What is visual art?

Another great question from a reader popped up this week, and proved a welcome distraction. It was fun to delve into how we arrived at the phrase visual arts, as well as attempting to explain what the Fine Arts were and are, and why those two words cause so much confusion. Personally, I would love to see the use of "Fine Arts", as a term, fade into obscurity, to be replaced by "Good" and "Bad". That would be far more interesting and fun but, probably, not very scholarly.