Defining Terms

   About a week ago I lunched with a buddy who owns a frame shop. I’d come across a sixty year old image that needed framing. Among the various topics that came up I’d shared this new blog. This guy is pretty sharp and yet he was not familiar with the term the “applied arts”. Here are two definitions; one from the National Gallery, one from Wikipedia:
            • Applied art is the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use. Whereas fine arts serve as intellectual stimulation to the viewer or academic sensibilities, the applied arts incorporate design and creative ideals to objects of utility, such as a cup, magazine or ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_arts 
            • Traditionally, art made for a practical purpose (eg, weaving, metalwork, ceramics, woodworking, graphic design, etc.). Art nouveau rejected the distinction between applied and fine art. www.nga.gov/education/tchan_6.shtm
   I thought to offer up my own definition yet I prefer the credibility of established sources here. However, as you will soon read, my sense is that the definition has drifted. My point is that if Charlie didn’t know, many others might not, either.
   There is a conscious effort in higher education that if one is offering an academic experience in the arts there seems to be two diverging directions. Schools like University of the Arts, while always offering fine and applied (and craft) side by side, are seeking now to capture creative synergy by offering performing and music along with visual arts.
   However, schools like the Art Institute and the Academy of Design & Technology narrow the focus to … the applied arts. With the latter, there’s such an emphasis on helping the student find employment after graduation (a worthy goal!) it would make good business sense to only offer that which are the “marketable” art degrees.
   Some schools include culinary, but for our purposes we’ll stick to the visual. In general, this is what we’re speaking of: Animation, CAD (Industrial, Civil, Architecture, etc ), Fashion Design, Film, Game Design, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Multimedia Digital, Photography, Production (pkg., sign, etc.) and Web Design.
   One may note a further distinction by its absence: crafts. Jewelry, Ceramics, Metal, Glass and Woodworking, Paper making / Book Binding and the like straddle both worlds, yet lack the wider business opportunities that firms, agencies and studios interacting on a regular basis with other industries of commerce tend to offer. These remain embraced by the former schools, not the latter. Ironic in the sense that the crafts tend to by definition reside with the applied. But it is academic business, because of the inherent lack readily available for commoditization of the subset known as crafts as compared with their other function based applied art kin.
   So, the applied arts has become the "marketable" arts, visual disciplines for which there is an immediate opportunity to monetize ones education. For these majors there are already businesses built around or because of them. And established industries that tend to interact with them.