T H E A R T S P O R T A L
An artist's palette
The arts or creative arts are a wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life, they have developed into innovative, stylized, and sometimes intricate forms. This is often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, and/or theorizing within a particular tradition, across generations, and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space.
Prominent examples of the arts include:
- visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting)
- literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose)
- performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre)
They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects and performances, convey insights and experiences, and construct new environments and spaces.
The arts can refer to common, popular, or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated, systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as the combination of artwork with the written word in comics. They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography. By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually redefined. The practice of modern art, for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo.
As both a means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity and as ends in themselves, the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world and a way that our responses and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits are transformed. From prehistoric cave paintings to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual to modern-day films, art has served to register, embody, and preserve our ever-shifting relationships to each other and to the world. (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.-
The Honan Chapel (Irish: Séipéal Uí Eonáin, formally Saint Finbarr's Collegiate Chapel and The Honan Hostel Chapel) is a small Catholic church built in the Hiberno-Romanesque revival style on the grounds of University College Cork, Ireland. Designed in 1914, the building was completed in 1916 and furnished by 1917. Its architecture and fittings are representative of the Celtic Revival movement and evoke the Insular art style prevalent in Ireland and Britain between the 7th and 12th centuries.
Its construction was initiated and supervised by the Dublin solicitor John O'Connell, a leading member of the Celtic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. He was funded by Isabella Honan (1861–1913), the last member of a wealthy Cork family, who made a significant donation towards the construction of the chapel. O'Connell oversaw both the design and the commissioning of its building and furnishings, guiding the architect James F. McMullen, the builders John Sisk and Sons, and the craftsmen and artists involved in its artwork. (Full article...) -
Cold Feet is a British comedy-drama television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network. The series was created and principally written by Mike Bullen as a follow-up to his 1997 Comedy Premiere special of the same name. The series follows three couples experiencing the ups-and-downs of romance, originally Adam Williams and Rachel Bradley (James Nesbitt and Helen Baxendale), Pete and Jenny Gifford (John Thomson and Fay Ripley) and Karen and David Marsden (Hermione Norris and Robert Bathurst). As the original series progressed, the Giffords divorced and Pete married Jo Ellison (Kimberley Joseph), whilst Karen and David also separated, forming relationships with Mark Cubitt (Sean Pertwee) and Robyn Duff (Lucy Robinson).
The original series was executive-produced by Bullen with Granada's head of comedy Andy Harries, and produced by Christine Langan, Spencer Campbell and Emma Benson. 32 episodes were broadcast over the original five series from 15 November 1998 to 16 March 2003. A revival with all of the original cast except Baxendale (Rachel had been killed off) began airing from 5 September 2016. (Full article...) -
Original editorial in The Sun of September 21, 1897
"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" is a line from an editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church. Written in response to a letter by eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon asking whether Santa Claus was real, the editorial was first published in the New York newspaper The Sun on September 21, 1897.
"Is There a Santa Claus?" was initially published uncredited and Church's authorship was not disclosed until after his death in 1906. The editorial was quickly republished by other New York newspapers. Though initially reluctant to do the same, The Sun soon began regularly republishing the editorial during the Christmas and holiday season, including every year from 1924 to 1950, when the paper ceased publication. (Full article...) -
"X-Cops" is the twelfth episode of the seventh season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. Directed by Michael Watkins and written by Vince Gilligan, the installment serves as a "Monster-of-the-Week" story—a stand-alone plot unconnected to the overarching mythology of The X-Files. Originally aired in the United States by the Fox network on February 20, 2000, "X-Cops" received a Nielsen rating of 9.7 and was seen by 16.56 million viewers. The episode earned positive reviews from critics, largely due to its unique presentation, as well as its use of humor. Since its airing, the episode has been named among the best episodes of The X-Files by several reviewers.
The X-Files centers on Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-Files. Mulder is a believer in the paranormal; the skeptical Scully was initially assigned to debunk his work, but the two have developed a deep friendship. In this episode, Mulder and Scully are interviewed for the Fox reality television program Cops during an X-Files investigation. Mulder, hunting what he believes to be a werewolf, discovers that the monster terrorizing people instead feeds on fear. While Mulder embraces the publicity of Cops, Scully is more uncomfortable about appearing on national television. (Full article...) -
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett CH CBE (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio A Child of Our Time, the orchestral Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli, and the opera The Midsummer Marriage.
