art, a visual object or experience consciously created through an expression of skill or imagination. The term art encompasses diverse media such as painting, sculpture, printmaking, drawing, decorative arts, photography, and installation. (Read Sister Wendy’s Britannica essay on art appreciation.)

Cynthia Ozick: …Ozick’s essays were collected in Art & Ardor (1983), Metaphor & Memory (1989), Fame & Folly (1996), Quarrel & Quandary (2000), The Din in the Head (2006), and Critics, Monsters, Fanatics, and Other Literary Essays (2016).

academy of art, in the visual arts, institution established primarily for the instruction of artists but often endowed with other functions, most significantly that of providing a place of exhibition for students and mature artists accepted as members. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, a

Anatolian art and architecture, the art and architecture of ancient Anatolian civilizations. Anatolia is the name that is currently applied to the whole Asian territory of modern Turkey. Its western half is a broad peninsula connecting the continent of Asia with Europe. Because the country lacks

Arabian art and architecture, the art and architecture of ancient Arabia. The pre-Islāmic history of the great Arabian subcontinent is primarily that of a nomadic people. By the second half of the 20th century, traces of their art and architecture had been found only in the long-settled agrarian

Iranian art and architecture, the art and architecture of ancient Iranian civilizations. Any reservation about attributing to Iran primary status among the countries contributing to the art of the ancient Middle East must be associated with the discontinuity of its early history and the

Oceanic art and architecture, the visual art and architecture of native Oceania, including media such as sculpture, pottery, rock art, basketry, masks, painting, and personal decoration. In these cultures, art and architecture have often been closely connected—for example, storehouses and

Paul Rudolph: His School of Art and Architecture at Yale University (1958–63), with its complex massing of interlocking forms and its variety of surface textures, is typical of the increasing freedom, imagination, and virtuosity of his mature building approach. Considered one of the most defining designs of his…

Syro-Palestinian art and architecture, the art and architecture of ancient Syria and Palestine. The countries bordering the Mediterranean between the Sinai Peninsula and the Nur Dağları (Amanus Mountains), to which the names Palestine and Syria are often loosely applied, had in fact no geographic

William Shakespeare: Historical criticism: Elmer Edgar Stoll, in Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (1933), stressed the ways in which the plays could be seen as constructs intimately connected with their historical environment. Playacting depends on conventions, which must be understood in their historical context. Costuming signals meaning to the audience; so does the…

Hamburg: Cultural life: …für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Art and Crafts), founded in 1877 by the jurist Justus Brinckmann, has one of the most significant collections of ancient artifacts in Germany and is also famous for its examples of Asian art and of Jugendstil (Art Nouveau). The Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte,…

art and cultural property repatriation, the return of art or other cultural objects to their country or culture of origin. It differs from art restitution, which is typically used to describe instances in which a piece of art or other cultural object is returned to an individual, rather than to a

aesthetics: The ontology of art: …discussed by Richard Wollheim in Art and Its Objects (1968), and again by Goodman in Languages of Art (see above). Wollheim argues that works of art are “types” and their embodiments “tokens.” The distinction here derives from the American philosopher and logician C.S. Peirce, who argued that the letter a,…

Jeanette Winterson: …Written on the Body (1992); Art and Lies (1994), about dehumanization and the absence of love in society; Gut Symmetries (1997); and The PowerBook (2000). She later published Lighthousekeeping (2004), an exploration of the nature of storytelling told through the tale of an orphaned girl sent to live in a…

Michael Fried: …latter magazine he published “Art and Objecthood” (1967), a controversial and influential attack on minimalist sculpture that revealed him to be a powerful champion of formalist art. Fried’s objection to what he saw as the theatricality of minimalist art was the emphasis on the situation, the event of the…

