It's just fascinating to me how many times "art" is subdivided and categorized. When you use your terms, "fine art" and "applied art", and say something like "fine art is the highest form of art", it's almost as if you are implying that all art intended as "fine art" is automatically of a higher standard than art whose intended use is commercial. If that is the case, I disagree with you because I believe all artworks should be judged by their face value, not their pedigree. I've seen plenty of awful "commercial art" for sure, but I've seen just as much awful "fine art", regardless of what the artists' intent was. A qualitative assessment should not be based on an artwork's category, but rather on its ability to transcend and simply be art worth its weight in visual appeal and communication. That's just my criteria.
Travis