Tippett's talent developed slowly. He withdrew or destroyed his earliest compositions, and was 30 before any of his works were published. Until the mid-to-late 1950s his music was broadly lyrical in character, before changing to a more astringent and experimental style. New influences—including those of jazz and blues after his first visit to America in 1965—became increasingly evident in his compositions. While Tippett's stature with the public continued to grow, not all critics approved of these changes in style, some believing that the quality of his work suffered as a consequence. From around 1976 his late works began to reflect the works of his youth through a return to lyricism. Although he was much honoured in his lifetime, critical judgement on Tippett's legacy has been uneven, the greatest praise generally reserved for his earlier works. His centenary in 2005 was a muted affair; apart from the few best-known works, his music has not been performed frequently in the 21st century. (Full article...) -
Watchmen is a comic book limited series by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-volume edition in 1987. Watchmen originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced Moore to create original characters instead.
Moore used the story as a means of reflecting contemporary anxieties, of deconstructing and satirizing the superhero concept and of making political commentary. Watchmen depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. In 1985 the country is edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the protagonists' personal development and moral struggles as an investigation into the murder of a government-sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement. (Full article...) -
Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 (English: Oral Fixation, Vol. 1) is the sixth studio album by Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira. It was released on 3 June 2005 by Epic Records. After attaining international success in 2001 with her fifth studio album and first English-language record, Laundry Service, Shakira wanted to release a fifth Spanish-language project as a follow-up. In the vein of her earlier work, Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 is a Latin pop album. Shakira enlisted Rick Rubin as executive producer, also working with Gustavo Cerati, Lester Mendez, Luis Fernando Ochoa and Jose "Gocho" Torres.
At its release Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who complimented Shakira's evolution from her earlier work. The album debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 157,000 copies. It set the record for the highest debut for a full-length Spanish-language album in the country. Internationally, the album topped the charts in Argentina, Germany, Mexico and Spain. Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 was the Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album at the 2006 Grammy Awards, and the Album of the Year and the Best Female Pop Vocal Album at the Latin Grammy Awards. Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 became the highest selling Latin pop album of the decade in the United States and the second highest selling Latin album overall. As of May 2013, over five million copies of the album were sold worldwide and it is the eighth best-selling Latin album in the United States. (Full article...) -
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (or simply El Camino) is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film. Part of the Breaking Bad franchise, it serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad. It continues the story of Jesse Pinkman, who partnered with former teacher Walter White throughout the series to build a crystal meth empire based in Albuquerque. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced El Camino; Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. Several Breaking Bad actors also reprised their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Robert Forster, Jonathan Banks, and Bryan Cranston. Forster died on the day of El Camino's release, making the film one of his final on-screen appearances.
Gilligan began considering the story of El Camino while writing Breaking Bad's series finale. He approached Paul with the idea for the film in 2017, near the tenth anniversary of the show's premiere, and completed the script several months later. Principal photography began in secret in New Mexico in November 2018, lasting nearly 50 days. The project remained unconfirmed until Netflix released a trailer on August 24, 2019. (Full article...) -
Wintjiya Napaltjarri (also spelt Wentjiya, Wintjia or Wentja, c. 1923–1934 – 2014), also known as Wintjia Napaltjarri No. 1, was a Pintupi-speaking Indigenous artist from Australia's Western Desert region. She is the sister of artist Tjunkiya Napaltjarri; both were wives of Toba Tjakamarra, with whom Wintjiya had five children.
