The arts

 also called fine arts, modes of expression that use skill or

imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or
experiences that can be shared with others.

Traditional categories within the arts include

 literature (including poetry, drama, story, and so on),
 the visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.),
 the graphic arts (painting, drawing, design, and other forms
expressed on flat surfaces),
 the plastic arts (sculpture, modeling),
 the decorative arts (enamelwork, furniture design, mosaic, etc.),
 the performing arts (theatre, dance, music),
 music (as composition),
 and architecture (often including interior design).
The arts are treated in a number of articles. For general discussions of the
foundations, principles, practice, and character of the arts, see aesthetics.
For the technical and theoretical aspects of several
arts, see architecture, calligraphy, dance, drawing, literature, motion
picture, music, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture,
and theatre. See also the historical discussions in history of the motion
picture and history of photography.

Art, also called (to distinguish it from other art forms) visual art, a visual
object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or
imagination. The term art encompassesdiverse media such
as painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative
arts, photography, and installation.

Particularly in the 20th century, a different sort of debate arose over the
definition of art. A seminal moment in this discussion occurred in 1917,
when Dada artist Marcel Duchampsubmitted a porcelain urinal
entitled Fountain to a public exhibition in New York City. Through this act,
Duchamp put forth a new definition of what constitutes a work of art: he
implied that it is enough for an artist to deem something “art” and put it in
a publicly accepted venue. Implicit within this gesture was a challenge to
the established art institutions—such as museums, exhibiting groups, and
galleries—that have the power to determine what is and is not considered
art. Such intellectual experimentation continued throughout the 20th
century in movements such as conceptual art and minimalism. By the turn
of the 21st century, a variety of new media (e.g., video art) further
challenged traditional definitions of art.

Architecture,
the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the
skills associated with construction.
The practice of architecture is employed to fulfill both practical and
expressive requirements, and thus it serves both utilitarian
and aesthetic ends. Although these two ends may be distinguished, they
cannot be separated, and the relative weight given to each can vary
widely. Because every society—whether highly developed or less so,
settled or nomadic—has a spatial relationship to the natural world and to
other societies, the structures they produce reveal much about
their environment (including climate and weather), history, ceremonies,
and artistic sensibility, as well as many aspects of daily life.

The characteristics that distinguish a work of architecture from other built

structures are (1) the suitability of the work to use by human beings in
general and the adaptability of it to particular human activities, (2) the
stability and permanence of the work’s construction, and (3) the
communication of experience and ideas through its form. All these
conditions must be met in architecture. The second is a constant, while
the first and third vary in relative importance according to the social
function of buildings. If the function is chiefly utilitarian, as in a factory,
communication is of less importance. If the function is chiefly expressive,
as in a monumental tomb, utility is a minor concern. In some buildings,
such as churches and city halls, utility and communication may be of equal
importance.
The present article treats primarily the forms, elements, methods, and
theory of architecture. For the history of architecture in antiquity, see the
sections on ancient Greece and Rome in Western architecture; as well
as Anatolian art and architecture; Arabian art and architecture; Egyptian
art and architecture; Iranian art and architecture; Mesopotamian art and
architecture; and Syro-Palestinian art and architecture. For later historical
and regional treatments of architecture, see African architecture; Chinese
architecture; Japanese architecture; Korean architecture; Oceanic art and
architecture; Western architecture; Central Asian arts; Islamic arts; South
Asian arts; and Southeast Asian arts. For a discussion of the place of
architecture and architectural theory in the realm of the
arts, seeaesthetics. For related forms of artistic
expression, see city; interior design; and urban planning.

Use
The types of architecture are established not by architects but by society,
according to the needs of its different institutions. Society sets the goals
and assigns to the architect the job of finding the means of achieving them.
This section of the article is concerned with architectural typology, with the
role of society in determining the kinds of architecture, and with planning—
the role of the architect in adapting designs to particular uses and to the
general physical needs of human beings.

Calligraphy, the art of beautiful handwriting. The term may derive

from the Greek words for “beauty” (kallos) and “to write” (graphein).
It implies a sure knowledge of the correct form of letters—i.e., the
conventional signs by which language can be communicated—and
the skill to make them with such ordering of the various parts and
harmony of proportions that the experienced, knowledgeable eye
will recognize such composition as a work of art. Calligraphic work,
as art, need not be legible in the usual sense of the word.

