The maze of Fine Art, what does it mean?

-Starry night by Vincent Van Gogh

I am a fine artist. I produce fine art. But what does that mean? There seems to be a general confusion in the world about the actual definition of fine art. Since I often present myself as a fine artist and have my company name linked with fine art I thought it was time to write a little explanation to shed some light on the matter that the maze of fine art has become.

To quote the definition from dictionary.com; a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, graphics and architecture.

In other words, fine art was developed primarily to portray aesthetics and beauty.
During history thou, the rules of what can be defined as fine art has been bent quite a few times. An example is how decorative arts used to be seen as a craft, and how now in the contemporary art world these restrictions have become quite meaningless due to the fact that the artist intention or concept is given primacy.
The one thing that fine art is distinguished from however is what we call applied art. Applied art is art that also serve some practical function. Examples are woodwork and needlework.

Today fine art can include everything from painting and drawing to photography, music, filmmaking, dance, printmaking, conceptual art and theatre. Fine art is in other words to be found in all kinds of different art!
You then later have to categorize the various styles and classifications within those different means of fine art to put an even more precise label on it. An example is in painting, is it abstract, photo-realism or Impressionism? But that requires a whole lot of new defining of course.

Fine art photograph by Ansel Adams.

One of the reasons why I call myself a fine artist is because of the freedom I feel comes with the word. In today's art world there is more than ever a need to define and put into boxes what type of art you represent. Labeling yourself as a painter is not enough. You need to clarify if you belong to the expressionists or the abstracts, the realists or the postmodernists.
I find that a lot of people have their minds firmly made up when it comes to art. Either you like this or you like that. It is often very black and white and based on what is considered fashion at the time.
Working with a realistic expression I found that many people living today think that kind of art belongs to the pre 18th century. After All, in the art world as well as the entertainment business, fashion world and life in general it is all about originality and new thinking. Which in a lot of cases result in a lot of brilliant new gadgets and ways of life, but it is not often that we as human beings reinvent the wheel. In fact, in as much as 99 % of the cases we just borrow or steal something already made and change or improve it.
And the same goes for art. But the whole originality and new thinking within the art world subject is for another time!

To sum it up, I call myself a fine artist because my main goal is to make high quality art which is appreciated for its ascetics and beauty!