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Considered one of the most important composers in the history of music for innovating in the creation of symphonies, string quartets, and concertos for piano and orchestra, Beethoven's musical training involved strenuous work since he was a child.

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.

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 the arts train in art schools at tertiary levels. Visual arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems.

In East Asia, arts education for nonprofessional artists typically focused on brushwork; calligraphy was numbered among the Six Arts of gentlemen in the Chinese Zhou dynasty, and calligraphy and Chinese painting were numbered among the four arts of scholar-officials in imperial China.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). 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.

After the decline of ukiyo-e and introduction of modern printing technologies, woodblock printing continued as a method for printing texts as well as for producing art, both within traditional modes such as ukiyo-e and in a variety of more radical or Western forms that might be construed as modern art. In the early 20th century, shin-hanga that fused the tradition of ukiyo-e with the techniques of Western paintings became popular, and the works of Hasui Kawase and Hiroshi Yoshida gained international popularity. Institutes such as the "Adachi Institute of Woodblock Prints" and "Takezasado" continue to produce ukiyo-e prints with the same materials and methods as used in the past.

Photography

Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. The 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 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.)

Architecture

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

Visual artists are no longer limited to traditional visual arts 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 (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 now integrate digital technologies, so 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. On the other hand, there are computer-based artworks which belong to a new conceptual and postdigital strand, assuming the same technologies, and their social impact, as an object of inquiry.

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.

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. A person who creates sculptures is called a sculptor.

The earliest undisputed examples of sculpture belong to the Aurignacian culture, which was located in Europe and southwest Asia and active at the beginning of the Upper Paleolithic. As well as producing some of the earliest known cave art, the people of this culture developed finely-crafted stone tools, manufacturing pendants, bracelets, ivory beads, and bone-flutes, as well as three-dimensional figurines.

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 materials 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.

US copyright definition of visual art

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

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
• Collage
• Conservation and restoration of cultural property
• Crowdsourcing creative work
• Décollage
• Environmental art
• Found object
• Graffiti
• History of art
• Illustration
• Installation art
• Interactive art
• Landscape art
• Mathematics and art
• Mixed media
• Portraiture
• Process art
• Recording medium
• Sketch (drawing)
• Sound art
• Vexillography
• Video art
• Visual arts and Theosophy
• Visual impairment in art
• Visual poetry

References

1. An About.com article by art expert, Shelley Esaak: What Is Visual Art? Archived 2 July 2015 at the Wayback Machine
2. Different Forms of Art – Applied Art Archived 23 June 2017 at the Wayback Machine. Buzzle.com. Retrieved 11 December 2010.
3. "Centre for Arts and Design in Toronto, Canada". Georgebrown.ca. 15 February 2011. Archived from the original on 28 October 2011. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
4. Art History: Arts and Crafts Movement: (1861–1900). From World Wide Arts Resources Archived 13 October 2009 at the Portuguese Web Archive. Retrieved 24 October 2009.
5. Ulger, Kani (1 March 2016). "The creative training in the visual arts education". Thinking Skills and Creativity. 19: 73–87. doi:10.1016/j.tsc.2015.10.007. ISSN 1871-1871.
6. Adrone, Gumisiriza. "School of industrial art and design". Archived from the original on 20 February 2022. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
7. The Past, Present and Future of Printing in Japan. Izumi Munemura. (2010). The Surface Finishing Society of Japan.
8. Shin hanga bringing ukiyo-e back to life. Archived 2021-05-02 at the Wayback Machine The Japan Times.
9. Junko Nishiyama. (2018) 新版画作品集 ―なつかしい風景への旅. p. 18. Tokyo Bijutsu. ISBN 978-4808711016
10. "浮世絵・木版画のアダチ版画研究所". Archived from the original on 19 October 2023. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
11. 木版印刷・伝統木版画工房 竹笹堂. Archived from the original on 26 February 2014. Retrieved 7 November 2014.
12. Art Terminology at KSU
13. "Merriam-Webster Online (entry for "plastic arts")". Merriam-webster.com. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019. Retrieved 30 October 2011.
14. Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity 22 September 2007 Through 20 January 2008, The Arthur M. Sackler Museum Archived 4 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine
15. P. Mellars, Archeology and the Dispersal of Modern Humans in Europe: Deconstructing the Aurignacian, Evolutionary Anthropology, vol. 15 (2006), pp. 167–82.
16. de Laet, Sigfried J. (1994). History of Humanity: Prehistory and the beginnings of civilization. UNESCO. p. 211. ISBN 978-92-3-102810-6.
17. Cook, J. (2013) Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind, The British Museum, ISBN 978-0-7141-2333-2.
18. "Copyright Law of the United States of America – Chapter 1 (101. Definitions)". .gov. Archived from the original on 25 December 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2011.

External links

• ArtLex – online dictionary of visual art terms (archived 24 April 2005)
• Calendar for Artists – calendar listing of visual art festivals.
• Art History Timeline by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• The arts
• Visual arts

• Visual arts
• Communication design
• Visual arts media