Can Digital Art be Fine Art?
To determine whether digital art can be fine art, we need to understand the definitions and examples of a few different terms. In this post, we are going to discuss fine art, applied art, and digital art in order to answer our main question.
Understanding Fine Art
Dictionary.com defines fine art as "any artwork considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes." Therefore, the goal of creating a piece of fine art is to create something visually appealing that has value purely based on how it looks. Traditionally, people think of painting and drawing when they hear fine art, but this phrase also reaches into three-dimensional works like sculpture and architecture. Take a look at the two examples below:
While the painting "The Boating Party" by Mary Cassatt is considered fine art, so can the "Chalice of the Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis." Both of these tell a story with their design and beauty. However, while arguably, the Chalice may be bordering the line of fine art and applied art due to its decorative nature and old age, it was likely created to be a decorative piece over functional drinkware.
Understanding Applied Art
Before jumping back into the discussion about fine art and digital art, let's first talk briefly about applied art.
Going back to Dictionary.com for consistency, applied art can be defined as "arts or crafts that have a primarily utilitarian function, or the designs and decorations used in these arts." An example of applied art would be a painting on a mug you use to sip your coffee or the decorative grapes embossed on your fancy dinner plates. The art is there for aesthetic reasons, but the primary function of the piece is pragmatic.
Applied art functions as the counterpart to fine art, though sometimes they are more closely related than others.
Understanding Digital Art
While Dictionary.com does not have a definition for digital art yet, we can safely define this ourselves as artwork created using software on a computer, tablet, phone, or the like. Digital art requires the aid of technology and electricity to produce it.
That being said, can digital art be fine art? The answer is yes, but it doesn't have to be. Like our Chalice example in the fine art section above, we must consider applied art.
Digital art that falls into the applied art category could include scientific renderings of human anatomy for doctors or diagrams for assembling furniture. The main focus of these pieces is to serve a function beyond aesthetics, even if they are well-designed. For example, a painter painting a portrait will likely have a very different intent with their work than another painter creating an accurate diagram of the human body's nervous system that is meant to be used in textbooks.
Digital Art as Fine Art
When considering the human history of creating art, inventing new techniques, and using old ones, the addition of digital art as a medium is extremely new. There is still much controversy over digital art in general due to the nature of the tool itself and how easy it is to plagiarize someone else's art from a digital platform.
Due to its freshness, some people lack an understanding of the skill required to create digital work and what goes into producing a digital painting. As a result, we are rediscovering where the boundaries are for things that we never had to consider art before, like typography, photo manipulation, and 3D animations, all of which are now heavily aided by an artificial brain at our fingertips. Some people ask, "will digital art replace fine art?" And the answer is simply no. Digital art can be a form of fine art and is just another medium people use to express themselves creatively.
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