Visual arts - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.

org/wiki/Visual_arts

Visual arts
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[1] are the applied arts[2] such as industrial design,
graphic design, fashion design, interior design and decorative
art.[3]

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 Vincent van Gogh: The Church at Auvers
much as high forms.[4] Art schools made a distinction between the (1890)
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 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.

Contents
Education and training
Drawing
Painting
Origins and early history
The Renaissance
Dutch masters
Baroque
Impressionism
Post-impressionism
Symbolism, expressionism and cubism

Printmaking
European history
Chinese origin and practice

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Development In Japan 1603–1867

Photography
Architecture
Filmmaking
Computer art
Plastic arts
Sculpture

Copyright definition of visual art (US)

See also
References
Bibliography
External links

Education and training

Training in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop systems. In
Europe the Renaissance movement to increase the prestige of the artist led to the academy system for training
artists, and today most of the people who are pursuing a career in arts train in art schools at tertiary levels. Visual
arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems.

Drawing
Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves
making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface using dry media
such as graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers.
Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing,
hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is
referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.

Drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in
France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as
models for painting or sculpture. Drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form
with black-figure pottery during the 7th century BC.[5]

With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters such as Sandro
Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci who sometimes treated drawing as an art in its own right
rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture.[6]

Painting
Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent
(a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the
use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition, or other aesthetic considerations in order to
manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual
motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The
Sistine Chapel to the human body itself.

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Origins and early history

Like drawing, painting has its
documented origins in caves and
on rock faces. The finest examples,
believed by some to be 32,000
years old, are in the Chauvet and
Lascaux caves in southern France.
Mosaic of Battle of Issus In shades of red, brown, yellow and
black, the paintings on the walls
and ceilings are of bison, cattle,
horses and deer.
Nefertari with Isis
Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. In the great
temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis.[7] The
Greeks contributed to painting but much of their work has been lost. One of the
best remaining representations are the Hellenistic Fayum mummy portraits.
Another example is mosaic of the Battle of Issus at Pompeii, which was probably
based on a Greek painting. Greek and Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the
4th century BC, which initiated a tradition in icon painting.

The Renaissance
Apart from the illuminated manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle
Ages, the next significant contribution to European art was from Italy's renaissance
painters. From Giotto in the 13th century to Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at the
Raphael: Spasimo
beginning of the 16th century, this was the richest period in Italian art as the (1514–1516)
chiaroscuro techniques were used to create the illusion of 3-D space.[8]

Painters in northern Europe too were influenced by the Italian school. Jan
van Eyck from Belgium, Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the Netherlands and
Hans Holbein the Younger from Germany are among the most successful
painters of the times. They used the glazing technique with oils to achieve
depth and luminosity.

Dutch masters
The 17th century witnessed the emergence
Rembrandt: The Night Watch
of the great Dutch masters such as the
versatile Rembrandt who was especially
remembered for his portraits and Bible scenes, and Vermeer who specialized in
interior scenes of Dutch life.

Baroque Claude Monet: Le

Déjeuner sur l’herbe
The Baroque started after the Renaissance, from the late 16th century to the late
(1866)
17th century. Main artists of the Baroque included Caravaggio, who made heavy use
of tenebrism. Peter Paul Rubens was a flemish painter who studied in Italy, worked
for local churches in Antwerp and also painted a series for Marie de' Medici. Annibale Carracci took influences

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from the Sistine Chapel and created the genre of illusionistic ceiling painting. Much of the development that
happened in the Baroque was because of the Protestant Reformation and the resulting Counter Reformation. Much
of what defines the Baroque is dramatic lighting and overall visuals.[9]

Impressionism
Impressionism began in France in the 19th century with a loose association of artists including Claude Monet,
Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne who brought a new freely brushed style to painting, often choosing to
paint realistic scenes of modern life outside rather than in the studio. This was achieved through a new expression
of aesthetic features demonstrated by brush strokes and the impression of reality. They achieved intense colour
vibration by using pure, unmixed colours and short brush strokes. The movement influenced art as a dynamic,
moving through time and adjusting to new found techniques and perception of art. Attention to detail became less
of a priority in achieving, whilst exploring a biased view of landscapes and nature to the artists eye.[10][11]

