Introduction
The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, comics, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines, such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts, also involve aspects of the visual arts, as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art.
Current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as applied or decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' had for some centuries often been restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the decorative arts, crafts, or applied visual arts media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts. The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions, painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist and being the furthest removed from manual labour – in Chinese painting, the most highly valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes. (Full article...)
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Scottish art in the nineteenth century is the body of visual art made in Scotland, by Scots, or about Scottish subjects. This period saw the increasing professionalisation and organisation of art in Scotland. Major institutions founded in this period included the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy of Art, the National Gallery of Scotland, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Glasgow Institute. Art education in Edinburgh focused on the Trustees Drawing Academy of Edinburgh. Glasgow School of Art was founded in 1845 and Grays School of Art in Aberdeen in 1885.
Henry Raeburn, most famous for his intimate portraits of leading figures in Scottish life, was the first significant artist to pursue his entire career in Scotland. His pupils included the brothers William, Archibald and Andrew Robertson. The next generation of portrait painters included David Watson and John Watson Gordon. Significant Glasgow artists included John Graham-Gilbert and Daniel Macnee. David Wilkie emerged as of one of the most influential British artists of the century in a variety of forms. Alexander Nasmyth helped formulate the tradition of Scottish landscape painting, which focused in the mid-nineteenth century on the Highlands. It was taken into the late nineteenth century by artists including Horatio McCulloch, Joseph Farquharson and William McTaggart. Towards the end of the century a number of artist colonies were founded, particularly in coastal communities such as Pittenweem and Kirkcudbright. Wilkie was instrumental in the development of genre painting, which was pursued by artists including John Burnet, Alexander George Fraser and Walter Geikie. He also helped inspire the interest in Spanish and oriental painting, continued by William Allan, David Roberts and John Phillip. (Full article...)
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| “ | I try to apply colors like words that shape poems, like notes that shape music. | ” |
| — Joan Miró, unknown |
Related portals
Selected biography
Hans Namuth (March 17, 1915 – October 13, 1990) was a German-born photographer. Namuth specialized in portraiture, photographing many artists, including abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. His photos of Pollock at work in his studio increased Pollock's fame and recognition and led to a greater understanding of his work and techniques. Namuth used his outgoing personality and persistence to photograph many important artistic figures at work in their studios.
Namuth photographed many other painters such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, and Mark Rothko and architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Louis Kahn. Namuth focused on his rapport with his subjects, getting many reclusive figures such as Clyfford Still to agree to be photographed. Namuth's work not only captured his subjects in their studios with their works, but also captured the relationship between photographer and subject as well as the subjects' levels of self-consciousness. Besides famous art figures, Namuth photographed the Mam people of Todos Santos, whose native lifestyles were being overrun by Western influences. Namuth died in a Long Island car crash in 1990. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto generated) -
- ... that the documentary Lynch/Oz incorporates hundreds of film clips to illustrate the influence of The Wizard of Oz on the work of filmmaker David Lynch?
- ... that Percy Kelly hoarded his drawings and paintings until the end of his life, saying that his cottage would someday "upstage Beatrix Potter's home"?
- ... that to encourage the development of Bissau-Guinean cinema, one foreign filmmaker provided the country's film institute with cameras, lights, and a Steinbeck guitar?
- ... that the British rap song "Jiggle Jiggle" by filmmaker Louis Theroux has been used in more than two million TikTok videos?
- ... that as a senior in high school, manga artist Yama Wayama began drawing male–male romance manga as a hobby?
- ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
- ... that art historian Zehava Jacoby was able to suggest a reconstruction of the lost tomb of Baldwin V of Jerusalem, destroyed in an 1808 fire, using an 18th-century drawing by Elzear Horn?
- ... that although the icosian game was advertised as a "highly amusing game for the drawing room", it was too easy to play and not a commercial success?
