Self Portrait with Two Circles, oil on canvas, Rembrandt c. 1665–1669.

Black Square, oil on canvas, Kasimir Malevich. 1915

Fine art or the fine arts encompass art forms developed primarily for aesthetics and/or concept rather than practical application.

Historically, the five greater fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with minor arts including drama and dancing.^[1] Today, the fine arts commonly include the visual art and performing art forms, such as painting, sculpture, collage, decollage, assemblage, installation, calligraphy, music, dance, theatre, architecture, film, photography, conceptual art, and printmaking. However, in some institutes of learning or in museums fine art, and frequently the term fine arts (pl.) as well, are associated exclusively with visual art forms.

Background[link]

One definition of fine art is "a visual art considered to have been created primarily for aesthetic purposes and judged for its beauty and meaningfulness, specifically, painting, sculpture, drawing, watercolor, graphics, and architecture."^[2]

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 visual arts has been described as a more inclusive and descriptive phrase for current art practice, and the explosion of media in which high art is now more recognized to occur.

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 endeavor as exclusive and esoteric.

Two-dimensional work[link]

Illustration[link]

Dürer's Rhinoceros, woodcut, 1515.

An illustration is a visualization such as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art that stresses subject more than form. The aim of an illustration is to elucidate or decorate textual information (such as a story, poem or newspaper article) by providing a visual representation.

Painting and drawing[link]

Goya, 1795, Self-Portrait

Drawing is a form of visual expression and is one of the major forms within the visual arts. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. There are a number of subcategories of drawing, including cartooning. Certain drawing methods or approaches, such as "doodling" and other informal kinds of drawing such as drawing in the fog a shower leaves on a bathroom mirror, or the surrealist method of "entopic graphomania", in which dots are made at the sites of impurities in a blank sheet of paper, and lines are then made between the dots, may or may not be considered as part of "drawing" as a "fine art."

Comics[link]

Comics are a graphic medium in which images are utilised in order to convey a sequential narrative. Comics are typically seen as a low art,^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]} although there are a few exceptions, such as Krazy Kat^[9] and Barnaby. In the late 20th and early 21st century there has been a movement to rehabilitate the medium.

Mosaics[link]

Mosaic of Christ Pantocrator from Hagia Sophia.

Mosaics are images formed with small pieces of stone or glass, called tesserae. They can be decorative or functional. An artist who designs and makes mosaics is called a mosaic artist or a mosaicist.

Printmaking and imaging[link]

Melencolia I, 1514, Dürer

Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print is considered an original, as opposed to a copy. The reasoning behind this is that the print is not a reproduction of another work of art in a different medium — for instance a painting — but rather an image designed from inception as a print. An individual print is also referred to as an impression. Prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. Common types of matrices include: plates of metal, usually copper or zinc for engraving or etching; stone, used for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts, linoleum for linocuts and fabric in the case of screen-printing. But there are many other kinds, discussed below. Multiple nearly identical prints can be called an edition. In modern times each print is often signed and numbered forming a "limited edition." Prints may also be published in book form, as artist's books. A single print could be the product of one or multiple techniques.

Fiber art[link]

Fiber art is a style of fine art which uses textiles such as fabric, yarn, and natural and synthetic fibers. It focuses on the materials and on the manual labour involved as part of its significance.

Calligraphy[link]

Folio from a Koran (8–9th century), Abbasid Kufic Calligraphy.

Calligraphy is a type of visual art. It is often called the art of fancy lettering (Mediavilla 1996: 17). A contemporary definition of calligraphic practice is "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious and skillful manner" (Mediavilla 1996: 18). Modern calligraphy ranges from functional hand-lettered inscriptions and designs to fine-art pieces where the abstract expression of the handwritten mark may or may not compromise the legibility of the letters (Mediavilla 1996). Classical calligraphy differs from typography and non-classical hand-lettering, though a calligrapher may create all of these; characters are historically disciplined yet fluid and spontaneous, improvised at the moment of writing (Pott 2006 and 2005; Zapf 2007 and 2006).