Richard Wagner: Exile: …Kunst und die Revolution (Art and Revolution), Das Kunstwerk der Zukunft (The Art Work of the Future), Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde (A Communication to My Friends), and Oper und Drama (Opera and Drama). The latter outlined a new, revolutionary type of musical stage work—the vast work, in fact,…

aesthetics: Marxist aesthetics: …Iskusstvo i obshchestvennaya zhizn (1912; Art and Social Life) is a kind of synthesis of early Marxist thought and attempts to recast the practices of art and criticism in a revolutionary mold. The ideology of “art for art’s sake,” Plekhanov argues, develops only in conditions of social decline when artist…

MoMA PS1, not-for-profit contemporary art centre, affiliated with the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), located in a former primary school in Long Island City, Queens, New York. When Alanna Heiss founded the Institute for Art and Urban Resources (IAUR; PS1’s original name) in 1971, its primary function

aesthetics: Form: , Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception (1954), which explores the significance for our understanding of pictures of such well-known Gestalt phenomena as the figure-ground relationship and the perception of completed wholes.

aesthetics: Expressionism: Along with John Dewey’s Art As Experience (1934), in which aesthetic experience is presented as integral to the organic completion of human nature, these works provide the culminating expression of a now defunct view of aesthetics as central to the understanding not of art alone but of the human…

art brut, (French: “raw art”), art of the French painter Jean Dubuffet, who in the 1940s promoted art that is crude, inexperienced, and even obscene. Dubuffet, the most important French artist to emerge after World War II, became interested in the art of the mentally ill in mid-career, after

Art Center College of Design, private coeducational institution of higher learning in Pasadena, California, U.S., emphasizing instruction in design and visual arts. The college offers bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in nine major areas: advertising, environmental design, film, fine art,

art collection, an accumulation of works of art by a private individual or a public institution. Art collecting has a long history, and most of the world’s art museums grew out of great private collections formed by royalty, the aristocracy, or the wealthy. A form of art collecting existed in the

art collection, an accumulation of works of art by a private individual or a public institution. Art collecting has a long history, and most of the world’s art museums grew out of great private collections formed by royalty, the aristocracy, or the wealthy. A form of art collecting existed in the

art conservation and restoration, any attempt to conserve and repair architecture, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and objects of the decorative arts (furniture, glassware, metalware, textiles, ceramics, and so on) that have been adversely affected by negligence, willful damage, or, more

Sadakichi Hartmann: …and ’90s, Hartmann started the Art Critic in 1893, wrote Symbolist dramas, lectured, and became a disciple of the American photographer and art entrepreneur Alfred Stieglitz. His articles appeared regularly in Camera Work, Stieglitz’s revolutionary magazine, where Hartmann wrote about photography with the same zeal he brought to his essays…

Raoul Hausmann: Notable photomontages by Hausmann include Art Critic (1919–20), a satirical image of a man in a suit with a German banknote behind his neck, choking him, and A Bourgeois Precision Brain Incites a World Movement (later known as Dada Triumphs; 1920), a montage and watercolour that conveys with text and…

art criticism, the analysis and evaluation of works of art. More subtly, art criticism is often tied to theory; it is interpretive, involving the effort to understand a particular work of art from a theoretical perspective and to establish its significance in the history of art. Many cultures have

Donald Kuspit: …Kuspit to cofound the journal Art Criticism with his colleagues in the art department at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1979. The journal became a vehicle for dialectical critical writing that was at odds with both Modernist and Marxist schools of thought.

Nicolas Appert: …which appeared that year as L’Art de conserver, pendant plusieurs années, toutes les substances animales et végétales (The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years). He used the money to establish the first commercial cannery, the House of Appert, at Massy, which operated from…

Eustache Deschamps: …a poet and author of L’Art de dictier (1392), the first treatise on French versification.

futurology: …L’Art de la conjecture (The Art of Conjecture), in which he offered a systematic philosophical rationale for the field. The following year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences formed its Commission on the Year 2000 “to anticipate social patterns, to design new institutions, and to propose alternative programs”;…

gastronomy: The great French chefs: Carême’s voluminous cookbooks, L’Art de la cuisine au dix-neuvième siècle (1833) and Le Pâtissier royal parisien (1815), included hundreds of recipes, menus for every day in the year, a history of French cooking, sketches for Carême’s monumental pièces montées, instructions for garnishes, decorations, and tips on marketing and…

Jean Molinet: His writings also include Art de rhétorique (1492; “Art of Rhetoric,” really concerned with the art of poetry), mysteries, religious poems, occasional verse, and parodies.

