It is customary and con venient as well as reasonable to distinguish between those arts which minister primarily to the physical or material needs of man, and those whose primary and dominant pur pose is to minister to man's emotions, apart from practical or material service. The arts of the first sort we call the useful arts; those of the second sort the fine arts. The products of the useful arts are designed for purposes external to themselves, to serve the needs of daily life; in other words they are made to be used. The products of the fine arts, on the other hand, are created for their own sake; they are an end in themselves, or — to be more accurate— they exist for the sake of the emotions they are designed to express and arouse. A chair, however superbly carved, is primarily a work of useful art, because made primarily to be sat on ; but a picture is painted for its own sake, not to be used but to be looked at and to excite pleasurable emo tions by its beauty of subject, of drawing, of color: it is a work of fine art. So also a poem or a symphony is produced for the sake of the esthetic emotions it arouses, not for that of any practical or material use to which it is to be put; it is a work of fine art. The fine arts, then, are those whose appeal is to the esthetic emotions; and just to the extent in which any work of art does so appeal does it enter within the domain of the fine arts. Painting, sculpture, music and pottery belong obviously in this domain; pottery, weaving, building, metal-working are as obviously use ful arts.
Since, however, useful objects are often made of such forms and so adorned as to be not only useful but also beautiful to look upon, and therefore to appeal to the esthetic sense, there is seen to be a wide border-land of art in which both use and beauty are kept in view, and both skill and imagination exer cised by the designer and maker of the useful object. The arts which are thus concerned with making useful objects beautiful are some times called the industrial arts, sometimes the decorative arts. But these terms cannot be used either as synonyms or as mutually ex clusive designations, for by many the name industrial arts° is applied to the useful arts, as such; while certain of the decorative arts belong wholly in the category of fine art. (See FINE ARTS). Indeed, architecture, which is universally classed as a fine art, is the most important of the decorative arts, to which many of the decorative arts are ancillary and subordinate, such as mosaic, decorative carv ing, marble inlay and the like. (See DECORA
uvE Ain). It is therefore evident that any classification of the arts into rigid categories such as the scientists have devised for their fauna and flora or for the sciences themselves is quite out of the question, because of the varying degrees to which the utilitarian and esthetic elements prevail in the different prod ucts of man's industry, and in different works even of the same general kind.
Sciences Related to In connection with the arts, especially the fine arts, there have been developed a number of fields of intellectual activity which are not themselves arts, but rather sciences, although they con cern themselves wholly with inquiries into matters of art. The investigation and discus sion of the nature of beauty and of the appeal which works of art make to the emotions is a branch of philosophy, and is called "Esthet ics (q.v.). The study of the origin, achieve ments, progress and decline of the arts or of an art is a branch of history, especially of the history of civilization. The exploration of ancient remains and the study and discus sion of the arts of a more or less remote an tiquity constitute the science of Archeology (q.v.). The discussion of the qualities, char acteristics, merits and defects of an art, a style or a period of art, or of a particular work of art, a special branch of Criticism (q.v.). The principles and laws at the basis of an art and the rules for its practice form a body known as the Theory of Art, closely related to the science of esthetics. Every one of these divisions of knowledge concerning Art and the arts has given birth to an exten sive literature, and the amount of such litera ture is enormous. Thus, for example, in the Avery Library of Columbia University at New York, there are at this writing 25,000 volumes devoted exclusively to architecture and the allied arts.
For information concerning various divi sions of the general subject see the articles ABORIGINAL ART; "ESTHETICS; AMERICAN ART; ARCHEOLOGY; ARCHITECTURE; DANCING; DEC ORATIVE ART; INTERIOR DECORATION; DRAMA; FINE ARTS; MUSIC; OPERA; PAINTING; PAINT ING, AMERICAN ; PAINTING, EDUCATION IN ;