Visual arts

The visual arts are a class of art forms, including painting, sculpture, film, photography, and others, that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature.

Arts or the Arts encompasses visual arts, performing arts, language arts, and culinary arts. Many artistic disciplines involve aspects of the visual arts as well other types, so these definitions are not strict.

The current usage of visual arts includes fine arts and well as crafts, but this was not always the case. In Britain and elsewhere, a visual artist referred to a person working in the fine arts (such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art disciplines. This distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts movement who valued vernacular artforms as much as high forms. The movement contrasted with modernists who sought to withhold the high arts from the masses by keeping them esoteric. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts in such a way that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of art.

There may be some residual meaning of visual arts as fine art. But generally, visual arts is suitably independent of these older, loaded concepts and as such is the preferred term for work across all the disciplines in question.

Common types of visual art

References

External links

ArtLex - online dictionary of visual art terms.
Art History Timeline by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Tenability of the Distinction Between Arts and Crafts - essay. (PDF)

Visual arts

Gourt Home::Gourt :: Visual arts

Common types of visual art

References

See also

External links