Post-impressionism
Towards the end of the 19th century, several young
painters took impressionism a stage further, using
geometric forms and unnatural colour to depict
emotions while striving for deeper symbolism. Of
Paul Gauguin: The particular note are Paul Gauguin, who was strongly
Vision After the Sermon influenced by Asian, African and Japanese art,
(1888) Vincent van Gogh, a Dutchman who moved to
France where he drew on the strong sunlight of the
Edvard Munch: The
south, and Toulouse-Lautrec, remembered for his vivid paintings of night life in the Scream (1893)
Paris district of Montmartre.[12]

Symbolism, expressionism and cubism

Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist, developed his symbolistic approach at the end of the 19th century, inspired by
the French impressionist Manet. The Scream (1893), his most famous work, is widely interpreted as representing
the universal anxiety of modern man. Partly as a result of Munch's influence, the German expressionist movement
originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century as artists such as Ernst Kirschner and Erich Heckel
began to distort reality for an emotional effect. In parallel, the style known as cubism developed in France as artists
focused on the volume and space of sharp structures within a composition. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque were
the leading proponents of the movement. Objects are broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted
form. By the 1920s, the style had developed into surrealism with Dali and Magritte.[13]

Printmaking
Printmaking is creating, for artistic purposes, an image on a matrix that is then transferred to a two-dimensional
(flat) surface by means of ink (or another form of pigmentation). Except in the case of a monotype, the same matrix
can be used to produce many examples of the print.

Historically, the major techniques (also called media) involved are woodcut, line engraving, etching, lithography,
and screenprinting (serigraphy, silkscreening) but there are many others, including modern digital techniques.
Normally, the print is printed on paper, but other mediums range from cloth and vellum to more modern
materials. Major printmaking traditions include that of Japan (ukiyo-e).

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Albrecht Dürer: Melancholia
I (1541)
European history
Prints in the Western tradition produced before
about 1830 are known as old master prints. In
Europe, from around 1400 AD woodcut, was
used for master prints on paper by using
printing techniques developed in the Byzantine
and Islamic worlds. Michael Wolgemut
improved German woodcut from about 1475,
and Erhard Reuwich, a Dutchman, was the first Ancient Chinese
to use cross-hatching. At the end of the century engraving of female
Albrecht Dürer brought the Western woodcut to instrumentalists
a stage that has never been surpassed, increasing
the status of the single-leaf woodcut.[14]

Chinese origin and practice

In China, the art of printmaking developed some 1,100 years ago as
illustrations alongside text cut in woodblocks for printing on paper.
Initially images were mainly religious but in the Song Dynasty, artists
began to cut landscapes. During the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing
(1616–1911) dynasties, the technique was perfected for both religious
and artistic engravings.[15][16]

Development In Japan 1603–1867 The Chinese Diamond Sutra, the

Hokusai: Red Fuji southern
wind clear morning from
Thirty-six Views of Mount
Fuji
world's oldest printed book (868 CE)
Woodblock printing in Japan
(Japanese: 木版画, moku hanga) is a
technique best known for its use in the ukiyo-e artistic genre; however, it was
also used very widely for printing books in the same period. Woodblock printing
had been used in China for centuries to print books, long before the advent of
movable type, but was only widely adopted in Japan surprisingly late, during the
Edo period (1603–1867). Although similar to woodcut in western printmaking
in some regards, moku hanga differs greatly in that water-based inks are used
(as opposed to western woodcut, which uses oil-based inks), allowing for a wide
range of vivid color, glazes and color transparency.

Photography
Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. Light patterns reflected or emitted
from objects are recorded onto a sensitive medium or storage chip through a timed exposure. The process is done
through mechanical shutters or electronically timed exposure of photons into chemical processing or digitizing
devices known as cameras.

