This made me snort my coffee (I hope it isn’t behind a paywall)
1 Like
Guys this is really a myopic view. It ignores great the great majority of art history. Caravaggio was an artist da Vinci was an artist Michelangelo was an artist all of them creating work on commission for the church for money. The idea of an artist as a monk pursuing a calling is purely a modern invention and frankly a sales pitch.
Van Gogh is a terrible example he was a psychotic man, supported by his brother-in-law and his family.
Art and Artists are subjective … so subjective we got to the point of not allowing the discussion a while back. It was almost as bad as MAC vs PC. Y’all are gonna have to agree to disagree. Because you will not change how anyone else feels about Art. 
As for Van Gogh not being an example because of mental illness … that could be said for a lot of Artists. It doesn’t make their impact any less important.
See? We could go on all day LOL 
It’s a paywall But, I got to see the list before I got the big sign across the screen
Weird, they used to allow 3 free reads before the paywall comes up.
Maybe it’s “subscriber only”
(yes, in Boston we have two choices. I read both.)
1 Like
They were artists, certainly, but was what they produced for money, art? I would argue not. At least not fine art. It was commercial art. Commissioned portraiture, for example, was not about self-expression. It can, of course, be painted in an expressive way, but that does not make it fine art, to my mind.
Portraiture which was created for its own beauty – Whistler’s Woman in White, for example, is an expression of his love for her. This is fine art. Interpretive, emotive and devotional. No commercial motivation. By contrast, Singer-Sergent’s similar painting of Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherford White, from a few years after, is a commission. An equally beautiful painting, but for me, one is fine art, the other is not.
It’s all about motivation.
He did try to sell his art though. For example in Antwerp where he went to art dealers to promote a few of his paintings that he had taken with him from Nuenen.
Vincent van Gogh wrote to Theo from Antwerp:
"See that you send your letter off on the first, because I’ve got enough bread in until then, but after that I’d be in a real stew. My little room isn’t bad at all, and it definitely doesn’t look dreary. Now that I have the 3 studies I brought with me here, I’ll set about going to the picture dealers, who mostly seem to live in private houses, though, no shop windows on the street.”
So by your definition Van Gough did not produce art?!
It cannot be for the simple reason that we can’t read minds, and the fact that we’re often not even sure about our own motivations.
I just typed in something that looks like an email address and it showed me the not so interesting content 
I asked Google, “How many graphic designers are there in the United States?” Here are figures from the first page of results. (The bolding is mine).
- There are currently an estimated 266,300 graphic designers in the United States.
- There are 174,483 people employed in the Graphic Designers industry in the US as of 2022.
- There are 133,437 Graphic Designers businesses in the US as of 2022
- There are over 118,080 graphic designers currently employed in the United States
- There are over 107,343 graphic designer/productions currently employed in the United States.
- The number of people employed as Graphic designers has been growing at a rate of 4.36%, from 270,691 people in 2018 to 282,497 people in 2019.
- There were 260,300 graphic designers in the US in 2016.
- There are approximately 254,100 people employed as a Graphic Designer.
- The total number of jobs reported in the US for graphic designers in 2019 was 281,500.
These are awfully specific figures considering that they differ by about 300%. Whatever the actual numbers, the supply exceeds the demand. My best guess is that the problem will only worsen as do-it-yourself and cheap crowdsourcing websites whittle away at the bottom and mid-levels.
As with chefs, tailors, and architects, there will always be demand from those who need higher-end, custom, and bespoke design solutions. For everything else, I think the heyday of this profession passed by several years ago.
I worked for a small insurance brokerage for a short time as an in-house GD. I’ll never forget something the owner once said about having full-time in-house creative for a small business that isn’t in the business of creativity. He said, “supply creates demand.”
I am comfortable with things not being black and white, I said as much earlier. I’m seeking more clarity of thought, personally. I was aiming for a better, more useful distinction between these two worlds, not a definition or anything.
Not what I was aiming for, I am simply interested in the opinions of folks here, that’s why I joined after all. I’ll leave it after this post.
