James Monaco’s use of the term ‘The Spectrum of Art’ refers to the fact that art comes in various forms, categorised by their different styles and ideas. The ancients recognised seven; history, poetry, comedy, tragedy, music, dance and astronomy. However, by the thirteenth century, the meaning of ‘art’ began to change and adapt a more practical connotation. The literary arts had somewhat merged into a mix of literature and philosophy. The meaning of art changed within different centuries, it being synonymous with ‘skill’ in the sixteenth century, activities that weren’t previously included such as painting and sculpture, began to be considered ‘fine arts’.
The nineteenth century saw the development of science, and now, what had been previously known as ‘natural philosophy’ was now considered ‘natural science’, and the art of alchemy became the science of chemistry.
Monaco defines his ‘spectrum of art’ in three different categories: “The performance arts, which happen in real time.”, “The representational arts, which depend on the established codes and conventions of language (both pictorial and literary) to convey information about the subject to the observer.”, “The recording arts, which provide a more direct path between subject and observer: media not without their own codes but quantitatively more direct than the media of the representational arts.”