I believe the common question, “What’s the difference between fine art and illustration?” is a misleading one. It’s like trying to compare an apple to a pear: they’re both fruits, but they taste different.

The real difference, as we have seen, has nothing to do with the talent of the artists or the quality of their artworks. The divergent developments that led to the creation of modern illustration and fine art are the only distinctions that categorize these two practices. But then, why is illustration so undervalued in comparison to fine art? The answer is as logical as it is evident.

I believe the common question, “What’s the difference between fine art and illustration?” is a misleading one. It’s like trying to compare an apple to a pear: they’re both fruits, but they taste different.

The real difference, as we have seen, has nothing to do with the talent of the artists or the quality of their artworks. The divergent developments that led to the creation of modern illustration and fine art are the only distinctions that categorize these two practices. But then, why is illustration so undervalued in comparison to fine art? The answer is as logical as it is evident.

In art, there’s the rule of the ‘one.’ Every artwork is original and irreproducible, and it owes its value to its uniqueness. When an artist dies, their works increase in value in the eyes of collectors and art galleries because their art dies with them—no one will ever be able to reproduce it. With illustration, this rule is broken. Of course, an illustration book contains images derived from original artworks, but the ease with which they are copied and distributed in large numbers diminishes the sense of uniqueness. Printmaking also produces many copies from a single drawing, but it is usually the artist who does this manually, and the number of copies is therefore very limited.

Ironically, the very element that allowed illustration to flourish eventually became the cause of its negative criticism.