Why is illustration not art

Like Bacon, Dana Shutz falls between fine art and modernism. She is a figurative artist, but the way she renders her images has little or nothing to do with the way things actually look, while also referencing the history of visual art, including cubism, expressionism, abstract art, and abstract expressionism. Money, however, should not be our primary or any concern when it comes to how we assess or value visual art. Some might want to classify Giger as an illustrator, but does his work have more in common with Norman Rockwell, or Hieronymus Bosch?

Because of the exceptional skill of his illustrations, the aesthetic beauty, his unique style, and most of all the extraordinary universe he created, populated by biomechanoids, Giger is a fine artist. Rauschenberg straddles modernism and contemporary art because he starts to use found objects like newspapers, a mattress, or a stuffed goat in his art, as well as imagery appropriated from popular culture.

He maintains the aesthetics of abstract expressionism think de Kooning , but integrates content such as social commentary. Duchamp was not popular during modernism, but was resurrected when a connection could be drawn between his work and that of American mid-century artists such as Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, legitimizing the newer American art by giving it a longer historical lineage, and putting Duchamp on a pedestal as retroactively instigating conceptual art.

Van Gogh is a pivotal artist who embraces fine art proper, but looks forward to modernism. While his art remains figurative, his emotive stylization calls attention to the thickly applied paint itself, as perhaps never before, in which case his art becomes conspicuously about art itself, as well as whatever the subject is. As with modernism, his is an originator of a new style, and advances techniques of making imagery as well as what can be seen and digested as an image. Most the old masters are going to be fine artists, and using a lot of conventional illustration techniques.

Contrary to much of what we hear in contemporary art theory, using representational drawing and painting skills to convey sophisticated content is a timeless avenue of creative endeavor, and is never behind some newer way of making art.

To say otherwise is tantamount to asserting that memes replace literature. Neiman made blanket illustration masquerading as fine art. His subjects, such as sports stars, never rise above the plebian, and his seemingly expressive brushwork expresses nothing other than a kind of cheesy flamboyance achieved with palette knife and gaudy colors.

Koons has presented himself as working in the tradition of Michelangelo because of his plaster sculptures produced by hired artisans , and as improving the paintings of the old masters by affixing his trademark blue gazing ball to copies of old master paintings made by his assistants.

He is not a fine artist, but a solid contemporary artist working in the traditional of Duchamp, here merely appropriating imagery and objects not from popular culture but from the museum, and recontextualizing them. His art does not use traditional skills, imagination, or aesthetics.

Carl Andre and the other minimalists fall between modernism and contemporary art. This places the idea of arranging tiles on the floor as sculpture, in the most simple arrangement possible, above any semblance of flair in the execution of the work.

This is radical when compared to a painting that sits on a wall, but imagine if Meryl Streep had done this exact performance. As theater it easily shades into cringeworthy self-aggrandizement. Hybrid art forms tend to have far more in common with genres outside of visual art, but are nevertheless contextualized and shown as the latest development in the traditional of visual art.

This is why video is not contemporary film, performance is not contemporary theater, and sound sculpture is not contemporary music, but they are all contemporary art. Only visual art proper is excluded from contemporary visual art. His art is contemporary because he uses found objects from nature, as it were , and makes ephemeral compositions. People assume that contemporary art is high art and illustration is low art, but as in the examples I gave above, there are outstanding exceptions where the art transcends the supposed limitations of the medium.

Some contemporary art is threadbare, and a few of the examples I gave are not anything that I admire works by Levine, Boyce, and Cattelan. His compositional use of the titled bright yellow armbands of the US Marshalls, and the splat of the tomato reference abstract and abstract expressionist painting. There is an amazing use of shallow space, creating a stage note the thick line in the wall that bisects the painting , and this has to be one of the best uses of fists — and even contrasted with shoes — in all of painting.

The audience is placed in the vantage point of the people who would taunt and throw food at the girl. Notice you can feel the wooden ruler in the her hand. I could go on and on. The point is that an artist synonymous with cliches, working in a style primarily used to sell products, is capable of using that same medium to address the human condition, a historical event, and all integrated into a stunning visual buffet.

If nothing else, the painting is an outstanding aesthetic achievement. Regardless of style, medium, discipline, or however we may want to categorize or contextualize art, it is always the case that the best art transcends the vehicle used. Nowadays I make digital art , mostly digital painting, and am moving more towards illustration, with a solid footing in fine art, and hints of modernism and contemporary art. And if you like my art or criticism, please consider chipping in so I can keep working until I drop.

See how it works here. Or go directly to my account. Or you can make a one time donation to help me keep on making art and blogging and restore my faith in humanity simultaneously. Like Liked by 2 people. I always look forward to your posts! Like Liked by 3 people.

Hi Tiffany. We often use modern and contemporary interchangeably, but contemporary art is much more associated with postmodernism, and can even be quite anti-modern, such as in its rejection of originality. When I was in grad school, which was entirely radical conceptual art, an artist would have been scorned and ridiculed if her or she tried to make modern art or fine art, or illustration.

Like Liked by 1 person. Lots to think about here. They all have so little in common. Your breakdown helps: Michelangelo was an illustrator, van Gogh a fine artist, Duchamp was modernist and Koons is contempt-orary, yes?

