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Originally Posted by demonrail666
Yes, of course I ultimately agree with you. There is a difference. Although, as I'm sure you'd agree, I do think it's more of an institutional rather than creative one a lot of the time.
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I wrote a bunch more.
Um, it can be "institutional" or an "academic" dividing line...it often is, but no, the differences are most certainly creative as well.
repost:
It may seem a bit pointless these days with what passes for fine art, but c'mon, of course there's a difference. True, far too often so-called fine art follows the formulaic rules of craft in the end analysis.
But truly fine art is an expression of chaos within unity, of felt weights and balances, emotive logic, and ultimately of the artist's enigmatic and elusive inner life. There are aesthetic 'rules' with emphasis on form and formal qualities, but the visionaries are able to break them to move art forward through history.
Illustration, by contrast, is craft and draughtsmanship according to the stylistic rules of the genre. It's purpose is to stress the subject (over form) and accompany textual information. There is a threshold, however. After all, this thread is all about ranking comics. How one comic book compares to another comic is determined by the illustrator's experience and sensitivity to the medium, and in this way, an estimation of the illustrator's craft is formulated. And in some cases, the craft is so marvelous that one may even say it's the illustrator's
art that separates an average comic from a great one; but of course, the story, the
literal narrative, invariably has a lot to do with one's estimation as well.
Both have some level of narrative, (even non-objectivist abstract expressionism has some degree of narrative) but the content of each have essential differences and characteristics.
Let's just examine an abbreviated relatively recent history of fine art painting, say, El Greco to Manet to Van Gogh to Cezanne to Kandinsky to Duchamp/Picasso to Abstract Expressionism to Johns/Rauschenberg to Warhol to Basquiat. Have comic books changed like this? No. Will they ever? No.
Fine art is structured and formal like classical yet free and open like jazz. It's alchemy; it's reconciliation of perceived opposites. It's like fine poetry or literature compared to pulp fiction. It's like Sonic Youth as compared to Pat Boone. It's like art rock compared to heavy metal. Just because a bunch of characters in the sixties started doing some "underground" comics that pushed the envelope of societal convention and the norms of the comic book genre, don't get inextricably confused. That is not to say I do not enjoy comics when they are done well. Picasso liked them. The hero system has a powerful and important psychological allure. But don't kid yourself that comics have a broader cultural palette than they actually do.
But the above are just quick examples by way of analogy to hopefully further an understanding. Fine art is ultimately rather indefinable. And this is not so with comic books which are much more readily analyzable as a sum of their very much more definable parts. But, ah, excuse me, I didn't mean to end on an "academic" note ha. Comic books have a literal narrative. And there you have it.