The word comes from the Greek words φως phos ("light"), and γραφις graphis ("stylus", "paintbrush") or γραφη
graphê, together meaning "drawing with light" or "representation by means of lines" or "drawing." Traditionally,
the product of photography has been called a photograph. The term photo is an abbreviation; many people also call
them pictures. In digital photography, the term image has begun to replace photograph. (The term image is
traditional in geometric optics.)

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Architecture

Saint Basil's Cathedral from the Red Tenements, by Jörg Blobelt, in Dresden (Germany).
Square (Moscow). Its extraordinary These buildings are decorated with Neoclassical motifs,
onion-shaped domes, painted in bright giveing them elegance, balance and refinement
colors, create a memorable skyline,
making St. Basil's a symbol both of
Moscow and Russia as a whole

Architecture is the process and the product of planning, designing, and constructing buildings or any other
structures. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as
works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

The earliest surviving written work on the subject of architecture is De architectura, by the Roman architect
Vitruvius in the early 1st century AD. According to Vitruvius, a good building should satisfy the three principles of
firmitas, utilitas, venustas, commonly known by the original translation – firmness, commodity and delight. An
equivalent in modern English would be:

1. Durability – a building should stand up robustly and remain in good condition.

2. Utility – it should be suitable for the purposes for which it is used.
3. Beauty – it should be aesthetically pleasing.
Building first evolved out of the dynamics between needs (shelter, security, worship, etc.) and means (available
building materials and attendant skills). As human cultures developed and knowledge began to be formalized
through oral traditions and practices, building became a craft, and "architecture" is the name given to the most
highly formalized and respected versions of that craft.

Filmmaking
Filmmaking is the process of making a motion-picture, from an initial conception and research, through
scriptwriting, shooting and recording, animation or other special effects, editing, sound and music work and finally
distribution to an audience; it refers broadly to the creation of all types of films, embracing documentary, strains of
theatre and literature in film, and poetic or experimental practices, and is often used to refer to video-based
processes as well

Computer art

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Visual artists are no longer limited to traditional art media. Computers have been used as an ever more common
tool in the visual arts since the 1960s. Uses include the capturing or creating of images and forms, the editing of
those images and forms (including exploring multiple compositions) and the final rendering or printing (including
3D printing).

Computer art is any in which computers played a role in production or display. Such art can be an image, sound,
animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD, video game, website, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many
traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works
of art and new media works created using computers have been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine
traditional painting with algorithmic art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end
product can be difficult. Nevertheless, this type of art is beginning to appear in art museum exhibits, though it has
yet to prove its legitimacy as a form unto itself and this technology is widely seen in contemporary art more as a
tool rather than a form as with painting.

Computer usage has blurred the distinctions between illustrators, photographers, photo editors, 3-D modelers, and
handicraft artists. Sophisticated rendering and editing software has led to multi-skilled image developers.
Photographers may become digital artists. Illustrators may become animators. Handicraft may be computer-aided
or use computer-generated imagery as a template. Computer clip art usage has also made the clear distinction
between visual arts and page layout less obvious due to the easy access and editing of clip art in the process of
paginating a document, especially to the unskilled observer.

Plastic arts
Plastic arts is a term for art forms that involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by moulding or
modeling such as sculpture or ceramics. The term has also been applied to all the visual (non-literary, non-
musical) arts.[17][18]

Materials that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete or steel, have also been included in the
narrower definition, since, with appropriate tools, such materials are also capable of modulation. This use of the
term "plastic" in the arts should not be confused with Piet Mondrian's use, nor with the movement he termed, in
French and English, "Neoplasticism."

Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard or plastic material, sound, or text
and or light, commonly stone (either rock or marble), clay, metal, glass, or wood. Some sculptures are created
directly by finding or carving; others are assembled, built together and fired, welded, molded, or cast. Sculptures
are often painted.[19] A person who creates sculptures is called a sculptor.