They both belong to contemporary art practice, and Duchamp is the father of it. They both deny originality, appropriate everyday objects, and are anti-art. Most contemporary art regards Duchamp as the genesis of their genre. Van Gogh is fine art with modernism. He works semi-realistically, but is definitely an originator and contributes to the evolution of the science of art, so to speak.

His emphasis on brush strokes and the surface of the painting was audacious for the time, and his mere application of impasto paint is an acknowledgment of pigment as the subject of art in addition to whatever he was painting. His art is highly about art itself, which is a core characteristic of modernism: art for art sake, and art about art.

Like some illustrators of today, he transcends the limitations of the medium in terms of quality of execution and depth of content, especially since he was living long before there were cameras, and thus illustration served broader purposes, including being the only possible depiction of visual reality.

For me, the difference between fine art and illustration is a lot like that between literature and genre fiction: both may use the same grammar and share the form of the novel, but one attempts to deal with the human predicament while the other one largely seeks to entertain.

Illustration is usually a means to an end ex. Like Like. I think it should be pointed out that Koons did not recreate that Manet painting. He had his assistants do it, like all of his work. I genuinely thought it was a parody the resin-balloon doggy with accompanying poop-gift. An aspect, only slightly distinctive in your article a confluence with politics, and in a way illustration — inherently, I think: social commentary. Which, well… is nearly always limited.

This breakdown and description of types, movements and example artists is helpful and stimulating. Thank you for writing it. Very informative article, but I question in the Breakdown section ranking Contemporary art having no imagination or originality. The same was said to Johan Vaaler. A contemporary artist has as much as or in some cases more imagination than a Fine art artist, whose work is often formulaic. Thanks for reading and commenting. And your point is well taken.

It does sound hard to deny the imagination and originality in a genre, unless, of course, I am talking about the further end of the spectrum, which seeks to be neither. If you want a radical departure from modernism, you go in the opposite direction. Look into the theory, such as Rosalind Krauss, who is a mastermind behind contemporary art.

This goes all the way back to Duchamp. As I said, they can acknowledge being clever, and innovative, but not original, according to their own underlying philosophical underpinnings.

I also emphasized that I am talking about in relation to the other genres, and postmodern art is reacting against modern art, and very strongly against its notion of originality.

Ask yourself if Sherry Levine re-photographing Walker Evans photographs is original. On the other hand, I agree with you that some of it has got to be original and imaginative in spite of the overarching theory. I have become interested in Western art, which as far as I can tell from your article is basically illustration, perhaps shading in to fine art, but springing out of love for a particular region, landscape, and history.

I meant Western art in the narrow sense: coming out of the American West. Landscapes features rocky mountains, deserts, mesas, and cacti; paintings of cowboys and of pinto horses standing in the snow, etc. My grandmother was a painter of all that stuff. Then recently, I moved to the West and fell in love with it myself. You fall in love with the landscape, and you want to paint it. If I had meant Western in the sense of European culture, that would have been extremely broad and would have cross-cut all the categories you laid out in this post.

Nope, that was very clear and well put. Nothing wrong with more regional art, and falling in love with landscapes. Probably not in the cement and asphalt city I live in right now in Thailand, though. The picture by Dana Schutz looks to me exactly like the self-portraits in your post about Suzzan Blac. There might be some overlap, but if you look at enough works by both, Shutz is a lot more whacky and even cheerful as compared to Blac.

But I think I see what you are getting at. Delightfully, comprehensively illustrated no pun intended. I also appreciated the chart comparing the four different categories of art and what they did or did not have in common. Glad you liked it. As usual, so gratifying to have so much to chew, Eric. Many such museums are seen in the countries of Europe. They are called art museums. Fine art is not created with a motive of getting it printed. It is created for purely imaginative or aesthetic purposes.

Fine art is commercial in purpose and is divided into drawing , painting , water-color painting, and sculpture too. However, to earn money in fine arts you should be someone with good talent because it is the unique, imaginative sense of your work that will get your work sold. Illustration is different from gallery art in the sense that it refers to works of art that appeal to the human eye like drawings and paintings commissioned for reproduction in print or other media.

The very purpose of illustration is to get it printed. Illustration is supportive in purpose and is more commercial in sense. Illustration supports a short story narrated in a magazine or a person or a character depicted in an essay or in a write-up in a magazine or a journal. Many artists throughout history created what a client imposed upon them. Take Michelangelo and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, for example. He points out that illustrators must work under tight time constraints within deadlines.

The focus of Fine Art may be design with the subject becoming secondary. But should Illustration be excluded from the world of fine art because of the focus? I think not. My friend pointed out that Illustration is commercial, and that since it is commercial, it is about money and not the art.

My argument is this: fine artists WANT to sell their artwork. They may sell it in a gallery or through another avenue, but ultimately they want money for their work. Illustration just has the ability to reach a broader audience because it is created to be printed. Fine artists and critics began to distinguish themselves from commercial artists by arguing that commercial art was a lower form of art.

Drawing is a universal human activity. Illustration is something you might want to do with your drawing skills.

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