Portal:Visual arts
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...)
Selected article
The World Before the Flood is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1828 and currently in the Southampton City Art Gallery. It depicts a scene from John Milton's Paradise Lost in which, among a series of visions of the future shown to Adam, he sees the world immediately before the Great Flood. The painting illustrates the stages of courtship as described by Milton: a group of men select wives from a group of dancing women, drag their chosen woman from the group, and settle down to married life. Behind the courting group, an oncoming storm looms, foreshadowing the destruction which the dancers and lovers are about to bring upon themselves.
When first exhibited at the 1828 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition the painting attracted large crowds, and strongly divided critical opinion. It was greatly praised by many critics, who counted it among the finest works of art in the country. Other reviewers condemned it as crude, tasteless, offensive and poorly executed. (Full article...)Selected picture
Selected quote
“ | Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable. | ” |
— Leonard Baskin, Publishers Weekly (April 5, 1965) |
Related portals
Selected biography
Jacob Isaackszoon van Ruisdael (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈjaːkɔp fɑn ˈrœyzˌdaːl] ; c. 1629 – 10 March 1682) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and etcher. He is generally considered the pre-eminent landscape painter of the Dutch Golden Age, a period of great wealth and cultural achievement when Dutch painting became highly popular.
Prolific and versatile, Ruisdael depicted a wide variety of landscape subjects. From 1646 he painted Dutch countryside scenes of remarkable quality for a young man. After a trip to Germany in 1650, his landscapes took on a more heroic character. In his late work, conducted when he lived and worked in Amsterdam, he added city panoramas and seascapes to his regular repertoire. In these, the sky often took up two-thirds of the canvas. In total he produced more than 150 Scandinavian views featuring waterfalls. (Full article...)Did you know (auto generated) -
- ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
- ... that filmmaker Randal Plunkett, 21st Baron of Dunsany, has seen the return of many species of bird and plant, as well as pine martens, stoats and otters, to his ancestral lands with rewilding?
- ... that Joseph Binder influenced modern poster design, creating posters for the 1939 New York World's Fair, the U.S. Army Corps and the American Red Cross?
- ... that the documentary Railway with a Heart of Gold has actual footage of a derailment captured whilst the filmmaker was attached to the side of the train?
- ... that John Hoke III, who is dyslexic and the chief design officer of Nike, has described drawing as his first language?
- ... that entry to the British Royal Military Academy required the use of a drawing triangle with a completely different purpose from those used today?
- ... that The Wiccan Web recommends drawing pentagrams on your computer screen with tinctures?
- ... that Bernie Wrightson spent seven years drawing an illustrated edition of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein?
General images
- Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet,
-
Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting)
-
Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (from History of painting)An
-
Château de Montsoreau-Museum of Contemporary Art (France), is a private institution based in a Renaissance castle. (from Contemporary art)The
-
Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
- A fresco from
-
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)A Boeing 747 aircraft with
-
Mary Cassatt (from History of painting)Young Mother Sewing,
- The
- Two Scribes Seated with Books and a Writing Table Fragment of a decorative margin Northern India (Mughal school), ca. 1640–1650 (from
-
Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting)Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist
-
Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting)
-
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)
-
Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting)
-
Bulls (from History of painting)Spanish cave painting of
-
Book of Hours (from History of painting)
-
functionalist and anonymous, as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. (from Graphic design)Graphic symbols are often
-
Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting)
-
Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting)Bharat Mata by
- Colour (from
-
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)
-
Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting)
-
Western Han Era (202 BCE – 9 CE) (from History of painting)A Chinese painted jar from the
-
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)A fresco showing
-
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,
-
Will H. Bradley (from Graphic design)Cover of the Thanksgiving 1895 issue of The Chap-Book, designed by
-
Inside Out is a global participatory art project, initiated by the French photographer JR, an example of Street art (from Contemporary art)Irbid, Jordan, "We are Arabs. We are Humans".
- Golden section in book design (from
-
Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting)
- The
-
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)
-
Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia (from History of painting)
-
Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting)
- Baptism of Christ on a medieval
-
Southern Song dynasty; paintings in leaf album style such as this were popular in the Southern Song (1127–1279). (from History of painting)Loquats and Mountain Bird, anonymous artist of the
-
3D modeling, animation, programming, among other fields. (from Graphic design)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,
-
Max Beckmann, The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (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)
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
- 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 |
WikiProjects
Things you can do
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus