Portal:Visual arts
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 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 Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is a privately owned museum whose stated aim is "to celebrate the labor of artists whose work would be displayed and appreciated in no other forum". It was originally in Dedham, Massachusetts, and is currently in Boston, Massachusetts. Its permanent collection includes over 700 pieces of "art too bad to be ignored", 25 to 35 of which are on public display at any one time.
MOBA was founded in 1993, after antique dealer Scott Wilson showed a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who suggested starting a collection. Within a year, receptions held in Wilson's friends' home were so well-attended that the collection needed its own viewing space. The museum then moved to the basement of a theater in Dedham. Explaining the reasoning behind the museum's establishment, co-founder Jerry Reilly said in 1995: "While every city in the world has at least one museum dedicated to the best of art, MOBA is the only museum dedicated to collecting and exhibiting the worst." To be included in MOBA's collection, works must be original and have serious intent, but they must also have significant flaws without being boring; curators are not interested in displaying deliberate kitsch. (Full article...)
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“ | Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable. | ” |
— Leonard Baskin, Publishers Weekly (April 5, 1965) |
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Emily Sartain (March 17, 1841 – June 17, 1927) was an American painter and engraver. She was the first woman in Europe and the United States to practice the art of mezzotint engraving, and the only woman to win a gold medal at the 1876 World Fair in Philadelphia. Sartain became a nationally recognized art educator and was the director of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women from 1866 to 1920. Her father, John Sartain, and three of her brothers, William, Henry and Samuel were artists. Before she entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and studied abroad, her father took her on a Grand Tour of Europe. She helped found the New Century Club for working and professional women, and the professional women's art clubs, The Plastic Club and The Three Arts Club. (Full article...)
Did you know (auto generated) -

- ... that Percy Kelly hoarded his drawings and paintings until the end of his life, saying that his cottage would someday "upstage Beatrix Potter's home"?
- ... that Bernie Wrightson spent seven years drawing an illustrated edition of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein?
- ... that to encourage the development of Bissau-Guinean cinema, one foreign filmmaker provided the country's film institute with cameras, lights, and a Steinbeck guitar?
- ... that an Arkansas TV station apologized for not being on the air by sending local media a drawing of ducks?
- ... that the filmmakers of 100 Litres of Gold brewed 20 litres of sahti at the Finnish embassy in Rome for its premiere?
- ... that Graham Crowley entered the John Moores Painting Prize ten times since 1976 before finally winning in 2023?
- ... that Nickelodeon storyboard artists created a book with hundreds of pornographic drawings of SpongeBob SquarePants characters?
- ... that in May 1983 British public health physician Spence Galbraith suggested withdrawing blood products made from blood donated in the U.S. after 1978?
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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; • 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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Architecture | Ceramic art | Comics | Crafts | Design | Drawing | Illustration | Film | Glass | Graphic design | Industrial design | Landscape architecture | Multimedia | Painting | Photography | Pottery | Printmaking | Public art | Sculpture | Typography | Mosaic
Artists | Visual arts awards | Artist collectives | Art collectors | Art critics | Art curators | Visual arts exhibitions | Art forgery | Art history | Visual arts materials | Art schools | Artistic techniques |
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