Photography[link]

E. J. Bellocq, c. 1912

Fine art photography refers to photographs that are created to fulfill the creative vision of the artist. Fine art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism and commercial photography. Photojournalism provides visual support for stories, mainly in the print media. Fine art photography is created primarily as an expression of the artist’s vision, but has also been important in advancing certain causes. The work of Ansel Adams in Yosemite and Yellowstone provides an example. Adams is one of the most widely recognized fine art photographers of the 20th century, and was an avid promoter of conservation. While his primary focus was on photography as art, his work raised public awareness of the beauty of the Sierra Nevada and helped to build political support for their protection.

Sculpture[link]

Head Ife Terracotta, Nigeria, C12th–C14th

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping hard or plastic material, commonly stone (either rock or marble), metal, or wood. Some sculptures are created directly by carving; others are assembled, built up and fired, welded, molded, or cast. Because sculpture involves the use of materials that can be moulded or modulated, it is considered one of the plastic arts. The majority of public art is sculpture. Many sculptures together in a garden setting may be referred to as a sculpture garden.

Conceptual art[link]

Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text. However, through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the UK, developed as a synonym for all contemporary art that does not practise the traditional skills of painting and sculpture.^[10]

Dance[link]

Edgar Degas, Ballet Rehearsal, 1873

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music,^[11] used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting. Dance is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, patterns of behaviour such as a mating dance), motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind), and certain musical genres. In sports, gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines while martial arts kata are often compared to dances.

Theatre[link]

The Royal Opera House, London

Modern Western theatre is dominated by realism, including drama and comedy. Another popular Western form is musical theatre. Classical forms of theatre, including Greek and Roman drama, classic English drama including Shakespeare and Marlowe and French theater including Molière is still performed today. In addition, performances of classic Eastern forms such as Noh and Kabuki can be found in the West, although with less frequency.

Film[link]

Still from Un Chien Andalou a 1929 film by Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí

Fine arts film is a term that encompasses motion pictures and the field of film as a fine art form. A fine arts movie theater is a venue, usually a building, for viewing such movies. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or special effects. Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. Film is considered to be an important art form, a source of popular entertainment and a powerful method for educating — or indoctrinating — citizens. The visual elements of cinema give motion pictures a universal power of communication. Some films have become popular worldwide attractions by using dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue.

Cinematography is the discipline of making lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for the cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography, though many additional issues arise when both the camera and elements of the scene may be in motion.

Independent filmmaking often takes place outside of Hollywood, or other major studio systems. An independent film (or indie film) is a film initially produced without financing or distribution from a major movie studio. Creative, business, and technological reasons have all contributed to the growth of the indie film scene in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Architecture[link]

Architecture is frequently considered a fine art, especially if its aesthetic components are spotlighted (in contrast to structural-engineering or construction-management components). Architectural works are perceived as cultural and political symbols and works of art. Historical civilizations are often known primarily through their architectural achievements. Such buildings as the pyramids of Egypt and the Roman Colosseum are cultural symbols, and are an important link in public consciousness, even when scholars have discovered much about a past civilization through other means. Cities, regions and cultures continue to identify themselves with (and are known by) their architectural monuments.^[12]

Games[link]

This section requires expansion.

There is a debate in the games industry, academia and video game culture regarding the stature of games as a fine art.^{[13][14][15][16][17]} Film critic Roger Ebert once has argued that games can never be art, as he claimed they lack the authorial control seen in film, and leave too much up to choice.^[18] However, he later stated that he was too unfamiliar with video games to judge them, although he still wasn't convinced at the time that video games are art.^[19] However, as of 2012, he is open to the possibility that video games are art.

