The fine art vs. illustration question, solved once and for all
You're welcome. Plus a gallery show!
If you want to annoy an illustrator in your life, ask them if they consider their work fine art or commercial art, which is a tedious debate that tends to rear its head every so often. It’s a somewhat fair question though. When can you label a piece of art as illustration, and when can you label it just a piece of art? If you see a drawing in a children’s book, surely that means it’s an illustration? But if you hang it up on a wall, does it automatically become fine art because it’s in a nice frame or whatever?
My own rule is that it’s a matter of clarity. An illustration, as the cartoonist Dash Shaw once put it, “tells you what a thing is and how you should feel about that thing.” For example, this ink drawing I did back in 2011 is not an illustration.
What are you looking at? And how should you feel about it? Well, it can be any number of things. The ambiguity is baked in. I can say that I am leading you in a certain direction, maybe—that definitely is a human leg, and probably a piano—but it doesn’t have the clarity needed to be an illustration.
This, however, is an illustration.
You know where you are, and have a sense about how the woman in the drawing feels. Your opinion of it may vary depending on how you feel about Rothko (I have mixed opinions, personally), but ultimately you’re grounded in some sort of time and place and space. After that, you’re on your own.
Anyhow, you can play this game for as long as it’s interesting to you1, but my larger point is that what makes something an illustration has nothing to do with how it’s drawn, or what materials were used, or whether or not an art director assigned it. Cartoons, for the most part, are illustrations—the intent to communicate something specific is there.
And speaking of putting art in frames, I have a gallery show up at Dwightmess for the remainder of the month. There is a mixture of fine art and illustration and everything in between, and my book will be for sale courtesy of People’s Books, so make sure to check it out if you can.
There’s also a closing party on Thursday, October 24th at 7:00 PM. Swing on by, I’d love to see you!
Unhealthy Obsessions: Closing Party
Thursday, October 24th at 7:00 PM
805 Silver Spring Avenue
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Gallery hours by appointment: email a@adamgriffiths.ink to book.
Not very long, at least for me—I get bored with conversations about definitions quickly. I would have been the worst philosophy major.
I always struggle with the cartoon v illustration thing. I call myself a cartoonist because most of my drawings have speech bubbles. In my head an illustrator is someone a bit grander, someone cleverer. I don’t know why I’ve developed this class system of artist > illustrator > cartoonist with me being a bottom feeder. Maybe it’s my insecurities or maybe it’s a real thing. I felt seen the first time I read your book so I will revisit it tomorrow to soothe my soul.
It’s been a real issue for me here in the Netherlands because the two are even more firmly divided, both in how you apply sales tax (21% for illustration, 9% for art), and which subsidies you can apply for. I’ve been permanently excluded for applying for fine arts grants because I’ve been told that I “manifest as an illustrator” thus am not an artist. It’s a very weird take, especially in a time and country that embraces gender fluidity, to take such a stand against creative fluidity. Nice topic! I may post my own rant over the subject in the future.