Art Deco, movement in the decorative arts and architecture that originated in the 1920s and developed into a major style in western Europe and the United States during the 1930s. Its name was derived from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, held in Paris in

lacquerwork: Europe: …appeared as an appendix to L’Art du peintre, doreur, vernisseur of Jean-Félix Watin (1772), the most precise account of lacquerwork that appeared in the 18th century. In this book Watin examined the recipes of his predecessors and recommended the best formulas for lacquering objects to be used indoors, such as…

Sarah Bernhardt: International success: Bernhardt’s treatise on acting, L’Art du théâtre (1923; The Art of the Theatre), is revealing in its sections on voice training: the actress had always considered voice as the key to dramatic character.

László Moholy-Nagy: …Moholy-Nagy developed the theories of art education for which he is known. He created a widely accepted curriculum that focused on developing students’ natural visual gifts instead of teaching them specialized skills. His dictum was: “Everybody is talented.” At the Bauhaus itself, fine-arts training was abolished in favour of “designing…

embroidery: …and Crafts movement, was “art needlework,” embroidery done on coarse, natural-coloured linen.

Art Ensemble of Chicago, American jazz group, innovators of sound, structure, and form in free jazz. They embraced a diversity of African and African American styles and sources in their creation of what they preferred to call “Great Black Music.” In 1966 composer-woodwind player Roscoe Mitchell

fairy tale, wonder tale involving marvellous elements and occurrences, though not necessarily about fairies. The term embraces such popular folktales (Märchen, q.v.) as “Cinderella” and “Puss-in-Boots” and art fairy tales (Kunstmärchen) of later invention, such as The Happy Prince (1888), by the

art for art’s sake, a slogan translated from the French l’art pour l’art, which was coined in the early 19th century by the French philosopher Victor Cousin. The phrase expresses the belief held by many writers and artists, especially those associated with Aestheticism, that art needs no

art fraud, the deliberately false representation of the artist, age, origins, or ownership of a work of art in order to reap financial gain. Forgery of a famous artist’s work is the best-known kind of art fraud, but fraud may also result from the knowing misattribution of the age or origin of a

art market: The 17th century: …encyclopaedic: the development of the gallery as a specialized viewing or display area encouraged collectors to concentrate on paintings and sculptures rather than the acquisition of an omnium gatherum of works of art and natural curiosities.

art history, historical study of the visual arts, being concerned with identifying, classifying, describing, evaluating, interpreting, and understanding the art products and historic development of the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, drawing, printmaking,

art history, historical study of the visual arts, being concerned with identifying, classifying, describing, evaluating, interpreting, and understanding the art products and historic development of the fields of painting, sculpture, architecture, the decorative arts, drawing, printmaking,

Western painting: Figuration: In France the Informel (“Unformed”) movement, its principles expounded most influentially by the critic Michel Tapié, combined the traditional iconography of the nude with massively ravaged painted surfaces to produce disturbing depictions of the body such as Jean Fautrier’s Otages (“Hostages”) series of the mid-1940s and Jean Dubuffet’s…

Art Institute of Chicago, museum in Chicago, Illinois, U.S., featuring European, American, and Asian sculpture, paintings, prints and drawings, decorative arts, photography, textiles, and arms and armour, as well as African, pre-Columbian American, and ancient art. The museum contains more than

Roger Brown: Early influences: …a few classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He then studied at Chicago’s American Academy of Art to become a commercial artist, another path he ultimately rejected. In 1965 he became a full-time student at SAIC, earning a B.F.A. in 1968 and an M.F.A. in…

