The Fine, Folk, and Popular Arts

Popular , Fine , Folk : Making Do and Thinking Out of the Box

Once upon a time , at the turn of the 20th century , Marcel Duchamp brought a urinal into the museum . As expected , it was banned from being shown in a major exhibition at that time . Today , the urinal is called a `found object ' a fine arts category that has become standard practice for contemporary artists , especially those who are working on media and techniques spawned by Duchamp 's rebellion : conceptual art installations , and the readymade . One of the most famous latter day

versions is that of Andy Warhol 's Campbell soup and Brillo boxes - those mass consumer items that found their way into the domain of the fine arts , and in their turn spawned another academic art historical category : Pop Art

Once upon a time , at the turn of the 19th century , the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh , who has not sold a single painting during his lifetime (with the possible exception of one work bought by his brother Theo died a pauper . In the 1980s , his Sunflower fetched millions of dollars at an auction . Today , he is not only a bestseller he is also considered one of the best artists of all times

Once upon a time , Madonna was just any other upstart , who with her limited vocal range was singing seemingly superficial songs like Like a Virgin ' and Material Girl ' Today , she and her `bad girl ' image as well as her numerous personas , is the subject of numerous academic s on popular culture

This and examples from Charlie Parker , as well - Shakespeare , the Shaker furniture , the quilt , Amazing Grace , photography - tell us not only that values change through time , some for the better , others for the worse depending on one 's point of view . The more important point is that while terms like popular , fine and folk arts are valuable as terms of convenience , they are unreliable - perhaps even superfluous or unnecessary - as terms of judgment or standards , as in say , low and high art , good and bad art , truthful and false art , among many other boundaries

On one hand , these boundaries are important because they guard against extreme relativism , an intellectual indolence that results in people thinking that anything can be art , and that art is anything and everything that you can get away with . On the other hand , boundaries prevent us from looking at art forms more productively , or think out of the box . As Parker 's essay suggests , it is more productive to suspend our received judgments or templates - if only for a while - and analyze each art form on their own terms : as part of certain domains (popular fine , folk and their combinations ) with their own specific dynamics gatekeepers , institutions , forms and contexts of production , reception creativity and artistry and their own specific systems of producing and making meanings

These elements - domain (popular , fine , folk , field (gatekeepers and institutions , artistry (form , content , context ) - clash and intersect with each other in an uneven world...