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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 9:17:52 GMT -7
Fine artFine art refers to arts that are concerned with a limited number of visual and performing art forms, including painting, sculpture, dance, theatre, architecture and printmaking. Schools, institutes, and other organizations still use the term to indicate a traditional perspective on the art forms, often implying an association with classic or academic art. The word "fine" does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question, but the purity of the discipline. This definition tends to exclude visual art forms that could be considered craftwork or applied art, such as textiles. The more recent term visual arts is widely considered to be a more inclusive and descriptive phrase for today's variety of current art practices, and for the multitude of mediums in which high art is now more widely recognized to occur. Ultimately, the term fine in 'fine art' comes from the concept of Final Cause, or purpose, or end, in the philosophy of Aristotle. The Final Cause of fine art is the art object itself; it is not a means to another end except perhaps to please those who behold it. An alternative, if flippant, reference to "fine art," is capital "A" art, or, art with a capital "A." The term is still often used outside of the arts to denote when someone has perfected an activity to a very high level of skill. For example, one might metaphorically say that "Pelé took football to the level of a fine art." That fine art is seen as being distinct from applied arts is largely the result of an issue raised in Britain by the conflict between the followers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, including William Morris, and the early modernists, including Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. The former sought to bring socialist principles to bear on the arts by including the more commonplace crafts of the masses within the realm of the arts, while the modernists sought to keep artistic endeavour exclusive, esoteric, and elitist. Confusion often occurs when people mistakenly refer to the Fine Arts but mean the Performing Arts (Music, Dance, Drama, etc). However, there is some disagreement here, as, for example, at York University, Fine Arts is a faculty that includes the "traditional" fine arts, design, and the "Performing Arts". An academic course of study in fine art may include a Master of Fine Arts degree. Links: www.polishfineart.com/www.polandbymail.com/get_item_bk2182_art-in-poland-1572-1764.htmwww.artlex.com/ArtLex/p/polish.htmlwww.krakow-info.com/galerie.htmwww.thecroftgallery.co.uk/artistpage.asp?aid=105www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=Tadeusz+kantor+images&btnG=Zoeken&meta=
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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 9:20:04 GMT -7
The visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature, such as painting, photography, printmaking, and filmmaking. Those that involve three-dimensional objects, such as sculpture and architecture, are called plastic arts. Many artistic disciplines (performing arts, language arts, and culinary arts) involve aspects of the visual arts as well as other types, so these definitions are not strict. The current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine arts as well as 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, "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. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts movement who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. The movement contrasted with modernists who sought to withhold the high arts from the masses by keeping them esoteric.[citation needed] 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. In colloquial speech, fine art is sometimes referred to as capital "A" art, or art with a capital "A."
Drawing
Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools which simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman".
Painting
Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The Sistine Chapel to the human body itself.
Printmaking
Printmaking is creating for artistic purposes an image on a matrix which is then transferred to a two-dimensional (flat) surface by means of ink (or another form of pigmentation). Except in the case of a monotype, the same matrix can be used to produce many examples of the print. Historically, the major techniques (also called mediums) involved are woodcut, line engraving, etching, lithography, and screenprinting (serigraphy, silkscreening) but there are many others, including modern digital techniques. Normally the surface upon which the print is printed is paper, but there are exceptions, from cloth and vellum to modern materials. Prints in the Western tradition produced before about 1830 are known as old master prints. There are other major printmaking traditions, especially that of Japan (ukiyo-e). [edit]Photography
Photography
Photography is the process of making pictures by means of the action of light. 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, chemical or digital devices known as cameras. The word comes from the Greek words phos ("light"), and graphis ("stylus", "paintbrush") or 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.)
Computer art
Visual artists are no longer limited to traditional art media. Computers may enhance visual art from ease of rendering or capturing, to editing, to exploring multiple compositions, to printing (including 3D printing.) 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 are those visual arts that involve the use of materials that can be moulded or modulated in some way, often in three dimensions. Examples are clay, paint and plaster. The plastic arts may refer to:
- Architecture - Ceramics - Glass art - Land art - Metalworking - Mosaic - Paper art - The use of Plastics within the arts or as an artform itself - Sculpture - Textile art - Woodworking
Materials that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete or steel, are also included in this 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.
