Portal:Visual arts
Introduction

The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, 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. Within the visual arts, the applied arts, such as industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, and decorative art are also included.
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 Vatican Museums (Italian: Musei Vaticani; Latin: Musea Vaticana) are the public museums of the Vatican City. They display works from the immense collection amassed by the Catholic Church and the papacy throughout the centuries, including several of the best-known Roman sculptures and most important masterpieces of Renaissance art in the world. The museums contain roughly 70,000 works, of which 20,000 are on display, and currently employs 640 people who work in 40 different administrative, scholarly, and restoration departments.
Pope Julius II founded the museums in the early 16th century. The Sistine Chapel, with its ceiling and altar wall decorated by Michelangelo, and the Stanze di Raffaello (decorated by Raphael) are on the visitor route through the Vatican Museums, considered among the most canonical and distinctive works of Western and European art. (Full article...)
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“ | The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. | ” |
— Marcel Duchamp, The Creative Act (1957) |
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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (/ˈrɛmbrænt, ˈrɛmbrɑːnt/; Dutch: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)ˌsoːɱ vɑn ˈrɛin] ⓘ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of Western art. It is estimated that Rembrandt's surviving works amount to about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings and several hundred drawings.
Unlike most Dutch painters of the 17th century, Rembrandt's works depict a wide range of styles and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological subjects and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. (Full article...)
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- 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
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- 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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