Because sculpture involves the use of materials that can be moulded or modulated, it is considered one of the
plastic arts. The majority of public art is sculpture. Many sculptures together in a garden setting may be referred to
as a sculpture garden.

Sculptors do not always make sculptures by hand. With increasing technology in the 20th century and the
popularity of conceptual art over technical mastery, more sculptors turned to art fabricators to produce their
artworks. With fabrication, the artist creates a design and pays a fabricator to produce it. This allows sculptors to
create larger and more complex sculptures out of material like cement, metal and plastic, that they would not be
able to create by hand. Sculptures can also be made with 3-d printing technology.

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Copyright definition of visual art (US)

In the United States, the law protecting the copyright over a piece of visual art gives a more restrictive definition of
"visual art".[20]

A “work of visual art” is —

(1) a painting, drawing, print or sculpture, existing in a single copy, in a limited edition of 200 copies
or fewer that are signed and consecutively numbered by the author, or, in the case of a sculpture, in
multiple cast, carved, or fabricated sculptures of 200 or fewer that are consecutively numbered by
the author and bear the signature or other identifying mark of the author; or
(2) a still photographic image produced for exhibition purposes only, existing in a single copy that is
signed by the author, or in a limited edition of 200 copies or fewer that are signed and consecutively
numbered by the author.

A work of visual art does not include —

(A)(i) any poster, map, globe, chart, technical drawing, diagram, model, applied art, motion picture
or other audiovisual work, book, magazine, newspaper, periodical, data base, electronic information
service, electronic publication, or similar publication;
(ii) any merchandising item or advertising, promotional, descriptive, covering, or packaging
material or container;
(iii) any portion or part of any item described in clause (i) or (ii);
(B) any work made for hire; or
(C) any work not subject to copyright protection under this title.

See also
Art materials
Asemic writing
Avant-garde
Child art
Collage
Comics
Contemporary art
Creative peacebuilding (visual arts)
Crowdsourcing creative work
Décollage
Environmental art
Found object
Graffiti
History of art
History of graphic design
History of film
History of painting
History of sculpture
Illustration
Indigenous Australian art
Installation art
Interactive art

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Islamic art
Kandyan Era Frescoes
Landscape art
Mail art
Mathematics and art
Mixed media
Naïve art
Portraiture
Process art
Recording medium
Rock balancing
Sketch (drawing)
Sketchbook
Sound art
Street art
Video art

References
1. An About.com article by art expert, Shelley Esaak: What Is Visual Art? (http://arthistory.about.com/cs/reference
/f/visual_arts.htm?p=1)
2. Different Forms of Art – Applied Art (http://www.buzzle.com/articles/different-forms-of-art.html). Buzzle.com.
Retrieved 11 Dec 2010.
3. "Centre for Arts and Design in Toronto, Canada" (https://web.archive.org/web/20111028075227/http:
//www.georgebrown.ca/centres/AD/index.aspx). Georgebrown.ca. 15 February 2011. Archived from the
original (http://www.georgebrown.ca/centres/AD/index.aspx) on 28 October 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
4. Art History: Arts and Crafts Movement: (1861–1900). From World Wide Arts Resources (http://wwar.com
/masters/movements/arts_and_crafts_movement.html) Archived (http://arquivo.pt/wayback/20091013011648
/http://wwar.com/masters/movements/arts_and_crafts_movement.html) 13 October 2009 at the Portuguese
Web Archive. Retrieved 24 October 2009.
5. History of Drawing. From Dibujos para Pintar. (http://www.dibujosparapintar.com/english_activities
/drawing_course_history.html) Retrieved 23 October 2009.
6. "Drawing" (https://web.archive.org/web/20090314224108/http://www.history.com
/encyclopedia.do?vendorId=FWNE.fw..dr085000.a). History.com. 2006. Archived from the original
(http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?vendorId=FWNE.fw..dr085000.a) on 14 March 2009. Retrieved
23 October 2009.
7. History of Painting. From History World (http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis
/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1320&HistoryID=ab20&gtrack=pthc). Retrieved 23 October 2009.
8. History of Renaissance Painting. From ART 340 Painting (http://faculty.evansville.edu/rl29/art340
/f04/renaissancepainting.html). Retrieved 24 October 2009.
9. Mutsaers, Inge. "Ashgate Joins Routledge - Routledge" (https://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages
/Rethinking_the_Baroque_Intro.pdf) (PDF). Ashgate.com. Retrieved 2018-10-15.
10. "Impressionist art & paintings, What is Impressionist art? Introduction to Impressionism"
(http://www.impressionism.org/). Retrieved 24 September 2018.
11. Impressionism. Webmuseum, Paris. (http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/glo/impressionism/) Retrieved 24 October
2009
12. Post-Impressionism. Metropolitan Museum of Art (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm).
Retrieved 25 October 2009.

