Portal:Visual arts

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THE VISUAL ARTS PORTAL

Introduction

Vincent van Gogh: The Church at Auvers (1890)

The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines (performing arts, conceptual art, textile arts) 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 the applied, 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' was often restricted to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art 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.

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[[File:|center|300px|Sand mandala]]

Credit: Henryart

Sandpainting in the form of a temporary sand mandala, constructed by Tibetan Buddhist monks in the City-Hall of Kitzbuehel in Austria.

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The Four Stages of Cruelty is a series of four printed engravings published by William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero. Beginning with the torture of a dog as a child in the First stage of cruelty, Nero progresses to beating his horse as a man in the Second stage of cruelty, and then to robbery, seduction, and murder in Cruelty in perfection. Finally, in The reward of cruelty, he receives what Hogarth warns is the inevitable fate of those who start down the path Nero has followed: his body is taken from the gallows after his execution as a murderer and is mutilated by surgeons in the anatomical theatre.

The prints were intended as a form of moral instruction; Hogarth was dismayed by the routine acts of cruelty he witnessed on the streets of London. Issued on cheap paper, the prints were destined for the lower classes. The series shows a roughness of execution and a brutality that is untempered by the humorous touches common in Hogarth's other works, but which he felt was necessary to impress his message on the intended audience. Nevertheless, the pictures still carry the wealth of detail and subtle references that are characteristic of Hogarth.

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“	Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.	”
	— Salvador Dalí, People (September 27, 1976)

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El Greco was a prominent painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and at 26 travelled to Venice to study. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577 he emigrated to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best known paintings. El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western civilization.

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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
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

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Did you know...

... that Bathsheba at Her Bath has been called "Rembrandt's greatest painting of the nude"?
...that Ananthabhadram, a film by Indian director Santhosh Sivan, was inspired by classical Kathakali dancing and paintings of Raja Ravi Varma?
...that the Royal Fort in Bristol was built with façades in Baroque, Palladian and Rococo styles because it was a compromise between the designs of three different architects?
...that Lil' Pimp was the first feature-length film to be created entirely with Macromedia Flash animation?
...that the world's tallest statue of Hindu god Lord Shiva (pictured) is located in Murudeshwara, a coastal town in Karnataka, India?
...that the Mona Lisa has no eyebrows?
...that Henri Le Secq was a founding member of the short-lived, first ever photographic organization Société héliographique?