beach sand dune photographed as an abstract with deep shadow and strong highlight

[photographs42]

This link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_arts
Yields this defination.

Fine art
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Fine arts)
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Fine art refers to arts that are "concerned and designates a limited number of visual art forms, including painting, sculpture, architecture and printmaking. Schools, institutes, and other organizations still use the term to indicate a traditional perspective on the visual arts, often implying an association with classic or academic art.
The word "fine" does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline. This definition tends to exclude visual art forms that could be considered craftwork or applied art, such as textiles. The more recent term visual arts is widely considered to be a more inclusive and descriptive phrase for today's variety of current art practices, and for the multitude of mediums in which high art is now more widely recognized to occur. Ultimately, the term fine in 'fine art' comes from the concept of Final Cause, or purpose, or end, in the philosophy of Aristotle. The Final Cause of fine art is the art object itself; it is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those who behold it.
An alternative, if flippant, reference to "fine art," is capital "A" art, or, art with a capital "A."
The term is still often used outside of the arts to denote when someone has perfected an activity to a very high level of skill. For example, one might metaphorically say that "Pelé took football to the level of a fine art."
That fine art is seen as being distinct from applied arts is largely the result of an issue raised in Britain by the conflict between the followers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, including William Morris, and the early modernists, including Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. The former sought to bring socialist principles to bear on the arts by including the more commonplace crafts of the masses within the realm of the arts, while the modernists sought to keep artistic endeavour exclusive, esoteric, and elitist.
Confusion often occurs when people mistakenly refer to the Fine Arts but mean the Performing Arts (Music, Dance, Drama, etc).
An academic course of study in fine art may include a Master of Fine Arts degree.

Jerome

[tim atherton]

additionally, in photography, "fine art photography" seems to have more recently become separated, as a descriptive term, from art/art photography (or perhaps contemporary art photography?)...

The works of Struth, Gursky, Mann, R Adams, Nixon, Crewdson, Wall, Esser, Sugimoto et al don't seem to be considered (or at least described) as Fine Art Photography (even if the N Americans among them might have received an MFA or such)

[chris jordan]

Fine Art has 150-180 grains per square inch of print. Medium has 80-120 grains, and Coarse Art has 40-60 grains. Anything below that is condered too rough to be art. Above Fine Art there is Very Fine, which is 220-240 grains per inch, then Extra Fine which is 280-320 grains, and finally Super Fine, which is 360-600 grains. Above that it is so smooth that it cannot be considered art.

There are also four grades of art: amateur, personal, commercial, and industrial. Amateur art is usually the best, especially in the eyes of the amateur who did it. Personal Art is a category commonly found on the website of graphic designers; they intend their Personal Art to be distinguished from Impersonal Art, which is everything else they do. Commercial Art is all other art except Industrial, which is just Commercial Art printed so big that it takes forklifts and cranes to move it around.

Then there is Performing Art, which is what some guys do with 8x10 cameras when there are lots of other people around.

There is also Analog and Digital Art. Analog Art is when you use film to photograph your girlfriend Ana sitting on a log. Digital Art is a fancy word for finger painting.

Finally there is just Art, but no one knows what that is yet.

[tim atherton]

...

[Pete Skerys]

In art school we often discussed the nature of art - what makes it so etc.

Of course this is a very slippery and often devisive topic, one that soaked up a lot of heated discussions in art circles throughout the last century.

Fundamentally, the conclusion we arived at - and the one I adhere to - is that art is whatever is/has/could be exhibited and is described as such by an artist.

To break this down a little:
1. the item/object (even concept) needed to be accessible to the public realm
2. the artist must designate it as art, and
3. the artist is someone who exhibits (artworks) in public.

Note: this definition is one based on notions of "contemporary art" rather than "fine art".
Fine art, to my mind, is work slanted more towards high craft skill - the object dominates the idea. Whereas contemporary art has a greater focus on the intellectual concept woven within the art work - the idea over the object. (Therefore an apparent laking in technical skill is acceptable, even celebrated.)
So, by this definition, there's no such thing as "personal art". Personal work is something else, such as ideas development, therapy, experiment or the like.
Such definitions are by their very nature full of holes, but i think they're often useful to contemplate. (Then forget about!)
just my 2c worth.
pete

[tim atherton]

Digital Art is a fancy word for finger painting.

mind you.... I recently worked on some exquisite early 18th Century Chinese finger painting whereby the artist would grow his finger nail and then then end would be split like a pen nib and he then used it to create the most fantastic scrolls