Bélep Islands: Comprising Pott and Art islands and several islets, the group lies within the northern continuation of the barrier reef that surrounds the main island of New Caledonia. The chief settlement is Wala, on Art Island. The largest of the group, Art Island is 10 miles (16 km) long…

art fraud: Victims and resources: The Art Loss Register (ALR), founded in 1991, grew out of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR: founded 1969), a not-for-profit organization that initiated and maintained (until 1997) an international database of stolen works of art, antiques, and collectables. After 1998 ALR assumed maintenance, although…

art market, physical or figurative venue in which art is bought and sold. At its most basic, an art market requires a work of art, which might be drawn from a very wide range of collectible objects; a seller; and a buyer, who may participate directly in negotiations or be represented by agents.

Bucharest: …City of Bucharest and the Art Museum of Romania, the latter maintaining large collections of national, European, and East Asian art. A highly original ethnographic collection, the Village Museum (1936), is made up of peasant houses brought from various parts of the country.

Lina Bo Bardi: Life and work in Brazil: …help establish and direct the Art Museum of São Paulo (Museu de Arte de São Paulo; MASP), the first museum in Brazil to collect and exhibit modern art. For the first iteration of the institution, which opened in 1947 in part of the building that housed Chateaubriand’s business, Bo Bardi…

With the dramatic growth of museums around the world—over 2,000 built in China alone since the advent of the 21st century and new ones springing up on a regular basis throughout Europe and North America, the Middle East, and Latin America—this is a good moment to reflect on these institutions and

musical sound: Scales and modes: …began to disintegrate in the art music of the late 19th century. It was replaced in part by the methods of Arnold Schoenberg, which used all 12 notes as basic material. Since that revolution of the early 1920s, the raw pitch materials of Western music have frequently been drawn from…

embroidery: …and Crafts movement, was “art needlework,” embroidery done on coarse, natural-coloured linen.

Art Nouveau, style of art that flourished between about 1890 and 1910 throughout Europe and the United States. Art Nouveau is characterized by its use of a long, sinuous, organic line and was employed most often in architecture, interior design, jewelry and glass design, posters, and illustration.

Sister Wendy Beckett was a South African-born British nun who appeared on a series of popular television shows and wrote a number of books as an art critic. Nicknamed the “Art Nun,” she offered eloquent and down-to-earth commentary that made art accessible to everyone. (Read Sister Wendy’s

Jeanette Winterson: Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery—which covers various topics such as Gertrude Stein, modern literature, and lesbianism—was published in 1995. Winterson produced a collection of short stories, The World and Other Places (1998); the vivid memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?…

futurology: …L’Art de la conjecture (The Art of Conjecture), in which he offered a systematic philosophical rationale for the field. The following year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences formed its Commission on the Year 2000 “to anticipate social patterns, to design new institutions, and to propose alternative programs”;…

Edwidge Danticat: In The Art of Death: Writing the Final Story (2017), Danticat recounted her own mother’s passing and explored how other writers have depicted death in their work. Everything Inside (2019) is a collection of short stories.

Tony Bennett: Rediscovered by a new generation: …Columbia in 1986 and released The Art of Excellence, his most-heralded album in many years. From that point, Bennett’s son and personal manager, Danny Bennett, began an aggressive campaign to market his father to a wider audience, and the following decade proved to be the most commercially successful and critically…

The Art of Fiction, critical essay by Henry James, published in 1884 in Longman’s Magazine. It was written as a rebuttal to “Fiction as One of the Fine Arts,” a lecture given by Sir Walter Besant in 1884, and is a manifesto of literary realism that decries the popular demand for novels that are

Virginia Woolf: Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One’s Own and other major works of Virginia Woolf: In two 1927 essays, “The Art of Fiction” and “The New Biography,” she wrote that fiction writers should be less concerned with naive notions of reality and more with language and design. However restricted by fact, she argued, biographers should yoke truth with imagination, “granite-like solidity” with “rainbow-like intangibility.”…

The Art of Fugue, monothematic cycle of approximately 20 fugues written in the key of D minor, perhaps for keyboard instrument, by Johann Sebastian Bach. The number and the order of the fugues remain controversial, as does the work’s date of composition. Bach did not indicate which instruments were

The Art of Fugue, monothematic cycle of approximately 20 fugues written in the key of D minor, perhaps for keyboard instrument, by Johann Sebastian Bach. The number and the order of the fugues remain controversial, as does the work’s date of composition. Bach did not indicate which instruments were

grammar: Ancient and medieval grammars: …wrote an influential treatise called The Art of Grammar, in which he analyzed literary texts in terms of letters, syllables, and eight parts of speech.

