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 Proclamation of Dušan's Law Codex (Serbian: Proglašenje Dušanovog zakonika, Serbian Cyrillic: Проглашење Душановог законика) is the name given to each of seven versions of a composition painted by Paja Jovanović which depict Dušan the Mighty introducing Serbia's earliest surviving law codex to his subjects in Skopje in 1349. The Royal Serbian Government commissioned the first version for 30,000 dinars in 1899, intending for it to be displayed at the following year's Exposition Universelle (world's fair) in Paris.
When originally commissioned, the painting was intended to depict Dušan's 1346 coronation as Emperor of Serbia. After consulting with the politician and historian Stojan Novaković, Jovanović decided against painting a scene from Dušan's coronation, and opted to depict the proclamation of his law codex instead. Thus, the painting has often erroneously been described as depicting the coronation. Jovanović paid a great deal of attention to historical detail in preparation for the work, visiting several medieval Serbian Orthodox monasteries in Kosovo and Macedonia, studying medieval costumes and weaponry and consulting experts on the period. (Full article...)
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“ | Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. | ” |
— Henri Matisse, unknown |
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George Vincent (baptised 27 June 1796 – c.1832) was an English landscape painter who produced watercolours, etchings and oil paintings. He is considered by art historians to be one of the most talented of the Norwich School of painters, a group of artists connected by location and personal and professional relationships, who were mainly inspired by the Norfolk countryside. Vincent's work was founded on the Dutch school of landscape painting as well as the style of John Crome, also of the Norwich School. The school's reputation outside East Anglia in the 1820s was based largely upon the works of Vincent and his friend James Stark.
The son of a weaver, Vincent was educated at Norwich Grammar School and afterwards apprenticed to Crome. He exhibited at the Royal Academy, British Institution, and elsewhere. From 1811 until 1831 he showed at the Norwich Society of Artists, exhibiting more than 100 pictures of Norfolk landscapes and marine works. By 1818 he had relocated to London, where in 1821 he married the supposedly wealthy daughter of a surgeon. There he obtained the patronage of wealthy clients, yet struggled financially. The purchase of an expensive house, combined with a tendency towards drink, exacerbated his financial problems and led to his incarceration in the Fleet Prison for debt in 1824. Before his release in 1827 he had resumed his connection with the Norwich Society of Artists, albeit with a much lower output of work. (Full article...)
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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
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