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...)
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The Raft of the Medusa (French: Le Radeau de la Méduse [lə ʁado d(ə) la medyz]) – originally titled Scène de Naufrage (Shipwreck Scene) – is an oil painting of 1818–19 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791–1824). Completed when the artist was 27, the work has become an icon of French Romanticism. At 491 by 716 cm (16 ft 1 in by 23 ft 6 in), it is an over-life-size painting that depicts a moment from the aftermath of the wreck of the French naval frigate Méduse, which ran aground off the coast of today's Mauritania on 2 July 1816. On 5 July 1816, at least 147 people were set adrift on a hurriedly constructed raft; all but 15 died in the 13 days before their rescue, and those who survived endured starvation and dehydration and practiced cannibalism (one custom of the sea). The event became an international scandal, in part because its cause was widely attributed to the incompetence of the French captain.
Géricault chose this large-scale uncommissioned work to launch his career, using a subject that had already generated widespread public interest. The event fascinated him, and before he began work on the final painting, he undertook extensive research and produced many preparatory sketches. He interviewed two of the survivors and constructed a detailed scale model of the raft. He visited hospitals and morgues where he could view, first-hand, the colour and texture of the flesh of the dying and dead. As he had anticipated, the painting proved highly controversial at its first appearance in the 1819 Paris Salon, attracting passionate praise and condemnation in equal measure. However, it established his international reputation and today is widely seen as seminal in the early history of the Romantic movement in French painting. (Full article...)Selected picture
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“ | Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable. | ” |
— Leonard Baskin, Publishers Weekly (April 5, 1965) |
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Selected biography
Gasparo Cairano, also known as Gasparo da Cairano, de Cayrano, da Milano, Coirano, and other variations (born Milan or Pieve del Cairo or Cairate, before 1489 – Brescia, died before 1517), was an Italian Renaissance sculptor.
The artist emerged in 1489 as part of the cultural world of Milan, beginning a successful career that turned him into a leading exponent of Renaissance sculpture in Brescia, distinguishing himself with works of cultural import such as his cycle of the Caesars for the Loggia palace in Brescia, as well as the Mausoleum of Martinengo. He introduced a powerful and highly expressive classical taste, as opposed to the hitherto existing refined decorativeness. During the first decade of the sixteenth century, Gasparo was able to win over public and private clients who sought to translate into stone their pride in their supposed historical descent from ancient Rome. (Full article...)Did you know (auto generated) -
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- 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
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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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