Not what I was suggesting at all. I simply meant he’s a bad example because his illness prevented him from being self-sufficient. Other artists of the time were. He might have sold better and been more successful in his lifetime if he had not suffered from mental Illness - though Gauguin didn’t fair much better. Whether it’s true or not, I was thinking about business acumen when I said that. He certainly made a great contribution in spite of it, perhaps even partly because of it.
This is great by the way, I think this a useful clarifying idea.
I trained as a draftsman just before they became obsolete. I missed the golden age of illustration by most of a century and I trained as a traditional painter - influenced heavily by painters from the 1880s or so. The thing I often think about is how dangerous it is to fall into a “scarcity” mindset. As truly creative folks who appreciate craft, I must believe we can find ways to make a living and so will younger designers. It’s weird though, ever since that post on AI a few weeks back, I’ve been looking at what kinds of artwork AI can generate and I’m stunned. My first thought was “can I use it better than these other folks with what I know”? Is that art or design or… hell I don’t know.
Also, thanks Sprout for putting your opinion right out there. You used two of my most cherished painting heroes to do it too. I can’t agree with you but, I get it and I find the idea of art pure and unsullied by profit really appealing.
Anyhow, not trying to stir anything further, I just appreciate the discussion it helped a bit.
1 Like
For me, fine art can be primarily identified from either the artist’s perspective or the viewer’s or listener’s. They’re not synonymous. The first has to do with the motives of the artist. The second has to do with how a viewer or listener appreciates it.
From the artists’ point of view, the motive to create what might be termed fine art tends to emanate mainly from a desire to explore creativity and self-expression.
From the viewers’ or listeners’ perspective, a fine art appreciation might stem from the work’s creativity, aesthetics, or imaginative qualities rather than its decorative or utilitarian usefulness.
A poet commissioned to write a poem for a specific event might receive payment. But if the poem is written primarily as an expression by the poet of that poet’s inner feelings, is the work fine art despite the financial incentives?
I might hang a poster on my wall produced several years ago as commercial art to advertise an event. The creation and production of that poster were likely business-related and utilitarian, which wouldn’t seem to rule out fine art. However, my choice to hang it on my wall might be exclusively due to my appreciation of its aesthetic qualities with no regard for the promotional value it once had. In this situation, the designer produced commercial art, but my subsequent appreciation of the poster might be from a fine arts perspective.
The Dadaists played with this whole notion of what constituted fine art. Most anyone would be hard-pressed to consider a urinal as fine art. However, when Marcel Duchamp signed a urinal with the signature “R. Mutt” and placed it in a museum, it became fine art. Or did it? Was the fine art, the signed urinal? Or was the fine art contained within Duchamp’s intellectualization of an absurdity?
Jackson Pollock didn’t consider his paintings as fine art. Instead, he thought of them as artifacts of the art having occurred. In other words, the art took place in his spontaneous actions while creating the paintings.
I think most people would consider ballet a fine art. However, is a ballerina engaged in fine art when the piece is more dependent upon her mastering a pre-defined technique than expressing her creativity? Is the ballerina the fine artist, or is the author of the ballet the fine artist? If money is charged to see the ballet, is the fine art aspect of the ballet compromised?
If self-expression and lack of commercial intent is a hallmark of fine art, is a child’s artistic scribbles fine art? Is a teenager dancing in her bedroom engaging in fine art? Is that child more of a fine artist than Rembrandt or Raphael, whose work was commissioned? Is the self-expressing teenage dancer more of a fine artist than the ballerina who gets a paycheck?
I could go on with this, but my point is the whole subject of what fine art is or isn’t is a blurry distinction muddied by myriad variables and personal subjectivity. Similarly, where’s the boundary between blue and green? At what point does a cool day become a warm one? Is this or that piece of art fine art or not? Some things have precise definitions with fixed boundaries. Others, such as fine art, are more about generalities — at least for me.
1 Like
It’s art merely because of the invitation (framing it as art in a museum) to see it aesthetically. Commercial artists and graphic designers can offer this invitation also.
Our internal representations and concepts are written in our cerebral cortex. They’re not static and can be developed.