where did the term state of the art come from
State of the art The origin of the concept of "state of the art" took place in the beginning of the twentieth century.[3] The earliest use of the term "state of the art" documented by the Oxford English Dictionary dates back to 1910, from an engineering manual by Henry Harrison Suplee (1856-post 1943), an engineering graduate (University of Pennsylvania, 1876), titled Gas Turbine: progress in the design and construction of turbines operated by gases of combustion. The relevant passage reads: "In the present state of the art this is all that can be done". The term, "art", itself refers to the useful arts, skills and methods relating to practical subjects such as manufacture and craftsmanship, rather than in the sense of the performing arts and the fine arts.[4]
Hierarchy of genres After history painting came, in order of decreasing worth: portraits, scenes of everyday life (called scènes de genre, or "genre painting", and also petit genre to contrast it with the grande genre), landscapes, animal painting, and finally still lifes. In his formulation, such paintings were inferior because they were merely reportorial pictures without moral force or artistic imagination. Genre paintings—neither ideal in style, nor elevated in subject—were admired for their skill, ingenuity, and even humour, but never confused with high art.