In the Middle East and East Asia, calligraphy by long and exacting
tradition is considered a major art, equal to sculpture or painting. In
Western culturethe plainer Greek- and Latin-derived alphabets and
the spread of literacy have tended to make handwriting in principle
an art that anyone can practice. Nonetheless, after the introduction
of printing in Europe in the mid-15th century, a clear distinction
arose between handwriting and more elaborate forms of scripts and
lettering. In fact, new words meaning “calligraphy” entered most
European languages about the end of the 16th century, and in
English the word calligraphy did not appear until 1613. Writing
books from the 16th century through the present day have continued
to distinguish between ordinary handwriting and the more decorative
calligraphy.

Dance,
 the movement of the body in a rhythmic way, usually to music and
within a given space, for the purpose of expressing an idea or
emotion, releasing energy, or simply taking delight in the movement
itself.
Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art of dance is that impulse
channeled by skillful performers into something that becomes intensely
expressive and that may delight spectators who feel no wish to dance
themselves. These two concepts of the art of dance—dance as a powerful
impulse and dance as a skillfully choreographed art practiced largely by a
professional few—are the two most important connecting ideas running
through any consideration of the subject. In dance, the connection
between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither
can exist without the other.

Although the above broad definition covers all forms of the art,
philosophers and critics throughout history have suggested different
definitions of dance that have amounted to little more than descriptions of
the kind of dance with which each writer was most familiar.
Thus, Aristotle’sstatement in the Poetics that dance is rhythmic
movement whose purpose is “to represent men’s characters as well as
what they do and suffer” refers to the central role that dance played in
classical Greek theatre, where the chorus through its movements
reenacted the themes of the drama during lyric interludes.

The English ballet master John Weaver, writing in 1721, argued on the
other hand that “Dancing is an elegant, and regular movement,
harmoniously composed of beautiful Attitudes, and contrasted graceful
Posture of the Body, and parts thereof.” Weaver’s description reflects very
clearly the kind of dignified and courtly movement that characterized the
ballet of his time, with its highly formalized aesthetics and lack of forceful
emotion. The 19th-century French dance historian Gaston Vuillier also
emphasized the qualities of grace, harmony, and beauty, distinguishing
“true” dance from the crude and spontaneous movements of early man:

Drawing,
 the art or technique of producing images on a surface,
usually paper, by means of marks, usually of ink, graphite,
chalk, charcoal, or crayon.
Drawing as formal artistic creation might be defined as the primarily linear
rendition of objects in the visible world, as well as of concepts, thoughts,
attitudes, emotions, and fantasies given visual form, of symbols and even
of abstract forms. This definition, however, applies to all graphic arts and
techniques that are characterized by an emphasis on form or shape rather
than mass and colour, as in painting. Drawing as such differs from graphic
printing processes in that a direct relationship exists between production
and result. Drawing, in short, is the end product of a successive effort
applied directly to the carrier. Whereas a drawing may form the basis for
reproduction or copying, it is nonetheless unique by its very nature.