Other[link]

• Avant-garde music is frequently considered both a performing art and a fine art.
• Creative writing (distinct from journalism or technical writing, as well as distinct from most forms of academic writing and organizational communications) is, as previously mentioned, frequently considered a fine art.
• Electronic Media (perhaps the newest medium for fine art, since it utilizes modern technologies such as computer hardware and software from production to presentation. Includes amongst other things video, digital photography, digital printmaking and interactive pieces).
• Textiles, including quilt art and "wearables" or "pre-wearables" are frequently considered fine art if part of an art display.
• Western art music is a performing art and frequently considered a fine art.

Academic study[link]

The examples and perspective in this article may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (May 2010)

In the United States an academic course of study in fine art may include the Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art, or a Bachelor of Fine Arts, and/or a Master of Fine Arts degree — traditionally the terminal degree in the field. Doctor of Fine Arts degrees (earned, as opposed to honorary degrees) have begun to emerge at some US academic institutions, however.

See also[link]

• Aesthetics
• Art
• Contemporary art
• Mathematics and art
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Visual arts

References[link]

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (May 2009)

Further reading[link]

• Ballard, A. (1898). Arrows; or, Teaching a fine art. New York: A.S. Barnes & Company.
• Caffin, Charles Henry. (1901). Photography as a fine art; the achievements and possibilities of photographic art in America. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co.
• Crane, L., & Whiting, C. G. (1885). Art and the formation of taste: six lectures. Boston: Chautauqua Press. Chapter 4 : Fine Arts
• Hegel, G. W. F., & Bosanquet, B. (1905). The introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of fine art. London: K. Paul, Trench &.
• Hegel, G. W. F. (1998). Aesthetics: lectures on fine art. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Neville, H. (1875). The stage: its past and present in relation to fine art. London: R. Bentley and Son.
• Rossetti, W. M. (1867). Fine art, chiefly contemporary: notices re-printed, with revisions. London: Macmillan.
• Torrey, J. (1874). A theory of fine art. New York: Scribner, Armstrong, and Co.
• Weale, J. (1860). Rudimentary dictionary of terms used in architecture, civil, architecture, naval, building and construction, early and ecclesiastical art, engineering, civil, engineering, mechanical, fine art, mining, surveying, etc. London: Weale.

Look up fine in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Fine may be:

• An adjective meaning attractive, of high quality, etc.

Legal[link]

• Fine (penalty), financial punishment
• Fine (of lands), or final concord (agreement), an obsolete type of land conveyance (transfer) to a new owner
• Fine on alienation, money paid to the lord by a tenant when he had occasion to make over his land to another

People[link]

• Alan Fine
• Anne Fine (b. 1947), British author
• Arthur Fine, philosopher of science
• Benjamin Fine
• Bernie Fine, assistant basketball coach at Syracuse University
• Fran Fine
• Gary Alan Fine
• Irving Fine (1914-1962), American composer
• Jeanna Fine (b. 1964), American erotic actress and dancer
• John Christopher Fine, American author, attorney, marine biologist, photojournalist
• John S. Fine
• Kit Fine
• Larry Fine (actor) (1902-1975), American
• Larry Fine (pianos), American technician and author
• Lou Fine
• Nathan Fine, mathematician
• Reuben Fine (1914-1993), American chess player
• Sidney Fine (historian)
• Sylvia Fine (1913-1991), American songwriter
• Tommy Fine (1914-2005), American baseball pitcher
• Vivian Fine
• Micheala is Fine

Fictional character[link]

• Fran Fine, title character of The Nanny

In the media[link]

• F.I.N.E.*, an Aerosmith song from their 1989 album Pump
• Fine (album), by Snailhouse
• "Fine" (song), by Whitney Houston
• FINE is an acronym used in The Italian Job (2003 film) which means "Freaked Out Insecure Neurotic & Emotional"

Other[link]

• Fine topology (see Comparison of topologies), in mathematics, a topology that recognizes more open sets (and thus admits more continuous functions)
• Fine, New York, a town in the United States
• FINE, the informal umbrella association of the four main Fair Trade networks (FLO, IFAT, NEWS, EFTA)
• FINE Brand, brand of hygienic paper products in Jordan
• Fine, point in a music transcription where its performance ends in accord with the position of a da capo al fine notation
• Fine, attribute of certain cricket fielding positions
• Fine (drink), French variety of brandy
• FINE (printing), Print head technology used in Canon printers. FINE means "Full-photolithography Inkjet Nozzle Engineering".

