Portal:Visual arts

THE VISUAL ARTS PORTAL

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 on the imagination of the artist to the highest degree 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...)

Outline of the visual arts

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The Disasters of War (Spanish: Los desastres de la guerra) is a series of 82 prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746–1828). Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising, the subsequent cruel war that ended in Spanish victory in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. During the conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire and Spain, Goya retained his position as first court painter to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers. Although deeply affected by the war, he kept private his thoughts on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath.

He was in poor health and almost deaf when, at 62, he began work on the prints. They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. It is likely that only then was it considered politically safe to distribute a sequence of artworks criticising both the French and restored Bourbons. In total over a thousand sets have been printed, though later ones are of lower quality, and most print room collections have at least some of the set. (Full article...)

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Portrait of Wally Neuzil

Credit: Google Art Project

Portrait of Wally by Egon Schiele (1912), from the Leopold Museum, Austria.

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“	Most painting in the European tradition was painting the mask. Modern art rejected all that. Our subject matter was the person behind the mask.	”
	— Robert Motherwell, The Times (November 17, 1985)

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Trofeo (1499–1500), Loggia palazzo, Brescia, south-east view

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...)

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Did you know (auto generated) - load new batch

... that the author of Sugar Dog Life ended up buying and raising a cactus after drawing one in the manga?
... that art historian Zehava Jacoby was able to suggest a reconstruction of the lost tomb of Baldwin V of Jerusalem, destroyed in an 1808 fire, using an 18th-century drawing by Elzear Horn?
... that the early woman explorer Adèle de Dombasle travelled to Polynesia in 1847 and worked as an illustrator, drawing people such as Queen Pōmare IV?
... that Graham Crowley entered the John Moores Painting Prize ten times since 1976 before finally winning in 2023?
... that a drawing of a dog was promoted by the president of El Salvador, caused an unaffiliated song to peak on the TikTok Billboard Top 50, and got its original creator doxxed?
... that Diane Orr and C. Larry Roberts were once said to "epitomize the regional, independent filmmaker"?
... that Sculpture Space lets artists create large-scale works in a former metalworking shop?
... that an Iowa nun's drawing of Eve and a pregnant Mary was described as "simple yet theologically dazzling"?

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General images

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

Image 1Due 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, among other fields. (from Graphic design)
Image 2Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina, c. 7300 BC (from History of painting)
Image 3Mother Goddess A miniature painting of the Pahari style, dating to the eighteenth century. Pahari and Rajput miniatures share many common features. (from History of painting)
Image 4Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting)
Image 5Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting)
Image 6The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shengwen, 1173–1176 AD, Song dynasty period. (from History of painting)
Image 7Francis 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 8Poster to promote the Centennial of Argentina (1910) (from Graphic design)
Image 9Max Beckmann, The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (from History of painting)
Image 10Eland, rock painting, Drakensberg, South Africa (from History of painting)
Image 11Two 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 12Qianlong Emperor Practicing Calligraphy, mid-18th century. (from History of painting)
Image 13Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet, Kalimantan, Indonesia (from History of painting)
Image 14An Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (from History of painting)
Image 15Giorgio de Chirico 1914, pre-Surrealism (from History of painting)
Image 16Young Mother Sewing, Mary Cassatt (from History of painting)
Image 17Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
Image 18Barnett Newman, Untitled Etching 1 (First Version), 1968, Minimalism (from History of painting)
Image 19Silk 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 20Irbid, 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 21Rock Shelters of Bhimbetka, rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
Image 22Juan Luna, The Parisian Life, 1892 (from History of painting)
Image 23Hellenistic Greek terracotta funerary wall painting, 3rd century BC (from History of painting)
Image 24The 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 25Brice Marden, 1966/1986, Monochrome painting (from History of painting)
Image 26A fresco from Cave 1 of Ajanta. (from History of painting)
Image 27Lascaux, Aurochs (Bos primigenius primigenius) (from History of painting)
Image 28Spanish cave painting of Bulls (from History of painting)
Image 29A 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 30Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting)
Image 31Patrick Henry Bruce, American modernism, 1924 (from History of painting)
Image 32Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting)
Image 33Cover of the Thanksgiving 1895 issue of The Chap-Book, designed by Will H. Bradley (from Graphic design)
Image 34Juan Luna, La Bulaqueña, 1895 (from History of painting)
Image 35Book of Hours (from History of painting)
Image 36Golden section in book design (from Graphic design)
Image 37Edvard Munch, 1893, early example of Expressionism (from History of painting)
Image 38Morgan Russell, Cosmic Synchromy (1913–14), Synchromism (from History of painting)
Image 39In 2021, researchers discovered ancient cave art in Leang Tedongnge, Sulawesi, Indonesia, estimated to be at least 45,500 years old. Depicting a warty pig, this artwork is recognized as the world's oldest known example of figurative or representational art. (from History of painting)
Image 40Baptism of Christ on a medieval Nubian painting from Old Dongola (from History of painting)
Image 41A 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)
Image 42Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting)
Image 43Henri Matisse 1909, late Fauvism (from History of painting)
Image 44Loquats 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 45Petroglyphs, from Sweden, Nordic Bronze Age (painted) (from History of painting)
Image 46Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
Image 47Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting)
Image 48Paul Klee, 1922, Bauhaus (from History of painting)
Image 49Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting)
Image 50Graphic symbols are often functionalist and anonymous, as these pictographs from the US National Park Service illustrate. (from Graphic design)
Image 51Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting)
Image 52Edward Hopper, Nighthawks, 1942, an American Scene painting (from History of painting)
Image 53Kiasma, a contemporary art museum in Helsinki, Finland (from Contemporary art)
Image 54The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami, Florida (from Contemporary art)
Image 55Piet Mondrian, "Composition No. 10" 1939–1942, De Stijl (from History of painting)
Image 56Colour (from Graphic design)
Image 57A Chinese painted jar from the Western Han Era (202 BCE – 9 CE) (from History of painting)
Image 58Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting)
Image 59Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
Image 60Max Ernst, 1920, early Surrealism (from History of painting)
Image 61Pierre Bonnard, 1913, European modernist Narrative painting (from History of painting)
Image 62Diego 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 63Grant Wood, 1930, social realism (from History of painting)