Although not every artwork has been preceded by a drawing in the form
of a preliminary sketch, drawing is in effect the basis of all visual arts.
Often the drawing is absorbed by the completed work or destroyed in the
course of completion. Thus, the usefulness of a ground plan drawing of a
building that is to be erected decreases as the building goes up. Similarly,
points and lines marked on a raw stone block represent auxiliary drawings
for the sculpture that will be hewn out of the material. Essentially,
every painting is built up of lines and pre-sketched in its main contours;
only as the work proceeds is it consolidated into coloured surfaces. As
shown by an increasing number of findings and investigations, drawings
form the material basis of mural, panel, and book paintings. Such
preliminary sketches may merely indicate the main contours or may
predetermine the final execution down to exact details. They may also be
mere probing sketches. Long before the appearance of actual small-scale
drawing, this procedure was much used for monumental murals.
With sinopia—the preliminary sketch found on a layer of its own on the
wall underneath the fresco, or painting on freshly spread, moist plaster—
one reaches the point at which a work that merely served as technical
preparation becomes a formal drawing expressing an artistic intention
Literature,
 a body of written works. The name has traditionally been applied to
those imaginative works of poetry and prose distinguished by the
intentions of their authors and the perceived aesthetic excellence of
their execution. Literature may be classified according to a variety
of systems, including language, national origin, historical
period, genre, and subject matter.
For historical treatment of various literatures within geographical
regions, see such articles as African literature; African theatre; Oceanic
literature; Western literature; Central Asian arts; South Asian arts;
and Southeast Asian arts. Some literatures are treated separately by
language, by nation, or by special subject (e.g., Arabic literature, Celtic
literature, Latin literature, French literature, Japanese literature,
and biblical literature).
Definitions of the word literature tend to be circular. The 11th edition
of Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary considers literature to be
“writings having excellence of form or expression and expressing ideas of
permanent or universal interest.” The 19th-century critic Walter
Paterreferred to “the matter of imaginative or artistic literature” as a
“transcript, not of mere fact, but of fact in its infinitely varied forms.” But
such definitions assume that the reader already knows what literature is.
And indeed its central meaning, at least, is clear enough. Deriving from
the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost
humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body
of writingbelonging to a given language or people; then it is individual
pieces of writing.

But already it is necessary to qualify these statements. To use the

word writing when describing literature is itself misleading, for one
may speak of “oral literature” or “the literature of preliterate peoples.”
The art of literature is not reducible to the words on the page; they
are there solely because of the craft of writing. As an art, literature
might be described as the organization of words to give pleasure.
Yet through words literature elevates and transforms experience
beyond “mere” pleasure. Literature also functions more broadly in
society as a means of both criticizing and affirming cultural values.
The Scope Of Literature
Literature is a form of human expression. But not everything expressed
in words—even when organized and written down—is counted as
literature. Those writings that are primarily informative—technical,
scholarly, journalistic—would be excluded from the rank of literature by
most, though not all, critics. Certain forms of writing, however, are
universally regarded as belonging to literature as an art. Individual
attempts within these forms are said to succeed if they possess something
called artistic merit and to fail if they do not. The nature of artistic merit is
less easy to define than to recognize. The writer need not even pursue it
to attain it. On the contrary, a scientific exposition might be of great literary
value and a pedestrian poem of none at all.

Motion picture,
 also called film or movie, series of still photographs on film, projected in
rapid succession onto a screen by means of light. Because of the optical
phenomenon known as persistence of vision, this gives the illusion of
actual, smooth, and continuous movement.
The motion picture is a remarkably effective medium in conveying dramaand
especially in the evocation of emotion. The art of motion pictures is exceedingly
complex, requiring contributions from nearly all the other arts as well as countless
technical skills (for example, in sound recording, photography, and optics).
Emerging at the end of the 19th century, this new art form became one of the most
popular and influential media of the 20th century and beyond.
As a commercial venture, offering fictional narratives to
large audiences in theatres, the motion picture was quickly recognized as perhaps
the first truly mass form of entertainment. Without losing its broad appeal, the
medium also developed as a means of artistic expression in such areas
as acting, directing, screenwriting, cinematography, costume and set design,
and music.

Essential Characteristics Of Motion Pictures

In its short history, the art of motion pictures has frequently undergone changes
that seemed fundamental, such as those resulting from the introduction of sound.
It exists today in styles that differ significantly from country to country and in
forms as diverse as the documentary created by one person with a
handheld camera and the multimillion-dollar epic involving hundreds of
performers and technicians.

Music,
 art concerned with combining vocal or instrumental sounds for
beauty of form or emotional expression, usually according to
cultural standards of rhythm, melody, and, in most Western
music, harmony. Both the simple folk song and the
complex electronic composition belong to the same activity, music.
Both are humanly engineered; both are conceptualand auditory,
and these factors have been present in music of all styles and in all
periods of history, throughout the world.

