Art and Antique

A quick search of the internet will provide you with any number of sites that list art and antique items together but this pairing is quickly misleading.  Art objects can be old enough to be classified as antique and some antiques are quite artfully created but these two terms represent items of quite different natures.

The definitions of the words art and antique only begin to describe the differences between the two.  The 2006 edition of the Random House Unabridged Dictionary lists as its primary definition for the word “art” as the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.  The same source defines the word “antique” as of or belonging to the past; not modern.

Keeping in mind these definitions of art and antique, one can easily see that art is timeless while antique is an indication of a particular period of time.  Art is defined by personal interpretation and can vary from person to person while antique is more concisely defined and uniformly understood.

Because time is such an important consideration when defining art and antique, one can easily see that some antiques are exquisitely beautiful and will remain so throughout time while other antiques must rely on the adage that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  Objects of art rendered in times past are undoubtedly antique but contemporary art is often breathtakingly beautiful with a timelessness to its beauty that will certainly withstand the test of time and it, too, will surely be considered antique at some point in time.

Perhaps an interesting illlustation of the two terms can be found in the wonderfully delicious world of wine.  Any oenophile of merit would declare a Bordeaux from the Haut-Medoc bottled in the 1940s a work of art and time would classify it an antique.  In the other glass, a bottle of red wine bottled at the same time by California brothers Ernest and Julio would probably be declared merely antique.

Regardless of which word drives your thoughts, art and antique appreciation will withstand the test of time.  The similarities are obvious to those who love it and the differences generate discussion by those who don’t understand.  Either way, conversation is evoked and isn’t that what art has done throughout time, anyway?