Annissa Collins, age 14, of Birmingham, Ala., for her question:
WHAT ARE THE FINE ARTS?
Fine arts are concerned with making or performing beautiful products or products that appeal in some way to man's aesthetic tastes. In a broad sense, the fine arts include music, literature, opera and ballet, as well as painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts.
People expect to enjoy a poem, a painting or a symphony for its own sake, not merely as a means to something else.
In a narrow sense, the fine arts include only the arts that appeal to aesthetic taste through the sense of sight. These arts including painting, sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, landscaping design, furniture and textile design.
But most authorities now prefer to call these the "visual arts."
Many colleges have departments of "fine arts" that cover many of these arts. They classify music and spoken literature, in a dramatic performance, as "auditory arts."
Some authorities group music, dance and the theater arts together as the "performance arts," because they must be performed, either by living artists or by mechanical means such as films and phonograph records.
Many art authorities group painting, sculpture and architecture together as "plastic arts," because they consist of solid objects. Works of art that do not move, including most paintings, sculpture and architecture, are called, "static." Those works that do move are called "mobile," as in mobile sculptures and animated films.
Many people believe that there are seven fine arts. This is an idea that developed in the Middle Ages. Scholars at that time grouped together seven kinds of learning, most of which we call sciences today. This group included grammar, dialectic (a kind of logic) rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy.
Another ancient idea is that fine arts can be separated from useful arts, because fine arts are only supposed to be beautiful, not to be useful. This idea developed in ancient times when men believed that gentlemen and ladies could not use their hands for any useful work.
But few people in democratic societies today beleive that this ancient idea is true. We regard architecture, furniture design and ceramics as fine arts, even though their products are useful, when artists use good design and make their objects satisfying to our eyes, ears and minds.
The Greek and Romans called all useful skills arts, including agriculture, mining and medicine. But we regard the hundreds of arts those which are concerned with beauty and aesthetic appeal, regardless of their practical use.
People also expect a great work of art to develop their minds by expressing and clarifying the best thoughts of great men and women.