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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The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-Saharan and North Africa, 300,000 photographs, and 50,000 library volumes. It was the first institution dedicated to African art in the United States and remains the largest collection. The Washington Post called the museum a mainstay in the international art world and the main venue for contemporary African art in the United States.
The museum was founded in 1964 by a former Foreign Service officer in Capitol Hill. The collection focused on traditional African art and an educational mission to teach black cultural heritage. To ensure the museum's longevity, the founder lobbied Congress to adopt the museum under the Smithsonian's auspices. It joined the Smithsonian in 1979 and became the National Museum of African Art two years later. A new, primarily underground museum building was completed in 1987, just off the National Mall and adjacent to other Smithsonian museums. It is among the Smithsonian's smallest museums. (Full article...)
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| “ | Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. | ” |
| — Henri Matisse, unknown |
Related portals
Selected biography
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Anna Mary Robertson Moses (September 7, 1860 – December 13, 1961), or Grandma Moses, was an American folk artist. She began painting in earnest at the age of 78 and is a prominent example of a newly successful art career at an advanced age. Moses gained popularity during the 1950s, having been featured on a cover of Time Magazine in 1953. She was a subject of numerous television programs and of a 1950 Oscar-nominated biographical documentary. Her autobiography, titled My Life's History, was published in 1952. She was also awarded two honorary doctoral degrees.
Moses was a live-in housekeeper for a total of 15 years, starting at age 12. An employer noticed her appreciation for their prints made by Currier and Ives, and they supplied her with drawing materials. Moses and her husband began their married life in Virginia, where they worked on farms. In 1905, they returned to the Northeastern United States and settled in Eagle Bridge, New York. They had ten children, five of whom survived infancy. She embroidered pictures with yarn, until disabled by arthritis. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto generated) -
- ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
- ... that John Hoke III, who is dyslexic and the chief design officer of Nike, has described drawing as his first language?
- ... that Mexican filmmaker David Zonana wrote his first feature film after producing for two other directors?
- ... that Bernie Wrightson spent seven years drawing an illustrated edition of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein?
- ... that a British filmmaker forced the British Board of Film Classification to watch paint drying for ten hours?
- ... that the author of Sugar Dog Life ended up buying and raising a cactus after drawing one in the manga?
- ... that the early woman explorer Adèle de Dombasle travelled to Polynesia in 1847 and worked as an illustrator, drawing people such as Queen Pōmare IV?
- ... that as a senior in high school, manga artist Yama Wayama began drawing male–male romance manga as a hobby?
General images
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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) -
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Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting) -
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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) -
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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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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) -
Colour (from Graphic design) -
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Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia (from History of painting) -
An Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (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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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) -
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) -
Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting) -
Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (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) -
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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) -
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Cover of the Thanksgiving 1895 issue of The Chap-Book, designed by Will H. Bradley (from Graphic design) -
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) -
Book of Hours (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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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) -
Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting) -
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Golden section in book design (from Graphic design) -
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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) -
Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting) -
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Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting) -
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) -
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting) -
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The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shengwen, 1173–1176 AD, Song dynasty period. (from History of painting) -
Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassatt (from History of painting) -
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Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting) -
Max Beckmann, The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (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) -
Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting) -
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Graphic symbols are often functionalist and anonymous, as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. (from Graphic design) -
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Spanish cave painting of Bulls (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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