See also[link]

Look up fineness in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Fein (disambiguation), including its variations and derivatives in surnames
• Fiennes, prominent English family or French commune
• Fineness, purity of a precious metal
• Finings, wine-, beer-, and juice-clarifying agents

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City, United States

The arts are a vast subdivision of culture, composed of many endeavors (or artforms) united by their employment of the human creative impulse. The term implies a broader range of disciplines than "art", which in modern usage usually refers only to the visual arts.^[1] The other major constituents of the arts are the literary arts, more often called literature – including poetry, novels and short stories, among others – and the performing arts, among them music, dance, theatre, opera and film.^[2] Literary arts and creative writing are actually interchangeable terms.^[3] These divisions are by no means absolute as there are artforms which combine a visual element with performance (e.g. film) and the written word (e.g. comics). This list is by no means comprehensive, but only meant to introduce the concept of the arts.

Whether or not a form of creative endeavor can be considered one of "the arts" can be contentious due to the cultural values attached in Western culture to the term "art", which can imply that it is a field elevated above popular culture.

Definition[link]

Collins English Dictionary defines 'the arts' as "imaginative, creative, and nonscientific branches of knowledge considered collectively, esp. as studied academically".^[4] The singular term art is defined by the Irish Art Encyclopedia as follows: "Art is created when an artist creates a beautiful object, or produces a stimulating experience that is considered by his audience to have artistic merit."^[5] So, one could conclude that art is the process that leads to a product (the artwork or piece of art), which is then examined and analyzed by experts in the field of the arts or simply enjoyed by those who appreciate the arts. The same source states:

Art is a global activity which encompasses a host of disciplines, as evidenced by the range of words and phrases which have been invented to describe its various forms. Examples of such phraseology include: Fine Arts, Liberal Arts, Visual Arts, Decorative Arts, Applied Arts, Design, Crafts, Performing Arts, and so on.

The term art commonly refers to the "Visual Arts", as an abbreviation of creative art or fine art. For example, the history of art is described as "the history of the visual arts of painting, sculpture and architecture. It is the history of one of the fine arts, others of which are the performing arts and literature. It is also one of the humanities. The term sometimes encompasses theory of the visual arts, including aesthetics." In the article for fine art, we read:

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: e.g., at York University (Toronto, Canada) Fine Arts is a faculty that includes the [visual arts], design and the "Performing Arts".^[6] Furthermore, creative writing is frequently considered a fine art as well.

To illustrate the previous statements, the College of Fine Arts at Stephen F. Austin State University (Nacogdoches, TX) consists of the Schools of "Art, Music and Theatre",^[7] while one of the Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees at the University of British Columbia is attached to the Creative Writing Program.^[8]

More work would be required to standardize the use of the terms "art" and "fine art", but for the purpose of this article the definition of "the arts" is not problematic, because it includes all the arts. One artist has even suggested that "[it] would really simplify matters if we could all just stick with visual, auditory, performance or literary – when we speak of The Arts – and eliminate “Fine” altogether".^[9]

History[link]

For all intents and purposes, the history of the arts begins with the history of art, as dealt with elsewhere. Furthermore, the history of the Performing Arts and Literature have been described in other articles --(Please see: Outline of performing arts; History of literature; prehistoric music). Some examples of creative art through the ages can be summarized here, as excerpted from the history of art.

