The classification of fine arts is a branch of art criticism, which is called the morphology of art (Ancient Greek). μορφή is a form and λόγος is a word, a teaching). This classification is based on a strict hierarchy of aesthetic and art criticism categories: class, genus, species, variety, genre. So fine art is called a class of spatial arts, combining painting, sculpture, graphics, monumental art, photographic art, other types and varieties. The criteria for their unification at the semiotic level of classification "are the volume, three-dimensionality or flatness, two-dimensionality of the images created with their help. It is this feature that determines the distinction that has developed in the distant past between the two main types of fine art - painting and sculpture."

Depending on the specifics, various types of fine arts reproduce the visually perceived qualities of the real world: volume, color, space, the material form of objects and the light-air environment.

In various morphological concepts, skillful activity is divided differently into classes and genera: according to the way works are perceived into "auditory" and "visual" arts (I. I. Ioffe), according to the ontological criterion (according to how works of art exist in time and space) into spatial, temporal and space-time (M. S. Kagan), according to the functional structure into "pictorial" (painting, graphics, sculpture) and "non-pictorial" or bifunctional (architecture, applied arts and design; S. H. Rappoport), to "linguistic" and "non-linguistic" (M. Reaser) according to the methods of form formation, techniques and materials, features of perception (phenomenological approach). The most archaic "object approach", now rejected by most specialists, divides the arts into "pictorial" and "non-pictorial", or abstract. The subject of the display of fine art is supposedly exclusively external reality, "non-pictorial" types of art embody the inner world of a person (A. P. Marder). Different types and mixed varieties of art are characterized by genre differentiation. More modern phenomenological and semiological approaches imply as a basis the use of a typology of the space-time continuum of perception of works of art as a "continuing system".

The most common academic system of art morphology is based on the ontological criterion – how works exist in their material form in physical space and time. Accordingly, all genera and types of art are divided into three large classes according to the way of their "material being": spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal. Painting, sculpture, graphics, architecture, the works of which objectively exist in the spatial environment, belong to the class of spatial arts; music and poetry, the form of which develops in time, are temporary arts. Performing arts (theater, choreography, scenography) and cinematography belong to space-time types. Spatial arts are also divided according to the degree of abstraction of language into "pictorial" (painting, graphics, sculpture) and "non-pictorial", or bifunctional, that is, combining artistic and utilitarian value (architecture, decorative and applied art). Historically, all types of art were gradually isolated, standing out from the space of architecture.

However, this classification is also not flawless. Many art theorists who adhere to the phenomenological concept rightly reject the division into spatial and temporal arts. Thus, according to I. I. Ioffe, architecture and music belong to the same kind of art, although to different types. Developing in the 1930s the ideas of a "morphological approach" to the study of the interaction of all types of art, Joffe wrote: "The division of arts into spatial and temporal is based on the division of them into light and sound, or visual and auditory ... There is a greater distance between the spatial arts of different ways of thinking than between the spatial and temporal ones– the same way of thinking... Light is as much space as time, as long as duration."

Attempts to consider the fundamental differences between painting, sculpture, and sculpting are known in the history of art in connection with the discussion begun in the Italian Renaissance by the learned humanist and art theorist Benedetto Varchi. In 1546, B. Varchi, intending to give three lectures on the comparison of painting and sculpture, sent out a questionnaire to famous artists of Florence: Michelangelo Buonarroti, Giorgio Vasari, Agnolo Bronzino, Jacopo Pontormo, Benvenuto Cellini, Francesco da Sangallo and others with the question: "Which of the arts, painting or sculpture, they consider more perfect.

Answering Varca's question, Michelangelo, in particular, gave a fundamental definition of the two principles of form formation underlying the distinction between the arts of sculpture and painting: "I mean by sculpture the art that is carried out by virtue of reduction (Italian. per forza di levare); art, which is carried out by addition (Italian. per via di porre), is like painting." Otherwise, Michelangelo wrote, "unnecessary disputes must be discarded," since both "stem from the same mind" (in the first case, the sculptor removes excess material, for example, by carving a statue from a block of stone; in the second, he adds brushstrokes in painting or builds up clay in sculpting). Michelangelo's famous definition of the art of drawing (retold by Francisco de Oland) is also indirectly related to this discussion.

