Job satisfaction

I HAVE been thinking about the old distinctions made between the fine and the decorative arts, between art and craft, and similarly between profession and trade, or amateur and professional, in preparation for a talk I am to give in April. All except the last pair were definitions intended to enhance the acquisition of wealth and status by creating a hierarchy within the art world. Amateur and professional are an anomaly, as higher status was accorded to amateurs in art or sport precisely because they gained no wealth by it.

In the Western tradition, the visual fine arts were sculpture and painting, in that order.