Editing Fine art (section)

== Origins, history and development ==
{{Main|Art history}}
{{History of art sidebar}}
According to some writers, the concept of a distinct category of fine art is an invention of the [[early modern period]] in the West.  Larry Shiner in his ''[[The Invention of Art: A Cultural History]]'' (2003) locates the invention in the 18th century:
"There was a traditional "system of the arts" in the West before the eighteenth century. (Other traditional cultures still have a similar system.) In that system, an artist or artisan was a skilled maker or practitioner, a work of art was the useful product of skilled work, and the appreciation of the arts was integrally connected with their role in the rest of life. "Art", in other words, meant approximately the same thing as the Greek word "techne", or in English "skill", a sense that has survived in phrases like "the art of war", "the art of love", and "the art of medicine".<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=519 |title=A Third System of the Arts? An Exploration of Some Ideas from Larry Shiner's ''The Invention of Art: A Cultural History'' |journal=Contemporary Aesthetics |author=Clowney, David |access-date=7 May 2013 |archive-date=28 April 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140428005534/http://www.contempaesthetics.org/newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=519 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
Similar ideas have been expressed by [[Paul Oskar Kristeller]], [[Pierre Bourdieu]], and [[Terry Eagleton]] (e.g. ''The Ideology of the Aesthetic''), though the point of invention is often placed earlier, in the [[Italian Renaissance]]; [[Anthony Blunt]] notes that the term ''arti di [[disegno]]'', a similar concept, emerged in Italy in the mid-16th century.<ref>Blunt, 55</ref>

But it can be argued that the [[classical world]], from which very little theoretical writing on art survives, in practice had similar distinctions. The names of artists preserved in literary sources are Greek painters and sculptors, and to a lesser extent the carvers of [[engraved gem]]s.  Several individuals in these groups were very famous, and copied and remembered for centuries after their deaths.  The cult of the individual artistic genius, which was an important part of the Renaissance theoretical basis for the distinction between "fine" and other art, drew on classical precedent, especially as recorded by [[Pliny the Elder]].  Some other types of object, in particular [[Ancient Greek pottery]], are often signed by their makers or the owner of the workshop, probably partly to advertise their products.

[[File:Willem van Haecht (II) - Apelles painting Campaspe - 2.jpg|thumb|250px|''Apelles painting Campaspe'', by [[Willem van Haecht]]; {{Circa|1630}}; [[Mauritshuis]]]]

The decline of the concept of "fine art" is dated by [[George Kubler]] and others to around 1880. When it "fell out of fashion" as, by about 1900, [[folk art]] was also coming to be regarded as significant.<ref name="Guerzoni 2011 p. 27">{{cite book |last=Guerzoni |first=G. |title=Apollo and Vulcan: The Art Markets in Italy, 1400–1700 |publisher=Michigan State University Press |year=2011 |isbn=978-1-60917-361-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qYE5MBi4fGQC&pg=PT27 |access-date=4 July 2020 |page=27 |quote=Observing these tensions, George Kubler was led to affirm in 1961: "The seventeenth-century academic separation between fine and useful arts first fell out of fashion nearly a century ago. From about 1880 the conception of 'fine art' was ..."}}</ref>  Finally, at least in circles interested in [[art theory]], ""fine art" was driven out of use by about 1920 by the exponents of industrial design ... who opposed a double standard of judgment for works of art and for useful objects".<ref>[[George Kubler|Kubler, George]] (1962). ''The Shape of Time : Remarks on the History of Things''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.Kubler, pp. 14–15, [https://books.google.com/books?id=O0uxw-x-wv0C google books] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221227160813/https://books.google.com/books?id=O0uxw-x-wv0C&printsec=frontcover |date=27 December 2022 }}</ref> This was among theoreticians; it has taken far longer for the art trade and popular opinion to catch up.  However, over the same period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the movement of prices in the art market was in the opposite direction, with works from the fine arts drawing much further ahead of those from the decorative arts.

In the [[art trade]] the term retains some currency for objects from before roughly 1900 and may be used to define the scope of auctions or auction house departments and the like.  The term also remains in use in [[tertiary education]], appearing in the names of colleges, faculties, and courses.  In the English-speaking world this is mostly in North America, but the same is true of the equivalent terms in other European languages, such as ''beaux-arts'' in French or ''bellas artes'' in Spanish.