Paul Auster: …collections White Spaces (1980) and The Art of Hunger (1982).

Ars amatoria, poem by Ovid, published about 1 bce. Ars amatoria comprises three books of mock-didactic elegiacs on the art of seduction and intrigue. One of the author’s best-known works, it contributed to his downfall in 8 ce on allegations of immorality. The work, which presents a fascinating

Johannes Vermeer: Themes: …another work of this period, The Art of Painting (c. 1666/68). With a large curtain, drawn back as though revealing a tableau vivant, Vermeer announced his allegorical intent for this large and imposing work. The scene depicts an elegantly dressed artist in the midst of portraying the allegorical figure of…

Pablo de Céspedes: His poem “The Art of Painting,” containing a glowing eulogy of Michelangelo, is considered among the best didactic verse in Spanish. The few remaining fragments were first printed by Francisco Pacheco in his treatise Del arte de la pintura (“On the Art of Painting”) in 1649.

Francesco Geminiani: His theoretical writings, particularly The Art of Playing on the Violin (1751), had considerable influence, and the latter work remains an important reference on the performance of late Baroque music.

Ars poetica, work by Horace, written about 19–18 bce for Piso and his sons and originally known as Epistula ad Pisones (Epistle to the Pisos). The work is an urbane, unsystematic amplification of Aristotle’s discussion of the decorum or internal propriety of each literary genre, which at Horace’s

Nancy Pelosi: Awards and books: …to America’s Daughters (2008) and The Art of Power: My Story as America’s First Woman Speaker of the House (2024).

Nicolas Appert: …which appeared that year as L’Art de conserver, pendant plusieurs années, toutes les substances animales et végétales (The Art of Preserving All Kinds of Animal and Vegetable Substances for Several Years). He used the money to establish the first commercial cannery, the House of Appert, at Massy, which operated from…

Kevin Costner: Yellowstone and Horizon: …a race car driver in The Art of Racing in the Rain (2019). In the drama Let Him Go (2020), he appeared as a former sheriff who seeks to save his grandson from an abusive stepfather.

directing: The director’s relation to the actor: …his own abilities, advised in The Art of Rehearsal:

The Art of Fugue, monothematic cycle of approximately 20 fugues written in the key of D minor, perhaps for keyboard instrument, by Johann Sebastian Bach. The number and the order of the fugues remain controversial, as does the work’s date of composition. Bach did not indicate which instruments were

Western theatre: The new stagecraft: In his book The Art of the Theatre (1905) he outlined his concept of a “total theatre” in which the stage director alone would be responsible for harmonizing every aspect of the production—acting, music, colour, movement, design, makeup, and lighting—so that it might achieve its most unified effect. More…

philosophy of art: Expression in the creation of art: …Graham Wallas in his book The Art of Thought (1926)—that in the creation of every work of art there are four successive stages: preparation, incubation, inspiration, and elaboration; others have said that these stages are not successive at all but are going on throughout the entire creative process, while still…

Niccolò Machiavelli: The Art of War and other writings of Niccolò Machiavelli: The Art of War (1521), one of only a few works of Machiavelli to be published during his lifetime, is a dialogue set in the Orti Oricellari, a garden in Florence where humanists gathered to discuss…

Sun Tzu: …the Chinese classic Bingfa (The Art of War), the earliest known treatise on war and military science.

