Portal:Visual arts
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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Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, also known as The Misses Williams-Wynn, is a 173 by 150 cm (68 by 59 in) oil on canvas by English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1835 and currently in the York Art Gallery. Although Etty was then known almost exclusively for history paintings featuring nude figures, he was commissioned in 1833 by Welsh Conservative politician Charles Watkin Williams-Wynn to paint a portrait of two of his daughters. Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball shows Williams-Wynn's daughters, Charlotte and Mary, in lavish Italian-style costume: Charlotte, the eldest, is shown standing, helping the seated Mary decorate her hair with a ribbon and a rose. Etty put a good deal of effort into the piece and took much longer than usual to finish it.
The painting was completed for and exhibited at the 1835 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was generally well received, even by critics usually hostile to Etty and his work. Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball demonstrated that Etty was both capable of high-quality work and deserving of patronage by the English elite, and the success led to further commissions. The painting remained in the collection of Mary Williams-Wynn's descendants, and other than an 1849 retrospective exhibition, was not shown publicly for 160 years. A private collector purchased the piece from the Williams-Wynn family in 1982, where it remained until its 2009 acquisition by the York Art Gallery. It now forms part of a major collection of Etty's work there. (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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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn(/ˈrɛmbrænt, ˈrɛmbrɑːnt/, Dutch: [ˈrɛmbrɑnt ˈɦɑrmə(n)ˌsoːɱ vɑn ˈrɛin] ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply 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 art. It is estimated Rembrandt produced a total of about three hundred paintings, three hundred etchings, and two thousand 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 themes and animal studies. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age. (Full article...)
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