Editing Fine art (section)

== Cultural perspectives ==
[[File:Ch'ien Hsüan 001.jpg|thumb|''[[Wang Xizhi]] watching geese''; by [[Qian Xuan]]; 1235-before 1307; handscroll (ink, color and gold on paper); 9{{fraction|1|8}} x 36{{fraction|1|2}} in.; [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]]]]
The conceptual separation of arts and decorative arts or crafts that have often dominated in Europe and the US is not shared by all other cultures.  But traditional [[Chinese art]] had comparable distinctions, distinguishing within [[Chinese painting]] between the mostly landscape [[literati painting]] of [[scholar gentlemen]] and the artisans of the schools of court painting and sculpture.  Although high status was also given to many things that would be seen as craft objects in the West, in particular ceramics, [[hardstone carving|jade carving]], weaving, and embroidery, this by no means extended to the workers who created these objects, who typically remained even more anonymous than in the West.  Similar distinctions were made in [[Japanese art|Japanese]] and [[Korean art]].  In [[Islamic art]], the highest status was generally given to [[Islamic calligraphy|calligraphy]], architects and the painters of [[Persian miniature]]s and related traditions, but these were still very often [[court painter|court employees]].  Typically they also supplied designs for the best [[Persian carpet]]s, architectural [[tile|tiling]] and other decorative media, more consistently than happened in the West.

[[Latin American art]] was dominated by European colonialism until the 20th-century, when indigenous art began to reassert itself inspired by the [[Constructivism (art)|Constructivist Movement]], which reunited arts with crafts based upon socialist principles. In Africa, [[Yoruba art]] often has a political and spiritual function. As with the art of the Chinese, the art of the Yoruba is also often composed of what would ordinarily be considered in the West to be craft production. Some of its most admired manifestations, such as textiles, fall in this category.