Portal:Arts

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The Arts Portal

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Art is the expression of creativity or imagination. The word art comes from the Latin word ars, artis, which means "skill/craft/art". Art is commonly understood as the act of making works (or artworks) which use the human creative impulse and which have meaning beyond simple description. While art is often distinguished from crafts and recreational hobby activities, this boundary can at times be hard to define. The term creative arts denotes a collection of disciplines whose principal purpose is the output of material for the viewer or audience to interpret. As such, art may be taken to include forms ranging from literary forms (prose writing and poetry); performance-based forms (dance, acting, drama, and music); visual and "plastic arts" (painting, sculpture, photography, illustration); to forms that also have a functional role, such as architecture and fashion design. Art may also be understood as relating to creativity, æsthetics and the generation of emotion.

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Selected Picture

Photo credit:א

Photo of the Brandenburg Gate quadriga taken at night, an example of sculpture.

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Featured biography

Witold Lutosławski was one of the major European composers of the 20th century, and possibly the most significant Polish composer since Chopin. Lutosławski studied piano and composition in Warsaw, and during World War II he made a living in that city by playing the piano in bars. In the late 1940s and early 1950s his music was banned as formalist by the Stalinist authorities. In the last three decades of the century he became the pre-eminent musician of his country, and was presented with a large number of international honours, awards and prizes. Lutosławski's early compositions were overtly influenced by Polish folk music; from the late 1950s onwards he developed his own characteristically dense harmonies and innovative aleatory techniques. His works include four symphonies and a Concerto for Orchestra; he also composed concertos and song cycles for renowned musicians including Mstislav Rostropovich, Peter Pears, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. He was also a notable conductor of his own music.

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Did you know...

... that the sculpture Nature Unveiling Herself Before Science (pictured) depicts what historians have described as "the modern fantasy of (female) nature willingly revealing herself to the (male) scientist"?
... that T. S. Eliot's Paradiso-like poems of the Four Quartets (Burnt Norton, East Coker, The Dry Salvages, and Little Gidding) are modeled on the structure of his Inferno-like poem The Waste Land?
... that architect Henrik Bull designed several churches, but his most widespread works were coins designed for Norges Bank?
... that Mexican writer Juan José Arreola's short story The Switchman can be interpreted as a satire of the Mexican train system?
... that U.S. singer-songwriter Phil Ochs described nearly every way to evade the draft in "Draft Dodger Rag"?

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Selected quote

“

You will get little or nothing from the printed page if you bring it nothing but your eye.

”

Walter Pitkin, Art of Rapid Reading, 1930

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Featured music

Navarra Op. 33 by Pablo de Sarasate

Roxana Pavel Goldstein and Elias Goldstein (violins) with the DePaul Symphony (Chicago) conducted by Cliff Colnotl

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Subportals


Architecture	Comics	Dance

Design	Film	Literature

Music	Opera	Photography

Poetry	Radio	Television

Theatre	Video games	Visual arts