Portal:Visual arts

THE VISUAL ARTS PORTAL

Introduction

Vincent van Gogh painting The Church at Auvers from 1890 gray church against blue sky — *The Church at Auvers*, an oil painting by Vincent van Gogh (1890)

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 on the imagination of the artist to the highest degree and being the furthest removed from manual labour – in Chinese painting, valued styles were "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes. (Full article...)

Selected article

Portrait of Mariana of Austria is a 1652–1653 oil-on-canvas painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, existing in a number of versions. Its subject, Doña Mariana (known as Maria Anna), was the daughter of Emperor Ferdinand III and Maria Anna of Spain. She was nineteen years old when the painting was completed. Although described as vivacious and fun-loving in life, she is given an unhappy expression in Velázquez's portrait. The portrait is painted in shades of black and red, and her face is heavily made up. Her right hand rests on the back of a chair, and she holds a lace handkerchief in her left hand. Her bodice is decorated with jewellery, including a gold necklace, bracelets and a large gold brooch. A clock rests on scarlet drapery behind her, signifying her status and discernment.

Mariana had been betrothed to her first cousin, Prince Baltasar Carlos. He died in 1646 aged sixteen, and in 1649 she married her uncle, Baltasar Carlos's father, Philip IV, who sought her hand so as to preserve the hegemony of the Habsburg dynasty. She became queen consort on their marriage, and after her husband's death in September 1665, regent during the minority of her son, Charles II, until he came of age in 1675. Owing to Charles' inhibiting physical weaknesses, she dominated the political life in Spain until her death in 1696. (Full article...)

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Selected picture

Detail of Jonah - Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo

Credit: Primalchaos

Buon fresco, as illustrated by a detail of Michelangelo's decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling (1508-1512), is a challenging painting technique involving the application of watered-down pigment to wet plaster. Painters are forced to work quickly to apply the pigment before the plaster dries.

Selected quote

“	When I've painted a woman's behind so that I want to touch it, then it's finished!	”
	— Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vollard, Ambroise (1925). Renoir: an initimate record. Translated by Van Dooren, Harold L.; Weaver, Randolph T. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. p. 57. OCLC 631984646.

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Selected biography

Portrait photograph by George Charles Beresford, 1902

François Auguste René Rodin (/roʊˈdæn/; French: [fʁɑ̃swa oɡyst(ə) ʁəne ʁɔdɛ̃]; 12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917) was a French sculptor generally considered the founder of modern sculpture. He was schooled traditionally and took a craftsman-like approach to his work. Rodin possessed a unique ability to model a complex, turbulent, and deeply pocketed surface in clay. He is known for such sculptures as The Thinker, Monument to Balzac, The Kiss, The Burghers of Calais, and The Gates of Hell.

Many of Rodin's most notable sculptures were criticized, as they clashed with predominant figurative sculpture traditions in which works were decorative, formulaic, or highly thematic. Rodin's most original work departed from traditional themes of mythology and allegory. He modeled the human body with naturalism, and his sculptures celebrate individual character and physicality. Although Rodin was sensitive to the controversy surrounding his work, he refused to change his style, and his continued output brought increasing favor from the government and the artistic community. (Full article...)