The arts might have origins in early human evolutionary prehistory. According to a recent suggestion, several forms of audio and visual arts (rhythmic singing and drumming on external objects, dancing, body and face painting) were developed very early in hominid evolution by the forces of natural selection in order to reach an altered state of consciousness.^[10] In this state, which Jordania calls battle trance, hominids and early human were losing their individuality, and were acquiring a new collective identity, where they were not feeling fear or pain, and were religiously dedicated to the group interests, in total disregards of their individual safety and life. This state was needed to defend early hominids from predators, and also to help to obtain food by aggressive scavenging. Ritualistic actions involving heavy rhythmic music, rhythmic drill, coupled sometimes with dance and body painting had been universally used in traditional cultures before the hunting or military sessions in order to put them in a specific altered state of consciousness and raise the morale of participants.^[11][12] More generally, evolutionary psychology and applications in fields such as evolutionary musicology, Darwinian literary studies, and evolutionary aesthetics have given several different explanations for the evolutionary origins of the arts.

Ancient Greek art saw the veneration of the animal form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus' thunderbolt).

In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths.

Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan.

An artist's palette

Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead.

The physical and rational certainties depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein [1] and of unseen psychology by Freud,[2] but also by unprecedented technological development. Paradoxically the expressions of new technologies were greatly influenced by the ancient tribal arts of Africa and Oceania, through the works of Paul Gauguin and the Post-Impressionists, Pablo Picasso and the Cubists, as well as the Futurists and others.

The various arts[link]

In the Middle Ages, Artes Liberales (liberal arts) taught in medieval universities as part of the Trivium: (grammar, rhetoric, and logic) and the Quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy), and the Artes Mechanicae (mechanical arts) such as metalworking, farming, cooking, business and the making of clothes or cloth. The modern distinctions between "artistic" and non-artistic skills did not develop until the Renaissance.

In modern academia, the arts are usually grouped with or a subset of the Humanities. Some subjects in the Humanities are history, linguistics, literature, and philosophy. Newspapers typically include a section on the arts.

Traditionally, the arts are classified as seven although the list has been expanded to nine. These being Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry, Dance, Theater/Cinema, with the modern non-traditional additions of Photography^[13] and Comics.^[14]

Visual arts[link]

Drawing[link]

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 draftswoman or draughtsman.

Gastronomy[link]

Gastronomy is the study of the relationship between culture and food. It is often thought erroneously that the term gastronomy refers exclusively to the art of cooking (see Culinary art), but this is only a small part of this discipline; it cannot always be said that a cook is also a gourmet. Gastronomy studies various cultural components with food as its central axis. Thus it is related to the Fine Arts and Social Sciences, and even to the Natural Sciences in terms of the digestive system of the human body.

Architecture[link]

The Parthenon on top of the Acropolis, Athens, Greece

Architecture (from Latin, architectura and ultimately from Greek, αρχιτεκτων, "a master builder", from αρχι- "chief, leader" and τεκτων, "builder, carpenter")^[3] is the art and science of designing buildings and structures.

A wider definition would include within its scope the design of the total built environment, from the macrolevel of town planning, urban design, and landscape architecture to the microlevel of creating furniture. Architectural design usually must address both feasibility and cost for the builder, as well as function and aesthetics for the user.

In modern usage, architecture is the art and discipline of creating an actual, or inferring an implied or apparent plan of any complex object or system. The term can be used to connote the implied architecture of abstract things such as music or mathematics, the apparent architecture of natural things, such as geological formations or the structure of biological cells, or explicitly planned architectures of human-made things such as software, computers, enterprises, and databases, in addition to buildings. In every usage, an architecture may be seen as a subjective mapping from a human perspective (that of the user in the case of abstract or physical artifacts) to the elements or components of some kind of structure or system, which preserves the relationships among the elements or components.

Planned architecture manipulates space, volume, texture, light, shadow, or abstract elements in order to achieve pleasing aesthetics. This distinguishes it from applied science or engineering, which usually concentrate more on the functional and feasibility aspects of the design of constructions or structures.

In the field of building architecture, the skills demanded of an architect range from the more complex, such as for a hospital or a stadium, to the apparently simpler, such as planning residential houses. Many architectural works may be seen also as cultural and political symbols, and/or works of art. The role of the architect, though changing, has been central to the successful (and sometimes less than successful) design and implementation of pleasingly built environments in which people live.