Niccolò Machiavelli: The Art of War and other writings of Niccolò Machiavelli: The Art of War (1521), one of only a few works of Machiavelli to be published during his lifetime, is a dialogue set in the Orti Oricellari, a garden in Florence where humanists gathered to discuss…

Lu Ji: The Art of Writing), a subtle and important work of literary criticism that defines and demonstrates the principles of composition with rare insight and precision.

Prince: Later career: …returned to Warner Brothers, releasing Art Official Age and PlectrumElectrum, the latter of which featured backing by the female trio 3rdEyeGirl. They also appeared on HitnRun: Phase One and Phase Two (both 2015).

the 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,

Paul Verlaine: Life.: In 1882 his famous “Art poétique” (probably composed in prison eight years earlier) was enthusiastically adopted by the young Symbolists. He later disavowed the Symbolists, however, chiefly because they went further than he in abandoning traditional forms: rhyme, for example, seemed to him an unavoidable necessity in French verse.

Nicolas Boileau: In 1674 he published L’Art poétique, a didactic treatise in verse, setting out rules for the composition of poetry in the Classical tradition. At the time, the work was considered of great importance, the definitive handbook of Classical principles. It strongly influenced the English Augustan poets Samuel Johnson, John…

Jean Vauquelin de La Fresnaye, sieur des Yveteaux: L’Art poétique, commissioned by Henry III in 1574, reflects Vauquelin’s lifelong effort to persuade his fellow writers to abide by the precepts of Aristotle and Horace. He urged them to avoid Italianate excesses and to cultivate a pure French style, devoid of dialect, in works…

puppetry: Styles of puppet theatre: The marionettes of the Art Puppet Theatre in Munich, for instance, were striking exemplars of the German tradition in deeply cut wood carving. In Austria the Salzburg Marionette Theatre specializes in Mozart operas and has achieved a high degree of naturalism and technical expertise. In Czechoslovakia—a country with a…

quilting: The quilt revival: “Art quilts” soon joined the quilter’s vocabulary, typified by work from Michael James, Jan Myers-Newbury, Nancy Crow, and others. These quilts, which escaped the practical constraints of quilts intended for use, were displayed in venues such as the biennial Quilt National exhibition in Athens, Ohio.

art conservation and restoration, any attempt to conserve and repair architecture, paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, and objects of the decorative arts (furniture, glassware, metalware, textiles, ceramics, and so on) that have been adversely affected by negligence, willful damage, or, more

art rock, eclectic branch of rock music that emerged in the late 1960s and flourished in the early to mid-1970s. The term is sometimes used synonymously with progressive rock, but the latter is best used to describe “intellectual” album-oriented rock by such British bands as Genesis, King Crimson,

Jean Béliveau: He was awarded the Art Ross Trophy as leading scorer (1956), the Hart Trophy as most valuable player (1956, 1964), and the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the play-offs (1965). He also participated in 13 All-Star Games and was named the league’s All-Star centre six times.

Jean Béliveau: He was awarded the Art Ross Trophy as leading scorer (1956), the Hart Trophy as most valuable player (1956, 1964), and the Conn Smythe Trophy as most valuable player in the play-offs (1965). He also participated in 13 All-Star Games and was named the league’s All-Star centre six times.

song: Art songs, by contrast, are intended for performance by professional, or at least carefully taught, singers, generally accompanied by piano or instrumental ensemble. The notes are written down, and notes and words are thereafter resistant to casual alteration. Popular songs stand midway between folk and…

Robert Henri: Henri’s book, The Art Spirit (1923), embodying his conception of art as an expression of love for life, continues to be popular among artists and art students.

Art Students League, independent art school founded in New York City in 1875 and run by and for artists. The Art Students League was formed almost entirely by students—many of them women—from the National Academy of Design, which was the only other art school in the city at the time and was

art theft, criminal activity involving the theft of art or cultural property, including paintings, sculptures, ceramics, and other objets d’art. The perceived value of a given work, be it financial, artistic, or cultural—or some combination of those factors—is frequently the motive for art theft.