Music
 is an art that, in one guise or another, permeates every human
society. Modern music is heard in a bewildering profusion of styles,
many of them contemporary, others engendered in past eras. Music
is a protean art; it lends itself easily to alliances with words, as
in song, and with physical movement, as in dance. Throughout
history, music has been an important adjunct
to ritual and drama and has been credited with the capacity to
reflect and influence human emotion. Popular culture has
consistently exploited these possibilities, most conspicuously today
by means of radio, film, television, musical theatre, and
the Internet. The implications of the uses of music
in psychotherapy, geriatrics, and advertising testify to a faith in its
power to affect human behaviour. Publications and recordings have
effectively internationalized music in its most significant, as well as
its most trivial, manifestations. Beyond all this, the teaching of
music in primary and secondary schools has now attained virtually
worldwide acceptance.
But the prevalence of music is nothing new, and its human importance
has often been acknowledged. What seems curious is that, despite the
universality of the art, no one until recent times has argued for its
necessity. The ancient Greek philosopher Democritus explicitly denied
any fundamental need for music: “For it was not necessity that separated
it off, but it arose from the existing superfluity.” The view that music and
the other arts are mere graces is still widespread, although the growth of
psychological understanding of play and other symbolic activities has
begun to weaken this tenacious belief.

Painting, the expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of

certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language. The
elements of this language—its shapes, lines, colours, tones, and
textures—are used in various ways to produce sensations of volume,
space, movement, and light on a flat surface. These elements are
combined into expressive patterns in order to represent real or
supernatural phenomena, to interpret a narrative theme, or to create
wholly abstract visual relationships. An artist’s decision to use a particular
medium, such as tempera, fresco, oil, acrylic, watercolouror other water-
based paints, ink, gouache, encaustic, or casein, as well as the choice of
a particular form, such as mural, easel, panel, miniature, manuscript
illumination, scroll, screen or fan, panorama, or any of a variety of modern
forms, is based on the sensuous qualities and the expressive possibilities
and limitations of those options. The choices of the medium and the form,
as well as the artist’s own technique, combine to realize a unique visual
image.
Earlier cultural traditions—of tribes, religions, guilds, royal courts, and
states—largely controlled the craft, form, imagery, and subject matter of
painting and determined its function, whether ritualistic, devotional,
decorative, entertaining, or educational. Painters were employed more as
skilled artisans than as creative artists. Later the notion of the “fine artist”
developed in Asia and Renaissance Europe. Prominent painters were
afforded the social status of scholars and courtiers; they signed their work,
decided its design and often its subject and imagery, and established a
more personal—if not always amicable—relationship with their patrons.
Technology of photography, equipment, techniques, and
processes used in the production of photographs.

The most widely used photographic process is the black-and-white

negative–positive system (Figure 1). In the camera the lens projects an
image of the scene being photographed onto a film coated with light-
sensitive silver salts, such as silver bromide. A shutter built into the lens
admits light reflected from the scene for a given time to produce an
invisible but developable image in the sensitized layer, thus exposing the
film.
During development (in a darkroom) the silver salt crystals that have been
struck by the light are converted into metallic silver, forming a visible
deposit or density. The more light that reaches a given area of the film,
the more silver salt is rendered developable and the denser the silver
deposit that is formed there. An image of various brightness levels thus
yields a picture in which these brightnesses are tonally reversed—
a negative. Bright subject details record as dark or dense areas in the
developed film; dark parts of the subject record as areas of low
density; i.e., they have little silver. After development the film is treated
with a fixing bath that dissolves away all undeveloped silver salt and so
prevents subsequent darkening of such unexposed areas. Finally, a wash
removes all soluble salts from the film emulsion, leaving a permanent
negative silver image within the gelatin layer.

