Explore the Arts

The art world is in a constant state of transformation. Because of this, it is no surprise that how we define the arts has transformed as well throughout time. Previously, the seven art forms were called the liberal arts. The liberal arts consisted of grammer, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. However, with the introduction of new media, the arts as we know them today were developed.

Now-a-days, the arts are commonly broken down into seven classifications; painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, performing, and cinema.

Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other mediums to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate multiple other materials, including sand, clay, paper, plaster, gold leaf, and even whole objects. Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive or political in nature. Painting media includes hot wax/encaustic, watercolor, gouache, ink, enamel, tempera, fresco, oil, pastel, acrylic, spray paint, water miscible oil paint, and digital painting. Painting types include allegory, bodegón, figure painting, illustration painting, landscape painting, portrait painting, still life, and veduta. Famous painters include Rafaël, Michelangelo, Rubens, Dali, Vermeer, Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt van Rijn, Van Gogh, and Da Vinci.
Architecture
Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements. The practice, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture for civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Over the years, the field of architectural construction has branched out to include everything from ship design to interior decorating. Architecture qualifies as a visual art. Famous architects include Antoni Gaudí, Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies Van der Rohe, Philip Johnson, Eero saarinen, Richard Rogers, Frank Genhry, Norman Foster, Renzo Piano, Santiago Calatrava, Zaha Hadid, Oscar Niemeyer, Rem Koolhas, Jeanne Gang, Daniel Burnham, Gordon Bunshaft, and Shigeru Ban.
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and modelling in stone, metal, ceramics, wood, glass and other materials. However, since Modernism, there has been an almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded/cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works from ancient cultures. Famous sculptors include Praxiteles, Donatello, Michelangelo, Gianlorenzo Bernini, Auguste Rodin, Constantin Brancusi, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, Sol Lewitt, and Louise Borgeois.
Literature
Literature, or literary arts, is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include oral literature, much of which has been transcribed. Literature is a method of recording, preserving, and transmitting knowledge and entertainment, and can also have a social, psychological, spiritual, or political role. Literature, as an art form, can also include works in various non-fiction genres, such as biography, diaries, memoir, letters, and the essay. Within its broad definition, literature includes non-fictional books, articles or other printed information on a particular subject. The term has also been applied to spoken or sung texts. Developments in print technology have allowed an ever-growing distribution and proliferation of written works, which now includes electronic literature. Literature is classified according to whether it is poetry, prose or drama, and such works are often further categorized according to historical period, adherence to certain aesthetic features, or genre. Famous authors include William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Fyodor Dostoevsky, William Faulkner, Toni Morris, Leo Tolstoy, James Joyce, Chinua Achebe, and Adeline Virgina Woolf.
Music
Music is a performing art that is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. The creation of music is commonly divided into musical composition, musical improvisation, and musical performance. Music may be performed or improvised using a vast range of instruments, including the human voice. In some musical contexts, a performance or composition may be to some extent improvised. Music is played in public and private areas, highlighted at events such as festivals, rock concerts, and orchestra performance, and heard incidentally as part of a score or soundtrack to a film, TV show, opera, or video game. Music often plays a key role in social activities, religious rituals, rite of passage ceremonies, celebrations, and cultural activities. The music industry includes songwriters, performers, sound engineers, producers, tour organizers, distributors of instruments, accessories, and sheet music. Famous musicians include Johannes Sebastian Bach, The Rolling Stones, Xian Xinghai, Notorious B.I.G, Bob Marley, Madonna, Caetano Veloso, Fela Kuti, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Guido D'Arezzo, Robert Johnson, Bob Dylan, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, Michael Jackson, The Beatles, Ludwig Van Beethoven, and William Hung.
Performing
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. Modern theatre includes performances of plays and musical theatre. The art forms of ballet and opera are also theatre and use many conventions such as acting, costumes and staging. Types of theater include drama, musical theatre, comedy, tragedy, and improvisation. Famous theatre actors include Steven Boyer, Michael Cambon, Alec Guinness, Sherie Rene Scott, Sarah Greene, Judi Dench, John Gielgud, Marlon Brando, and Daniel Day-Lewis. Famous ballet dancers include Margot Fonteyn, Janet Collins, Natalia Osipova, Marianela Núñez, Miyako Yoshida, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Marcelo Gomes, David McAllister, Carlos Acosta, and Calvin Royal III. Famous opera singers include Leyla Gencer, Luciano Pavarotti, Beverly Sills, Enrico Caruso, Fritz Wunderlich, Robert Merrill, Claudia Muzio, Placido Domingo, Lily Pons, Montserrat Caballe, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Andrea Bocelli, Leontyne Price, José Carreras, Kirsten Flagstad, Cecilia Bartoli, Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Joan Sutherland.
Cinema
Cinema refers to a film, also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture or photoplay. Cinema is a work of visual art and performing art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere through the use of moving images. These images are generally accompanied by sound and, more rarely, other sensory stimulations. The word cinema, short for cinematography, is often used to refer to filmmaking and the film industry, and to the art form that is the result of it. Famous cinematographers include Sir Roger Deakins, Gordon Willis, Wally Pfister, Conrad Hall, Rodrigo Prieto, Claudio Miranda, Michael Ballhaus, Robert Richardson, Vittorio Storaro, Bill Pope, Emmanuel Lubezki, Maryse Alberti, Hoyte van Hoytema, Michael Chapman, Bradford Young, Rachel Morrison, Linus Sandgren, Caleb Deschanel, Ellen Kuras, and Daniel Moder. Famous actresses include Lupita Nyong'o, Amanda Stenberg, Sharon Stone, Nicole Kidman, Kerry Washington, Octavia Spencer, Viola Davis, Charlize Theron, Angela Basset, Angelina Jolie, Barbara Streisand, Natalie Portman, Taraji P. Henson, Jodie Foster, Joan Crawford, Whoopi Goldberg, Alfre Wodard, Judi Dench, Jane Fonda, Marilyn Monroe, Cate Blanchett, Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Grace Kelly, and Meryl Streep. Famous actors include Hugh Jackman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Johnny Depp, Mads Mikkelsen, Will Smith, Matthew McConaughey, Tom Cruise, Forest Whitaker, Michael Douglas, Leondardo DiCaprio, Russel Crowe, Clint Eastwood, Charles Chaplain, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Robin Williams, Denzel Washington, Paul Newman, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Daniel Day-Lewis, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando, and Jack Nicholson.

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