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13. Modern Art Movements. Irish Art Encyclopedia (http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/modern-art-movements.htm).

Retrieved 25 October 2009.
14. The Printed Image in the West: History and Techniques. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/prnt/hd_prnt.htm). Retrieved 25 October 2009.
15. Engraving in Chinese Art. From Engraving Review (http://www.engraving-review.com/chinese-art-
engraving.html) Archived (https://archive.is/20120729021616/http://www.engraving-review.com/chinese-art-
engraving.html) 29 July 2012 at Archive.today. Retrieved 23 October 2009.
16. The History of Engraving in China. From ChinaVista (http://www.chinavista.com/experience/engrave
/engrave.html). Retrieved 25 October 2009.
17. Art Terminology at KSU (http://docs.ksu.edu.sa/DOC/Articles19/Article190588.doc)
18. "Merriam-Webster Online (entry for "plastic arts")" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary
/plastic%20arts). Merriam-webster.com. Retrieved 2011-10-30.
19. Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity 22 September 2007 Through 20 January 2008, The
Arthur M. Sackler Museum (http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/exhibitions/sackler/godsInColor.html)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20090104060402/http://www.artmuseums.harvard.edu/exhibitions
/sackler/godsInColor.html) 4 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine
20. "Copyright Law of the United States of America – Chapter 1 (101. Definitions)" (http://www.copyright.gov
/title17/92chap1.html#101). Copyright.gov. Retrieved 2011-10-30.

Bibliography
Barnes, A. C., The Art in Painting, 3rd ed., 1937, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., NY.
Bukumirovic, D. (1998). Maga Magazinovic. Biblioteka Fatalne srpkinje knj. br. 4. Beograd: Narodna knj.
Fazenda, M. J. (1997). Between the pictorial and the expression of ideas: the plastic arts and literature in the
dance of Paula Massano. n.p.
Gerón, C. (2000). Enciclopedia de las artes plásticas dominicanas: 1844–2000. 4th ed. Dominican Republic
s.n.
Oliver Grau (Ed.): MediaArtHistories. MIT-Press, Cambridge 2007. with Rudolf Arnheim, Barbara Stafford,
Sean Cubitt, W. J. T. Mitchell, Lev Manovich, Christiane Paul, Peter Weibel a.o. Rezensionen
(http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/de/department/bildwissenschaft/forschung/publikationen/index.php)
Laban, R. V. (1976). The language of movement: a guidebook to choreutics. Boston: Plays.
La Farge, O. (1930). Plastic prayers: dances of the Southwestern Indians. n.p.
Restany, P. (1974). Plastics in arts. Paris, New York: n.p.
University of Pennsylvania. (1969). Plastics and new art. Philadelphia: The Falcon Pr.

External links
ArtLex (https://web.archive.org/web/20050424084418/http://www.artlex.com/) – online dictionary of visual art
terms.
Calendar for Artists (http://calendarforartists.com/) – calendar listing of visual art festivals.
Art History Timeline (http://www.metmuseum.org/toah) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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