This dispute, started by Leonardo da Vinci, was never resolved. In 1549, Varkey published the texts of the debates, emphasizing the specificity of each art form and their equivalence. In 1893, the book of the German sculptor and art theorist Adolf von Hildebrand "The Problem of Form in The Fine Arts" was published, in which, from the standpoint of a professional artist, an analysis of the laws of form formation in the visual arts was given, based on two ways of perceiving space and, accordingly, two main types of spatial representations: distant (planar) and tactile (volumetric). With distant perception, the two-dimensional, silhouette qualities of the perceived objects are enhanced and the three-dimensional, three-dimensional, three-dimensional ones are almost not felt. For example, when we see a forest on the horizon or mountains in the distance, we do not distinguish individual trees or stones, but we perceive the nature of the overall silhouette. The sharpness of such a perception can be enhanced by squinting slightly, looking "half-eyedly", or even close one eye. This is exactly what painters do, since the basis of the art of painting is the perception of objects in relation to the surrounding spatial environment: light, air, taking into account reflexes and warm-cold relations of tones. So, for example, a painter on sketches, moving away from the canvas and squinting (looking "half an eye"), checks the overall impression of nature. This feature was clearly proved by the French Imperessionists in the 1870s and 1880s. Therefore, "distant viewing" is called synthetic, or picturesque.

The opposite way of viewing an object up close contributes to a better understanding of its three-dimensional, constructive qualities, but sometimes weakens the perception of the whole. This method is called tactile, or motor, since vision in it is likened to touch, feeling the object from all sides, which stimulates the analysis of the volumetric and constructive qualities of the object, the convincing "sculpting" of its shape by means of tone, line, color. This is how the laws of perception and construction of the pictorial form determine not only "two visual attitudes" (the term of D. N. Kardovsky and N. E. Radlov), but also the two main types of fine art.

A special place in the system of types of arts is occupied by architecture and all bifunctional varieties of artistic activity (works of which combine aesthetic, artistic and utilitarian functions). Architecture creates a materially organized environment necessary for human life and activity, according to the classic "Vitruvius Triad": Strength, Benefit, Beauty (Latin: Firmitas, Utilitas, Venustas).

The traditional point of view is that architecture, decorative and applied art and design belong to the so-called "non-pictorial" (tectonic) types of art that use non-iconic (conventional) signs, or abstract images, objects, phenomena, actions addressed directly to the associative mechanisms of perception (A. V. Ikonnikov , M. S. Kagan). However, such a one-sided definition causes disputes among historians and art theorists, including on the question of the origin of architecture. What is primary: the utilitarian need for shelter from the elements or the spiritual need to "double a person in a figurative model" (defined by M. S. Kagan). The first is illustrated by the famous "Vitruvius Hut", which explains the origin of the architecture from a simple shelter such as a hut, or "cube" of four vertical poles connected by crossbars and complemented by wicker veils (G. Semper's model). The second explanation has to do with the question of the pictorial nature of architecture.

A. G. Gabrichevsky, B. R. Wipper, G. Södlmayr and many others considered architecture to be fine art, with the only difference being that the expressive and pictorial means of architectural creativity have a more abstract character in comparison with painting, graphics, and sculpture. Thus, B. R. Wipper mentioned the categories of medieval aesthetics: "creative nature" (Latin natura naturans) and "nature created" (Latin natura naturata). The first concept means "the nature of creative forces", the second - "the nature of phenomena". Architecture depicts "first nature"; painting, sculpture, graphics — the second. The question, therefore, lies not in the special "non-pictorial nature" of the art of architecture, but in the specifics of the subject and method of depiction. Since the main expressive means of the architect are spatial relations, it can be concluded that architecture depicts not the forms of the surrounding reality, but physical and spiritual forces, energy, aspirations, the flight of thought in space and time; in a narrower sense - the function of certain elements of the building structure. That is why in the architectural composition all its visible parts - walls, columns, capitals, vaults - are not constructive, really working details, but an image of the structure, the parts of which really work, but their work is hidden behind external forms.

Thus, according to the generally accepted "conciliatory" and the simplest classification, the class of spatial arts includes a kind of fine art, which, in turn, includes several main types, divided on the basis of ontological and semiotic criteria:

Architecture
Painting
Graphics
Sculpture
Arts and Crafts