Fine art is created to specifically be for aesthetic purposes and to be rated on its beauty and has no practical nature unlike the applied arts. Whilst I do think that fine art has a place philosophy wise when applied to something that more relates to me I.e concept art, i still think that practically its something that is very far away from what I'm looking to achieve in my more preferred area of work.Â
I looked into the difference between fine art and graphic design to start and see where i could draw comparisons and differences. Fine art is a very personal piece of work that draws from an artists emotions and other factors whilst design work usually comes from the need to create for something, whether its a logo, flier or some other kind of design based worked that is meant to be easily interpreted.Â
Thats why i think its better for me to draw my comparisons between concept art and fine art. Concept art is an applied art that is designed to communicate to an audience what kind of aesthetic and world your project is going for whether it be a game or movie. These are a critical visual tool for helping the directors of these projects understand how they want their vision to be, giving them a visual and aesthetic guide for the duration of the project.
For reference, here is a comparison between a fine art cityscape and a applied arts cityscape:
Work by Hsin-Yao Tseng, a fine artist.Â
Here we see a really nice painting, i captures the atmosphere of a wet street at night, lit up by street lights however it doesn't communicate much else as is usual with fine arts.
A cityscape by Gary Jamroz Palma for the game Remember Me
This is the huge sprawling layout of Neo-Paris, its designed to show the huge class divide between the city and the outer areas by utilisation of a huge wall blocking out the less fortunate is is seen quite commonly in other cyberpunk media. The art has a very clear message about what its trying to communicate aesthetic wise and for building the world.
They both communicate atmosphere in their own way yet due to fictitious nature of concept art the breadth of the world is explored more in the concept art. This differs greatly from fine art which is very much more based in reality and requires you to interpret and think about it more.Â
Fine art is also very wide however as it also incorporates things such as sculpture and performance however these also run along the same veins as being just for aesthetic and beauty purposes, whilst its equivalents in applied arts are probably 3d modelling and animation.Â
I think fine art is really interesting and is a core part of art in a whole but past that i feel like its influence rapidly drops off the further away you get from a paintbrush. Basic design principles compared to fine art principals don't mesh well but i can still see how they could each bounce of each other.Â
For reference, some other notable concept art pieces that straddle the line between art and a functional piece of work.Â
Matte painting is the profession of creating backgrounds and settings for movies that would be impossible to film, though not commonly used now days, this was a profession that clearly jumped between fine art and applied arts as the more realistic the painting the more seamless it would appear to the viewer. This illusion was important until cgi become sufficiently cheap enough to create the backgrounds.Â