Painting[link]

The Mona Lisa is one of the most recognizable artistic paintings in the Western world.

Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a vehicle (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas, wood panel 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.

Colour is the essence of painting as sound is of music. Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, Newton, have written their own colour theory. Moreover the use of language is only a generalization for a colour equivalent. The word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the spectrum. There is not a formalized register of different colours in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as C or C#, although the Pantone system is widely used in the printing and design industry for this purpose.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage. This began with Cubism and is not painting in strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer.

Modern and contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft in favour of concept; this has led some to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work.

Conceptual art[link]

Conceptual art is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of the term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that often defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text. However, through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the UK, developed as a synonym for all contemporary art that does not practise the traditional skills of painting and sculpture.^[15]

Video games[link]

A debate exists in the fine arts and video game cultures over whether video games can be counted as an art form.^[16] Some cite games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Myst and Journey as prime examples of video games as an art form.^[17] Others, such as game designer Hideo Kojima, profess that video games are a type of service, not an art form.^[18]

In May 2011, the National Endowment of the Arts included video games in its redefinition of what is considered a work of art.^[19]

Literary arts[link]

Shakespeare wrote some of the best known works in English literature.

Literature is literally "acquaintance with letters" as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning "an individual written character (letter)"). The term has generally come to identify a collection of writings, which in Western culture are mainly prose, both fiction and non-fiction, drama and poetry. In much, if not all of the world, texts can be oral as well, and include such genres as epic, legend, myth, ballad, other forms of oral poetry, and as folktale.

Performing arts[link]

The performing arts differ from the plastic arts insofar as the former uses the artist's own body, face, presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal or paint which can be molded or transformed to create some art object.

Performing arts include acrobatics, busking, comedy, dance, magic, music, opera, operetta, film, juggling, martial arts, marching arts such as brass bands and theatre.

Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft.

Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, etc.

There is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is called Performance art. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era.

Music[link]

A musical score by Mozart.  Play (help·info)

Music is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch (which governs melody and harmony), rhythm (and its associated concepts tempo, meter, and articulation), dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture. The creation, performance, significance, and even the definition of music vary according to culture and social context. Music ranges from strictly organized compositions (and their recreation in performance), through improvisational music to aleatoric forms. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between music genres are often subtle, sometimes open to individual interpretation, and occasionally controversial. Within "the arts", music may be classified as a performing art, a fine art, and auditory art.

Theatre[link]

Theatre or theater (Greek "theatron", θέατρον) is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera and mummers' plays.

Dance[link]

A Ballroom dance exhibition

Dance (from Old French dancier, perhaps from Frankish) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting.

Dance is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind), and certain musical forms or genres.

Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer. People danced to relieve stress.

Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. In sports, gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines while Martial arts 'kata' are often compared to dances.

Arts criticism[link]

• Architecture criticism
• Visual art criticism
• Dance criticism
• Film criticism
• Literary criticism
• Music journalism
• Television criticism
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References[link]

• Does time fly?—Peter Galison's Empires of Time, a historical survey of Einstein and Poincare, intrigues Jon Turney. Jon Turney. The Guardian, Saturday 6 September 2003
• Contradictions of the Enlightenment: Darwin, Freud, Einstein

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Stacey Kent
Background information
Birth name	Stacey Kent
Origin	South Orange, New Jersey
Genres	Jazz
Occupations	Singer
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1996–present
Labels	Blue Note Records
Website	Official site

Stacey Kent (born March 27, 1968) is a Grammy nominated^[1] American jazz singer.

Background[link]

Kent attended Newark Academy in Livingston, New Jersey.^[2] Her paternal grandfather was Russian.^[3] She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, and moved to England after her graduation. While studying at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, she met the tenor saxophonist Jim Tomlinson, whom she married on August 9, 1991.

In the early 1990s, Kent began her professional career singing regularly at Café Boheme in London's Soho. After two or three years, Kent began opening for established jazz acts across the road at the Ronnie Scott's nightclub in London.