General images
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Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting) -
Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting) -
Due to its interdisciplinary nature, graphic design can be performed in different areas of application: branding, technical and artistic drawing, signage, photography, image and video editing, 3D modeling, animation, programming, among other fields. (from Graphic design) -
Graphic symbols are often functionalist and anonymous, as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. (from Graphic design) -
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Golden section in book design (from Graphic design) -
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A Chinese painted jar from the Western Han Era (202 BCE – 9 CE) (from History of painting) -
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Silk painting depicting a man riding a dragon, painting on silk, dated to 5th–3rd century BC, Warring States period, from Zidanku Tomb no. 1 in Changsha, Hunan Province (from History of painting) -
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Colour (from Graphic design) -
Loquats and Mountain Bird, anonymous artist of the Southern Song dynasty; paintings in leaf album style such as this were popular in the Southern Song (1127–1279). (from History of painting) -
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Book of Hours (from History of painting) -
Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting) -
Irbid, Jordan, "We are Arabs. We are Humans". Inside Out is a global participatory art project, initiated by the French photographer JR, an example of Street art (from Contemporary art) -
Cover of the Thanksgiving 1895 issue of The Chap-Book, designed by Will H. Bradley (from Graphic design) -
Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting) -
Diego Rivera, Recreation of Man at the Crossroads (renamed Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934, Mexican muralism movement (from History of painting) -
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Two Scribes Seated with Books and a Writing Table Fragment of a decorative margin Northern India (Mughal school), ca. 1640–1650 (from History of painting) -
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Mother Goddess A miniature painting of the Pahari style, dating to the eighteenth century. Pahari and Rajput miniatures share many common features. (from History of painting) -
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Max Beckmann, The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (from History of painting) -
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Spanish cave painting of Bulls (from History of painting) -
Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting) -
Francis Picabia, (Left) Le saint des saints c'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait, 1 July 1915; (center) Portrait d'une jeune fille americaine dans l'état de nudité, 5 July 1915: (right) J'ai vu et c'est de toi qu'il s'agit, De Zayas! De Zayas! Je suis venu sur les rivages du Pont-Euxin, New York, 1915 (from History of painting) -
The Eternal Father Painting the Virgin of Guadalupe. Attributed to Joaquín Villegas (1713 – active in 1753) (Mexican) (painter, Museo Nacional de Arte. (from History of painting) -
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An Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (from History of painting) -
Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting) -
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Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting) -
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The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shengwen, 1173–1176 AD, Song dynasty period. (from History of painting) -
Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia (from History of painting) -
A Boeing 747 aircraft with livery designating it as Air Force One. The cyan forms, the US flag, presidential seal and the Caslon lettering, were all designed at different times, by different designers, for different purposes, and combined by designer Raymond Loewy in this one single aircraft exterior design. (from Graphic design) -
Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassatt (from History of painting) -
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Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting) -
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A fresco showing Hades and Persephone riding in a chariot, from the tomb of Queen Eurydice I of Macedon at Vergina, Greece, 4th century BC (from History of painting) -
Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting) -
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Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting) -
A fresco from Cave 1 of Ajanta. (from History of painting) -
Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet, Kalimantan, Indonesia (from History of painting) -
Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina, c. 7300 BC (from History of painting)
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Major topics
- Types of visual art – Architecture • Art intervention • Ceramic art • Computer art • Drawing • Fashion • Film • Installation art • Land art • Mixed media • Painting • Performance art • Photography • Printmaking • Sculpture • Stained glass; • Artists' Books
- Art history – Pre-historic art • Ancient art • Art of Ancient Egypt • Art in Ancient Greece • Minoan pottery • Scythian art • Roman art • Women artists
- Western art periods and movements – Medieval art • Gothic art • Renaissance • Mannerism • Baroque • Rococo • Neoclassicism • Romanticism • Realism • Modern Art • Impressionism • Symbolism • Fauvism • Proto-Cubism • Cubism • Futurism • Dada • Art Deco • Surrealism • Abstract Expressionism • Lyrical abstraction • Conceptual Art • Contemporary Art • Postmodern art visual arts.
- Eastern and Middle Eastern art – Buddhist art • Chinese art • Islamic art • Japanese art • Laotian art • Thai art • Tibetan art
- Lists – Architects • Art movements • Art periods • Painters • Printmakers • Sculptors • Statues
- Lists of basic topics – Visual arts • Architecture • Film • Painting • Photography • Sculpture
Subcategories
Architecture | Ceramic art | Comics | Crafts | Design | Drawing | Illustration | Film | Glass | Graphic design | Industrial design | Landscape architecture | Multimedia | Painting | Photography | Pottery | Printmaking | Public art | Sculpture | Typography | Mosaic
Artists | Visual arts awards | Artist collectives | Art collectors | Art critics | Art curators | Visual arts exhibitions | Art forgery | Art history | Visual arts materials | Art schools | Artistic techniques |
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