Visual arts: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:31, 22 May 2007

The visual arts are creative fields that produce works primarily experienced through the sense of sight. Humans have engaged in visual art for over 30,000 years, beginning long before the written historical record.

In the Western world, visual art traditionally included painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking; works in these areas are sometimes categorized as "fine art." During the 19th and 20th centuries, the term visual art expanded to encompass areas formerly classified as crafts (such as pottery, glass, and textiles), forms that have emerged from new technologies (such as photography, film, and video), as well as the artifacts of non-Western peoples who may have no cultural concept of art. Contemporary visual artists are so varied in their practices that the lines often become blurred between visual art and many other fields in the arts, the humanities, and even the sciences.