Wintjiya's involvement in contemporary Indigenous Australian art began in 1994 at Haasts Bluff, when she participated in a group painting project and in the creation of batik fabrics. She has also been a printmaker, using drypoint etching. Her paintings typically use an iconography that represents the eggs of the flying ant (waturnuma) and hair-string skirts (nyimparra). Her palette generally involves strong red or black against a white background. (Full article...) -
"A Death in the Family" is a 1988 storyline in the American comic book Batman, published by DC Comics. It was written by Jim Starlin and penciled by Jim Aparo, with cover art by Mike Mignola. Serialized in Batman #426–429 from August to November 1988, "A Death in the Family" is considered one of the most important Batman stories for featuring the death of his sidekick Robin at the hands of his archenemy, the Joker.
Jason Todd, the second character to assume the Robin persona, was introduced in 1983 to replace Dick Grayson, who was unavailable for use at the time. Jason became unpopular among readers after 1986, as writers began to characterize him as rebellious and impulsive. Editor Dennis O'Neil was considering having Jason revamped or written out of Batman when he recalled a 1982 Saturday Night Live sketch in which Eddie Murphy encouraged viewers to call the show if they wanted him to boil a lobster on air. Inspired to orchestrate a similar stunt, DC set up a 900 number voting system to allow fans to decide Jason's fate. (Full article...) -
Cover of The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys mystery
The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.
The Hardy Boys have evolved since their debut in 1927. From 1959 to 1973, the first 38 books were extensively revised, largely to remove depictions of ethnic stereotypes; they were also targeted towards younger readers by being rewritten in a simpler, action-oriented style to compete with television. (Full article...) -
Wordless novels flourished in Germany in the 1920s and typically were made using woodcut or similar techniques in an Expressionist style. (Frans Masereel, 25 Images of a Man's Passion, 1918)
The wordless novel is a narrative genre that uses sequences of captionless pictures to tell a story. As artists have often made such books using woodcut and other relief printing techniques, the terms woodcut novel or novel in woodcuts are also used. The genre flourished primarily in the 1920s and 1930s and was most popular in Germany.
The wordless novel has its origin in the German Expressionist movement of the early 20th century. The typically socialist work drew inspiration from medieval woodcuts and used the awkward look of that medium to express angst and frustration at social injustice. The first such book was the Belgian Frans Masereel's 25 Images of a Man's Passion, published in 1918. The German Otto Nückel and other artists followed Masereel's example. Lynd Ward brought the genre to the United States in 1929 when he produced Gods' Man, which inspired other American wordless novels and a parody in 1930 by cartoonist Milt Gross with He Done Her Wrong. Following an early-1930s peak in production and popularity, the genre waned in the face of competition from sound films and anti-socialist censorship in Nazi Germany and the US. (Full article...) -
Amarte Es un Placer (transl. Loving You Is a Pleasure) is the thirteenth studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel. It was released by WEA Latina on 13 September 1999. Produced by Miguel, it is a pop album with R&B and jazz influences. Miguel was more involved with the songwriting on this record than on earlier albums and was assisted by composers including Arturo Pérez, Armando Manzanero, and Juan Carlos Calderón. Despite the popularity of his contemporaries Ricky Martin and Enrique Iglesias who crossed over to the English-language market, Miguel preferred to sing and record in Spanish at the time.
Four singles were released to promote the album: "Sol, Arena y Mar", "O Tú o Ninguna", "Dormir Contigo", and the title track "Amarte Es un Placer". Miguel embarked on a world tour which lasted from September 1999 into May 2000. He performed in Spain, South America, Mexico, and the United States. It became the highest-grossing tour by a Spanish-speaking recording artist. (Full article...) -
Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin is a 2020 non-fiction book by the medical librarian and death-positive advocate Megan Rosenbloom. Dealing with anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin, it expounds upon Rosenbloom's research on such books and their historical, ethical, and cultural implications.
The book focuses on the relationship between anthropodermic bibliopegy and the history of medicine; most confirmed cases of such books were created or owned by medical professionals, in contrast to common stereotypes that they were associated with Nazi Germany, serial killers, or the French Revolution. Rosenbloom discusses how the practice reflects the changing attitudes towards consent, ownership, and disposal of human bodies, and how the history of anthropodermic books intertwines with the history of medical ethics as a field. She interviews librarians, archivists, collectors, and experts on the topic, and examines notable examples of such books and their origins. Though Rosenbloom supports the preservation and maintenance of anthropodermic books, Dark Archives also covers arguments to the contrary, such as those espoused by Princeton University Library senior librarian Paul Needham. (Full article...) -
WBPX-TV (channel 68) is a television station in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, airing programming from the Ion Television network. It is owned by the Ion Media subsidiary of the E. W. Scripps Company, which also owns Woburn-licensed Grit station WDPX-TV (channel 58); the two channels share the same TV spectrum. WBPX-TV and WDPX-TV are broadcast from a tower shared with WUNI and WWJE-DT on Parmenter Road in Hudson, Massachusetts.