A positive picture is obtained by repeating this process. The usual

procedure is enlargement: the negative is projected onto a sensitive
paper carrying a silver halide emulsion similar to that used for the
film. Exposure by the enlarger light source again yields a latent
image of the negative. After a development and processing
sequence the paper then bears a positive silver image. In contact
printing the negative film and the paper are placed face to face
in intimate contact and exposed by diffused light shining through the
negative. The dense (black) portions of the negative image result in
little exposure of the paper and, so, yield light image areas; thin
portions of the negative let through more light and yield dark areas
in the print, thus re-creating the light values of the original scene.
Printmaking,
 an art form consisting of the production of images, usually
on paper but occasionally on fabric, parchment, plastic, or other
support, by various techniques of multiplication, under the direct
supervision of or by the hand of the artist. Such fine prints, as they
are known collectively, are considered original works of art, even
though they can exist in multiples.
To the modern reader, the word print might suggest mechanically mass-
produced commercial products, such as books, newspapers, and textiles.
In this article, however, the print refers to the original creation of an artist
who, instead of the paintbrush or the chisel, has chosen printmaking tools
to express himself.
The fine print is a multiple original. Originality is generally associated with
uniqueness, but a print is considered original because the artist from the
outset intended to create an etching, woodcut, or other graphic work and
thus conceived his image within the possibilities and limitations of that
technique. Without doubt, early printmaking was strongly influenced by a
desire for multiple prints. Artists quickly discovered, however, that when
a drawing is translated into a woodcut or engraving it takes on totally new
characteristics. Each technique has its own distinctive style, imposed by
the tools, materials, and printing methods. The metamorphosis that takes
place between drawing and print became the strongest attraction for the
creative artist. It is important to understand that the artist does not select
his printing method arbitrarily but chooses the one in which he can best
express himself. Thus, any of the proofs printed from an original plate is
considered an original work of art, and, although most fine prints are pulled
in limited quantities, the number has no bearing on originality, only on
commercial value.

Sculpture, an artistic form in which hard or plastic materials are worked

into three-dimensional art objects. The designs may be embodied in
freestanding objects, in reliefs on surfaces, or in environments ranging
from tableaux to contexts that envelop the spectator. An enormous variety
of media may be used, including clay, wax, stone, metal,
fabric, glass, wood, plaster, rubber, and random “found” objects. Materials
may be carved, modeled, molded, cast, wrought, welded, sewn,
assembled, or otherwise shaped and combined.
Sculpture is not a fixed term that applies to a permanently circumscribed
category of objects or sets of activities. It is, rather, the name of an art that
grows and changes and is continually extending the range of its activities
and evolving new kinds of objects. The scope of the term was much wider
in the second half of the 20th century than it had been only two or three
decades before, and in the fluid state of the visual arts at the turn of the
21st century nobody can predict what its future extensions are likely to be.
Certain features which in previous centuries were considered essential to
the art of sculpture are not present in a great deal of modern sculpture
and can no longer form part of its definition. One of the most important of
these is representation. Before the 20th century, sculpture was
considered a representational art, one that imitated forms in life, most
often human figures but also inanimate objects, such as game, utensils,
and books. Since the turn of the 20th century, however, sculpture has also
included nonrepresentational forms. It has long been accepted that the
forms of such functional three-dimensional objects as furniture, pots, and
buildings may be expressive and beautiful without being in any way
representational; but it was only in the 20th century that nonfunctional,
nonrepresentational, three-dimensional works of art began to be
produced.

Theatre,
 also spelled theater, in dramatic arts, an art concerned almost
exclusively with live performances in which the action is precisely
planned to create a coherent and significant sense of drama.
Though the word theatre is derived from the Greek theaomai, “to see,” the
performance itself may appeal either to the ear or to the eye, as is
suggested by the interchangeability of the terms spectator (which derives
from words meaning “to view”) and audience (which derives from words
meaning “to hear”). Sometimes the appeal is strongly intellectual, as
in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but the intellectual element in itself is
no assurance of good theatre. A good performance of Hamlet, for
example, is extremely difficult to achieve, and a poor one is much less
rewarding than a brilliant presentation of a farce. Moreover, a
good Hamlet makes demands on the spectator that may be greater than
what that spectator is prepared to put forward, while the farce may be
enjoyed in a condition of comparative relaxation. The full participation of
the spectator is a vital element in theatre.
There is a widespread misconception that the art of theatre can be
discussed solely in terms of the intellectual content of the script. Theatre
is not essentially a literary art, though it has been so taught in some
universities and schools. For many years the works of the Greek
dramatists, Shakespeare, and other significant writers such as Friedrich
von Schillerwere more likely to be studied than performed in their entirety.
The literary side of a theatrical production works most effectively when it
is subordinated to the histrionic. The strongest impact on the audience is
made by acting, singing, and dancing, followed by spectacle—the
background against which those activities take place. Later, on reflection,
the spectator may find that the meaning of the text has made the more
enduring impression, but more often the literary merit of the script, or its
“message,” is a comparatively minor element.

Reference: https://www.britannica.com/topic/the-arts