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General images

The following are images from various visual arts-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Brice Marden, 1966/1986, Monochrome painting (from History of painting)
Image 2Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting)
Image 3Francis Picabia, (Left) Le saint des saints c'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait, 1 July 1915; (center) Portrait d'une jeune fille americaine dans l'état de nudité, 5 July 1915: (right) J'ai vu et c'est de toi qu'il s'agit, De Zayas! De Zayas! Je suis venu sur les rivages du Pont-Euxin, New York, 1915 (from History of painting)
Image 4Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet, Kalimantan, Indonesia (from History of painting)
Image 5Two Scribes Seated with Books and a Writing Table Fragment of a decorative margin Northern India (Mughal school), ca. 1640–1650 (from History of painting)
Image 6Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassatt (from History of painting)
Image 7Baptism of Christ on a medieval Nubian painting from Old Dongola (from History of painting)
Image 8Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting)
Image 9Loquats and Mountain Bird, anonymous artist of the Southern Song dynasty; paintings in leaf album style such as this were popular in the Southern Song (1127–1279). (from History of painting)
Image 10Juan Luna, The Parisian Life, 1892 (from History of painting)
Image 11Kiasma, a contemporary art museum in Helsinki, Finland (from Contemporary art)
Image 12The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida (from Contemporary art)
Image 13Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina, c. 7300 BC (from History of painting)
Image 14Paul Klee, 1922, Bauhaus (from History of painting)
Image 15Cover of the Thanksgiving 1895 issue of The Chap-Book, designed by Will H. Bradley (from Graphic design)
Image 16Qianlong Emperor Practicing Calligraphy, mid-18th century. (from History of painting)
Image 17Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting)
Image 18Lascaux, Aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius) (from History of painting)
Image 19Eland, rock painting, Drakensberg, South Africa (from History of painting)
Image 20Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting)
Image 21A Chinese painted jar from the Western Han Era (202 BCE – 9 CE) (from History of painting)
Image 22Poster to promote the Centennial of Argentina (1910) (from Graphic design)
Image 23Irbid, Jordan, "We are Arabs. We are Humans". Inside Out is a global participatory art project, initiated by the French photographer JR, an example of Street art. (from Contemporary art)
Image 24Patrick Henry Bruce, American modernism, 1924 (from History of painting)
Image 25The Eternal Father Painting the Virgin of Guadalupe. Attributed to Joaquín Villegas (1713 – active in 1753) (Mexican) (painter, Museo Nacional de Arte. (from History of painting)
Image 26Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting)
Image 27Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting)
Image 28Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting)
Image 29Golden section in book design (from Graphic design)
Image 30Hellenistic Greek terracotta funerary wall painting, 3rd century BC (from History of painting)
Image 31Book of Hours (from History of painting)
Image 32Silk painting depicting a man riding a dragon, painting on silk, dated to 5th–3rd century BC, Warring States period, from Zidanku Tomb no. 1 in Changsha, Hunan Province (from History of painting)
Image 33Grant Wood, 1930, social realism (from History of painting)
Image 34Colour (from Graphic design)
Image 35A fresco from Cave 1 of Ajanta. (from History of painting)
Image 36Juan Luna, La Bulaqueña, 1895 (from History of painting)
Image 37Piet Mondrian, "Composition No. 10" 1939–1942, De Stijl (from History of painting)
Image 38Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
Image 39Graphic symbols are often functionalist and anonymous, as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. (from Graphic design)
Image 40Giorgio de Chirico 1914, pre-Surrealism (from History of painting)
Image 41Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, an American Scene painting (from History of painting)
Image 42Pierre Bonnard, 1913, European modernist Narrative painting (from History of painting)
Image 43Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
Image 44Diego Rivera, Recreation of Man at the Crossroads (renamed Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934, Mexican muralism movement (from History of painting)
Image 45Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting)
Image 46Due to its interdisciplinary nature, graphic design can be performed in different areas of application: branding, technical and artistic drawing, signage, photography, image and video editing, 3D modeling, animation, programming, digital drawing, video creation among other fields. (from Graphic design)
Image 47Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
Image 48A Boeing 747 aircraft with livery designating it as Air Force One. The cyan forms, the US flag, presidential seal and the Caslon lettering, were all designed at different times, by different designers, for different purposes, and combined by designer Raymond Loewy in this one single aircraft exterior design. (from Graphic design)
Image 49Barnett Newman, Untitled Etching 1 (First Version), 1968, Minimalism (from History of painting)
Image 50A fresco showing Hades and Persephone riding in a chariot, from the tomb of Queen Eurydice I of Macedon at Vergina, Greece, 4th century BC (from History of painting)

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 • Stained glass; • Artists' Books

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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Visual arts

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