Have you asked yourself this question several times? So do I and I think millions of people around the world have done it like us.
Like most words in our language, art has its origin in a Latin word, said word alluded in times of the Roman Empire to the creation of objects, particularly those that could be the subject of aesthetic experience.
Such an idea was typical of the Latin people because, for the Greeks from whom the Romans took a good part of their culture, art referred to the techniques of material production. The aesthetic was only taken into account to the extent that some of these techniques served as a resource to represent or copy reality.
These two meanings of the word art are still preserved today. For this reason, and to differentiate them, when speaking of art in aesthetic terms, the adjective bella is added to the noun and any possible confusion is settled.
As for the meaning of art referred to techniques of material production, it is alluded to when these techniques are performed masterfully.
Then it is said colloquially, with admiration:
That is quite an art!
With what art So and so dominates the hammer! (or the plow, or a car, or any object that allows to carry out a job in daily life).
The notion of fine arts, as opposed to other arts that, by logical contrast, would then be the ugly arts, comes from the seventeenth century, when the Industrial Revolution separated work into three different ways of doing it: artistic, artisanal and industrial.
The artistic form referred to the ability to create aesthetic works, that is, beautiful and sublime although still associated with the imitation of nature or life in general.
The craft came to refer to the traditional techniques of material production, that is, to the way of producing objects one by one.
As for the industrial, he alluded to the production of objects in series, of little or no aesthetic value.
This separation has resulted in an overvaluation of the artistic fact and an undervaluation of the industrial fact. At present, only the artisanal maintains a certain balance in the consideration of people.
The undervaluation of the industrial has had a lot to do with the image that the factories offered at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which were considered dirty and extremely noisy places. It has also had to do with the separation into social classes of the members of society. For those in privileged social positions, art (and, incidentally, everything that is considered beautiful or sublime) must be elite and enjoyed only by those who can afford it. This same way of understanding the world postulates that those who lack material goods and, in addition, privileges, education, hygiene and good taste, do not have the right to enjoy art or their access to it should be as superficial as possible.
This is the reason why a mass culture has been created that aims to give the people "what the people want" or are capable of understanding. And, according to this same idea, what the people want and understand as they believe and want to be believed, is low, vulgar, corny, ridiculous.
This idea of the artistic, apart from being exclusive and foolish, perceives art as something to be possessed, instead of being enjoyed, understood, loved.
Poverty is only associated with the artistic in a romantic way, that is, seeing the artist as a tormented genius who lives in misery because he puts his high ideals before any aspiration of a material nature. This romantic aura acts as an economic incentive and increases the price of the works of the poor genius, yes, after he dies. That is the reason why today the paintings of the Dutch Vincent Van Gogh are auctioned for astronomical prices and, while he lived between 1853 and 1890, he barely sold two paintings.
Those who have paid tens of millions of dollars for any of Van Gogh's paintings know of the aesthetic value of it, but what they have sought is to own such works rather than enjoy them. To enjoy them, it would have been enough for them to see them as many times as they wanted in a museum, which is where they should be. Van Gogh's paintings should be known not only by a few people, but by all humanity, since they are part of the artistic heritage of this, such as the works of the Italian Renaissance masters Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo or the epic poems of Homer.
