I’m actually a student at art school and am writing an essay on commercial art vs “fine art”, and I found your opinion interesting. I’m basically of the same opinion. I think that the “fine art” world has become controlled by an elite few, mostly public servants who head state run galleries and government grant issueing bodies, and as a result all of the “talent” has moved to the commercial arts.

I was having a debate with my supervisor over this (we don’t agree obviously). My essay is specifically about Frazetta, comparing him to other great hero/narrative painters of history, of which there is plenty of precedent. My supervisor kept coming up with fairly lame reason’s why “my guy” (apparently commercial artist’s aren’t good enough for him to refer to them by name) wasn’t a real artist. He basically said that to be a real artist, you had to express doubt, anxiety, uncertainty, and explore problems. What a load of rubbish! That’s perhaps true if you’re an insecure loser who isn’t sure about anything.

Another thing I hate is the the “fine art” world is so snobbishly dismissive of any art that people like, i.e. true “pop art”, like comics, landscape photography, fantasy art, etc. The fine art world is of the belief that if a work is “too easily digestible” then it must be bad because it isn’t challenging or confronting. The belief around my school is that “real art” is difficult, challenges, and confronts the viewer - i.e. the viewer doesn’t like what they see. No wonder fine art has marginalised itself while film/tv has come to such cultural dominance.

anyway that’s my beef. if you have any helpful info please email me!

Seems to me there’s both good and boring stuff going on in “fine” and“commercial” art. By “commercial” art I’m assuming you mean advertising or illustration, as opposed to “commercial fine art” like Kincaid or that blue dog person.

Since commercial art is about selling something other than the art itself, the only kind I can get excited about actually doing is art that sells something I like. Music is shrinkingly in that category, in the sense that while I love music, the artwork keeps getting smaller. First there were album covers, then smaller CD covers, and now it’s whatever can be viewed on your iPod.

This Wyeth painting is interesting in the way it has such a strong chromatic impact with a limited palette. White and grays play the role of blue, for example, a do so effectively.

The dividing line is personal pleasure. For me, that means passion. I have to have it. If I do, it comes through in the work; if I don’t, I just can’t fake it.

(Well, not for long, anyway.)

What you say about the joy of the frumpy unpredictability of random irregularities makes total sense. On the other hand, there’s a lot of commercial work that’s fantastically loose. Look at the art in CD jackets, for example. Pretty wild stuff.

As usual, your stories make me smile!

Like you and others, I see worth in the highest forms of both endeavors. And I think that the enjoyment you get from working commercially (or alternatively, using your lighter to make color) must translate to your work.

Here’s where I think some differences (not better or worse, just differences) might lie.

As you say, it’s the finished look of the commercial art that counts — cut and paste in photoshop, whatever works to make that highly polished (or rough and ready) look that the client needs to put across her message. The product, to work as it is intended, has to be of the particular format required and often this requires a look that can translate into a flat medium, like a book cover or glossy magazine ad. In the very few classes I’ve taken where design was the focus, I found that I spent at least as much time, if not more, refining the presentation as I did doing the work.

In textiles (to move to a field I know far better than illustration per se) this means making the inside look as precise and finely finished as the outside. It can translate further into the standards set up by some long lost group-think — I’m thinking of the 12 per inch size of quilting stitches as well as their evenness. And of mitered edges. And batting that runs completely to the edge of the binding. and so forth.

What this results in is a squeezing down of materials that the artist can use — cotton doesn’t slip and slide and slither and stretch like silk. These standards insist that first and foremost the artist must consider the finished product — no jumping in without knowing precisely that you can achieve that spectacularly crafted look.

Now I’m perfectly happy to present that spectacularly crafted look, but I find that it can either interfere with the look that I really want (stretched and puckered silk is delicious but doesn’t photograph well and exhibit juries are confused by it) or that I become inhibited by the standards and blocked by the seeming impossibility of achieving it.

Someone once said “trouble shooting is easier than planning.” Somehow I think that illustration requires planning ahead, while fine art can wing it and sometimes exceed what illustration can’t.

And like Leslie, I also think you can refute everything I say here because the two fields are so full and encompass so much (and overlap at times, too).

For me, personally, the flat glossy perfection of illustration (or its equivalent, the high-end cotton quilt) is no fun to do. It doesn’t move my mind like the wonky irregularities that happen to come along as I struggle to achieve something else, something not intended to push a product or enhance a message.