Her first CD, Close Your Eyes, was released in 1997. She has released nine CDs as of 2011^[update], and has been also featured on Tomlinson's albums, most recently The Lyric (2006), which won "Album of the Year" at the 2006 BBC Jazz Awards and was re-released on Blue Note in 2011.

Kent's music has been championed by critic and jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, and she won the 2001 British Jazz Award and the 2002 BBC Jazz Award for Best Vocalist. She has also presented jazz programmes on BBC Radio 2 and 3.

At the 2006 BBC Jazz Awards, Tomlinson, upon receiving the award for "Album of the Year" for The Lyric, announced that Kent had signed with Blue Note records label.

Kent's album, The Boy Next Door achieved Gold album status in France in September, 2006. Breakfast On The Morning Tram (2007) achieved Platinum album status in France in November, 2007 and Gold album status in Germany in February, 2008 and was nominated for Best Vocal Jazz Album at the 2009 Grammy Awards.

Kent appeared in Ian McKellen's 1995 film version of Richard III, singing a jazz version of Christopher Marlowe's poem The Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

Booker Prize-winning novelist Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the liner notes to Kent's 2003 album, In Love Again. Ishiguro has co-written four of the songs on the fall 2007 Blue Note album Breakfast on the Morning Tram. One of the songs written by Ishiguro, "The Ice Hotel," with music composed by Tomlinson won first prize in the International Songwriting Competition in April 2008.

On 31 March 2009 Kent received the National Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) - a government decoration - in recognition of her contribution to the arts, from French Culture Minister Christine Albanel.

Stacey's 2010 album, Raconte-Moi, (Blue Note/EMI) is an all-French album. Raconte-Moi achieved Gold album status in France and Germany.

Her latest album, due for release Oct 24, 2011, Dreamer In Concert, (Blue Note/EMI) is a live album, recorded on May 30-31, 2011 at La Cigale, in Paris. The album includes three previously unrecorded selections; Antônio Carlos Jobim's 'Waters of March', and two new compositions by her husband, saxophonist and the album's producer, Jim Tomlinson; 'Postcard Lovers', with lyrics once again by the novelist, Kazuo Ishiguro, (author of "Remains of the Day" and "Never Let Me Go") and 'O Comboio', penned by the Portuguese poet, Antonio Ladeira, which Stacey sings in Portuguese.

Discography[link]

• Close Your Eyes (1997)
• The Tender Trap (1998)
• Only Trust Your Heart (1999)
• Let Yourself Go: Celebrating Fred Astaire (2000)
• Dreamsville (2001)
• Brazilian Sketches (2001)
• In Love Again: The Music of Richard Rodgers (2002)
• The Boy Next Door (2003)
• "The Christmas Song" (single, 2003)
• SK Collection (2001)
• SK Collection II (2003)
• The Lyric (2006) Re-release on Blue Note/EMI (2011)
• SK Collection III (2006)
• Breakfast on the Morning Tram (2007) Blue Note/EMI
• Raconte-moi... (2010) Blue Note/EMI
• Dreamer In Concert (2011) Blue Note/EMI

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Stacey Kent

• Official website
• Official website (French)
• Interview Zicline.com Étienne Payen
• Stacey Kent at Allmusic
• Review of Breakfast on the Morning Tram at Gabe's View

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

Philippe de Montebello (born May 16, 1936 in Paris) served from 1977 to 2008 as the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. On his retirement, he was both the longest-serving director in the institution's history, and the longest-serving director of any major art museum in the world. From January 2009, Montebello took up a post as the first Fiske Kimball Professor in the History and Culture of Museums at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts.

Born to a French aristocratic family, de Montebello immigrated to the United States of America in the 1950s, and became a naturalized citizen of the US in 1955. He was educated in New York City at the Lycée Français, graduated from Harvard University with a degree in art history, and earned an MA from New York University, after which he embarked on a career in Fine Arts. He became the Director of the Metropolitan Museum in 1977 and has become widely known as the public face of the museum.