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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 9:30:13 GMT -7
CeramicsCeramics and ceramic art in the art world means artwork made out of clay bodies and fired into the hardened ceramic form. Some ceramic pieces are classified as fine art, while many others can be classified as one of the decorative, industrial or applied arts (the application of design and aesthetics to objects of function and everyday use). The identification of a specific pottery piece as a "work of art" is not always clear. Ceramic art usually, but not always, was intended by the maker as art. It may have a signature, designer name or brand name stamp on the bottom. Ceramic art can be either manufactured by individuals or in a factory that employs artists to design, produce or decorate the ware. Historically, ceramic articles were prepared by shaping the clay body, a clay rich mixture of various minerals, into the desired shapes before being subjected to high temperatures in a kiln. However ceramics now refers to a very diverse group of materials which, while all are fired to high temperature, may not have been shaped from material containing any clay. The origin of the word is the ancient Greek keramikos, from Keramos, meaning "potter's clay." www.polishpotteryonline.com/
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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 9:43:46 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 9:46:49 GMT -7
Land artLand art or earth art is a form of art which uses items from the natural environment, such as rocks, sticks, soil and plants. Particularly large works are sometimes known as earthworks. Land art came to prominence in the late 1960s and 1970s. The works frequently exist in the open and are left to change and erode under natural conditions. Many of the first works were ephemeral in nature and now only exist as photographic documents. HistoryThere are pre-historical precedents for land art, such as the almost-worldwide distribution of megaliths, and the Mound Builder cultures of North America. Isamu Noguchi's 1941 design for Contoured Playground is regarded as an important early piece of land art. His influence on contemporary land art and environmental sculpture is evident in many works today. Later land art was originally inspired mostly by modern and minimal movements such as De Stijl, Cubism, Minimalism and the work of Constantin Brancusi and Joseph Beuys. Many of the artist associated with 'Land art' had been involved with Minimalism and Conceptual Art. Alan Sonfist is the pioneer of an alternative approach to working with nature and culture that he began in 1965 by bringing historical nature back into New York City. According to the critic Barbara Rose writing in 'Artforum' in 1969 she herself had become disillusioned with the commodification and insularity of gallery bound art. The sudden appearance of Land Art in 1968 can be located as a response by a generation of artists mostly in their late twenties to the heightened political activism of the year and the emerging environmental and women's liberation movements. The movement was 'launched' in October 1968 by the group exhibition 'Earthworks' at the Dwan Gallery in New York. In February, 1969, Willoughby Sharp curated the historic "Earth Art" exhibition at the Andrew Dickson White Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca New York. The artists included in the "Earth Art" exhibition were: Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Hans Haacke, Michael Heizer, Neil Jenney, Richard Long, David Medalla, Robert Morris, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, and Gunther Uecker. Gordon Matta-Clark, who lived in Ithaca at the time, was invited by Willoughby Sharp to help the artists in "Earth Art" with the on-site execution of their works for the exhibition. Perhaps the best known artist who worked in this genre was the American Robert Smithson whose 1968 essay "The Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects" provided a critical framework for the movement as a reaction to the disengagement of Modernism from social issues as represented by the critic Clement Greenberg. His best known piece, and probably the most famous piece of all land art, is Spiral Jetty (1970), for which Smithson arranged rock, earth and algae so as to form a long (1500 feet) spiral-shape jetty protruding into Great Salt Lake in Utah. How much of the work, if any, is visible is dependent on the fluctuating water levels. Since its creation, the work has been completely covered, and then uncovered again, by water. Smithson's Gravel Mirror with Cracks and Dust (1968) is an example of land art existing in a gallery space rather than in the natural environment. It consists of a pile of gravel by the side of a partially mirrored gallery wall. In its simplicity of form and concentration on the materials themselves, this and other pieces of land art have an affinity with minimalism. There is also a relationship to Arte Povera in the use of materials traditionally considered "unartistic" or "worthless". Land artists have tended to be American, with other prominent artists in this field including Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, Hans Haacke, Alice Aycock, Dennis Oppenheim, Michael Heizer, Alan Sonfist, and James Turrell. Turrell began work in 1972 on possibly the largest piece of land art thus far, reshaping the earth surrounding the extinct Roden Crater volcano in Arizona. Perhaps the most prominent non-American land artists are the British Chris Drury Andy Goldsworthy and Richard Long. Some projects by the artist Christo (who is famous for wrapping monuments, buildings and landscapes in fabric) have also been considered land art by some, though the artist himself considers this incorrect, as explained on his web page. Joseph Beuys' concept of 'social sculpture' influenced 'Land art' and his 'Eichen' project of 1972 to plant 7000 Oak trees has many similarities to 'Land art' processes. Land artists in America relied mostly on wealthy patrons and private foundations to fund their often costly projects. With the sudden economic down turn of the mid 1970s funds from these sources largely dried up. With the death of Smithson in a plane crash in 1973 the movement lost its figurehead and petered out. Turrell continues to work on the Roden Crater project. In most respects 'Land art' has become part of mainstream Public Art. In 1998 a group of artists started in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) a project called Indoor Land Art Programme - ILAP, and had shows all over Europe. More recently, the artist Seth Wulsin has adopted Caseros Prison in Buenos Aires and its demolition as an artwork that, while extending beyond land art, also bears many conceptual resemblances. One particularly unusual example of land art is the well known Marree Man in South Australia which is both the largest and most unique because despite being the largest, it came into being without any witnesses to its creation and no artist(s) have either laid claim to the work or have ever been identified! African land art has become world renowned over the last decade, largely through the work of South African land artist Strijdom van der Merwe. Contemporary Australian sculptor Andrew Rogers has created geoglyphs around the world called 'The Rhythms of Life'. Rhythms of LifeThe “Rhythms of Life” project is the largest contemporary land art project in the world – 10 sites – in disparate exotic locations (located below sea level and up to altitudes of 4,300 meters). Up to three Geoglyphs (each up to 660 feet x 660 feet) are located in each site. By completion the project will have involved up to 5000 people (550 people worked in Bolivia, 852 people in Sri Lanka, and 1000 in China. “Rhythms of Life” sites containing large scale Geoglyphs (land sculptures) are complete in Bolivia, Israel, Chile, Sri Lanka, Australia, Iceland and China, which are part of a chain of 10 sites created around the world. Outside the City of Melbourne, in Geelong, a “Rhythms of Life” site was commissioned in association with the Commonwealth Games 2006. In China the “Rhythms of Life” walls stretch 2.1 kilometers. Individually and together the Geoglyphs form a unique art work stretching around the world, titled “The Rhythms of Life”. They are optimistic symbols about life and regeneration – connecting people with history and heritage. The title, the “Rhythms of Life” is derived from Rogers’ early bronze sculptures. Links: www.tate.org.uk/collections/glossary/definition.jsp?entryId=151www.usc.edu/programs/cst/deadfiles/lacasis/ansc100/library/styles/EarthArt.htmlgeology.about.com/od/geologyandculture/a/aa_earthart.htmwww.christojeanneclaude.net/si.htmlwww.calearth.org/
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Post by pieter on Jun 8, 2007 10:00:44 GMT -7
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