WBPX-TV's programming is duplicated on WPXG-TV (channel 21) in Concord, New Hampshire, which shares its channel with Lowell, Massachusetts–licensed Daystar station WYDN (channel 48) and broadcasts from Fort Mountain near Epsom, New Hampshire. (Full article...)
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Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta Appraised by Dante and Virgil is a composition painted in at least five very similar versions by Dutch–French Romantic painter Ary Scheffer; all are in oils on canvas. The paintings depict a scene from Dante's Inferno. A pair of lovers, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta, are shown in Hell, while Dante and Virgil are on the right viewing them. A stab wound is visible on Malatesta's chest, signifying the pair's murder by his brother, Giovanni, who was da Rimini's husband.
This picture is the version of the painting painted in 1855, which hangs in the Louvre in Paris. The original, dating to 1835, is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Others exist in collections in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Art.
Did you know...
- ... that the architects of the Florida Tropical House (pictured), located in Beverly Shores, Indiana designed the house with Florida residents in mind?
- ... that Lady Elsie Mackay, socialite, actress and interior designer, died in 1928 with WWI ace Walter G. R. Hinchcliffe, attempting to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic?
- ... that author Laura Vernon Hamner, informally known as "Miss Amarillo", lived over thirty years in an Amarillo, Texas hotel?
In this month
- 5 May 1726 – Handel's opera Alessandro premieres at the King's Theatre in London with Italian castrato singer Senesino in the title role
- 12 May 1926 – Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, which he composed at the age of 19 while a student at Leningrad Conservatory, receives its first performance
- 22 May 1844 – Impressionst painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt (self-portrait pictured) is born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
- 26 May 1897 – Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, which later became the subject of numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations, is published by Constable & Co.
- 29 May 1913 – Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premieres in Paris and causes a riot in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work
News
- August 5: DaBaby Levitating remix losing US radio audiences after the rapper's comments on HIV/AIDS
- June 11: Taylor Swift's Evermore records biggest sales week of the year as it returns to No 1 on album chart
- May 27: Olivia Rodrigo's song good 4 u debuts at No 1 on US Billboard Hot 100 chart
- May 25: 'Rock and roll never dies': Italy wins Eurovision after 30 years
- February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
Featured biography
Pierre Rossier was a pioneering Swiss photographer whose albumen photographs, which include stereographs and cartes-de-visite, comprise portraits, cityscapes and landscapes. He was commissioned by the London firm of Negretti and Zambra to travel to Asia and document the progress of the Anglo-French troops in the Second Opium War and, although he failed to join that military expedition, he remained in Asia for several years, producing the first commercial photographs of China, the Philippines, Japan and Siam (now Thailand). He was the first professional photographer in Japan, where he trained Ueno Hikoma, Maeda Genzō, Horie Kuwajirō, as well as lesser known members of the first generation of Japanese photographers. In Switzerland he established photographic studios in Fribourg and Einsiedeln, and he also produced images elsewhere in the country. Rossier is an important figure in the early history of photography not only because of his own images, but also because of the critical impact of his teaching in the early days of Japanese photography. (Full article...)
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| “ | That there is a social problem presented by obscenity is attested by the expression of the legislatures of the forty-eight States, as well as the Congress. To recognize the existence of a problem, however, does not require that we sustain any and all measures adopted to meet that problem. The history of the application of laws designed to suppress the obscene demonstrates convincingly that the power of government can be invoked under them against great art or literature, scientific treatises, or works exciting social controversy. Mistakes of the past prove that there is a strong countervailing interest to be considered in the freedoms guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth Amendments. | ” |
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