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Originally, ‘skill’ (of any kind), a meaning the word has in everyday contexts. Modern usage referring especially to painting, drawing, or sculpture emerged by c.1700, but significantly Dr Johnson's primary meaning of the word (1755) was still ‘The power of doing something not taught by nature and instinct; as to walk is natural, to dance is an art.’ This contrast between art and nature goes back to the Middle Ages. Nor did Johnson's five other meanings of the word make any reference to what we nowadays call ‘the visual arts’. However, the modern sense of art as a uniquely significant form of creation, and of an artist as a creative genius of a special kind, does seem to have made headway during Johnson's lifetime. The related concept of fine arts, considered as sharing common principles and distinct from science, religion, or the practical concerns of everyday life, also emerged in the 18th-c, together with a new subject, aesthetics, the philosophy of art. The artist was now considered distinct from the artisan, or skilled manual worker. By the 19th-c, art was normally (instead of occasionally) associated with the imaginative and creative productions of objects for abstract contemplation, with no useful function. The highly significant phrases ‘artistic temperament’ and ‘artistic sensibility’ occur first in the mid-19th-c. The definition of art became controversial again in the 20th-c. New forms, such as film, television, street theatre, pop music, and happenings were claimed by some to be art, by others, not.

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By its original and broadest definition, art (from the Latin ars, meaning "skill" or "craft") is the product or process of the effective application of a body of knowledge, most often using a set of skills; this meaning is preserved in such phrases as "liberal arts" and "martial arts". However, in the modern use of the word, which rose to prominence after 1750, ?art? is commonly understood to be skill used to produce an aesthetic result (Hatcher, 1999). Britannica Online defines it as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others"Britannica Online. By any of these definitions of the word, artistic works have existed for almost as long as humankind, from early pre-historic art to contemporary art. is the one that has stayed closest to the older Latin meaning, which roughly translates to "skill" or "craft", and also from an Indo-European root meaning "arrangement" or "to arrange". A few examples where this meaning proves very broad include artifact, artificial, artifice, artillery, medical arts, and military arts. However, there are many other colloquial uses of the word, all with some relation to its etymology. Often, if the skill is being used in a lowbrow or practical way, people will consider it a craft instead of art. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way, it will be considered design instead of art. On the other hand, crafts and design are sometimes considered applied art. Some thinkers have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with value judgments made about the art than any clear definitional difference (Novitz, 1992). The purpose of works of art may be to communicate ideas, such as in politically-, spiritually-, or philosophically-motivated art, to create a sense of beauty (see ?aesthetics?), to explore the nature of perception, for pleasure, or to generate strong emotions. The purpose may also be seemingly nonexistent.

The ultimate derivation of 'fine' in 'fine art' comes from the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle, who proposed four causes or explanations of a thing.

Theories of art

Aesthetics, or the philosophy of art, often engages in disputes about the best way to define art. is basically a sociological category, that whatever art schools and museums, and artists get away with is considered art regardless of formal definitions. This "institutional definition of art" has been championed by George Dickie. Most people did not consider the depiction of a Brillo Box or a store-bought urinal to be art until Andy Warhol and Marcel Duchamp (respectively) placed them in the context of art (i.e., the art gallery), which then provided the association of these objects with the values that define art. The placement of an object in an artistic context is a common characteristic of conceptual art, prevalent since the 1960s; notably, the Stuckist art movement criticizes this tendency of recent art.

Proceduralists often suggest that it is the process by which a work of art is created or viewed that makes it, art, not any inherent feature of an object, or how well received it is by the institutions of the art world after its introduction to society at large. Leo Tolstoy, on the other hand, claims that what makes something art or not is how it is experienced by its audience, not by the intention of its creator. Functionalists, like Monroe Beardsley argue that whether or not a piece counts as art depends on what function it plays in a particular context, the same Greek vase may play a non-artistic function in one context (carrying wine), and an artistic function in another context (helping us to appreciate the beauty of the human figure).

Utility of art

Often one of the defining characteristics of fine art as opposed to applied art, is the absence of any clear usefulness or utilitarian value. It is also sometimes argued that even seemingly non-useful art is not useless, but rather that its use is the effect it has on the psyche of the creator or viewer.

Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy. It allows one to symbolize complex ideas and emotions in an arbitrary language subject only to the interpretation of the self and peers.

In a social context, it can serve to soothe the soul and promote popular morale. In a more negative aspect of this facet, art is often utilised as a form of propaganda, and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood (in some cases, artworks are appropriated to be used in this manner, without the creator's initial intention).

From a more anthropological perspective, art is often a way of passing ideas and concepts on to later generations in a (somewhat) universal language.

Classification disputes about art

It is common in the history of art for people to dispute about whether a particular form or work, or particular piece of work counts as art or not. Philosophers of Art call these disputes ?classificatory disputes about art.? For example, Ancient Greek philosophers debated about whether or not ethics should be considered the ?art of living well.? Classificatory disputes in the 20th century included: cubist and impressionist paintings, Duchamp?s urinal, the movies, superlative imitations of banknotes, propaganda, and even a crucifix immersed in urine. Conceptual art often intentionally pushes the boundaries of what counts as art and a number of recent conceptual artists, such as Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin have produced works about which there are active disputes. Video games and role-playing games are both fields where some recent critics have asserted that they do count as art, and some have asserted that they do not. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst and Enim?s work by arguing "For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilising forces.

Controversial art

Famous examples of controversial European art of the 19th century include Theodore Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa" (1820), construed by many as a blistering condemnation of the French government's gross negligence in the matter, Edouard Manet's "Le D'jeuner sur l'Herbe" (1863), considered scandalous not because of the nude woman, but because she is seated next to fully-dressed men, and John Singer Sargent's "Madame Pierre Gautreau (Madam X)", (1884) which caused a huge uproar over the reddish pink used to color the woman's ear lobe, considered way too suggestive and supposedly ruining the high-society model's reputation.

In the 20th century, examples of high-profile controversial art include Pablo Picasso's "Guernica" (1937), considered by most at the time as the primitive output of a madman, this the sole explanation for its 'hodgepodge of body parts' and Leon Golub's "Interrogation III" (1958), shocking the American conscience with a nude, hooded detainee strapped to a chair, surrounded by several ever-so-normal looking 'cop' interrogators.

In 2001, Eric Fischl created "Tumbling Woman" as a memorial to those who jumped or fell to their death on 9/11. Initially installed at Rockefeller Center in New York City, within a year the work was removed as too disturbing. Link to images of these controversial art examples

Forms, genres, mediums, and styles

is a form of literature.

An art form is a specific form for artistic expression to take, it is a more specific term than art in general, but less specific than ?genre.? For instance, a painting may be a still life, an abstract, a portrait, or a landscape, and may also deal with historical or domestic subjects. Is cinematography a genre of photography (perhaps ?motion photography?) or is it a distinct form?

An artistic medium is the substance the artistic work is made out of. No one doubts there is such a thing as land art, but is it best thought of as a distinct form of art? Or perhaps as a style within the genre of landscape architecture? we have found sculptures, cave paintings, rock paintings and petroglyphs from the upper paleolithic starting roughly 40,000 years ago, but the precise meaning of such art is often disputed because we know so little with firmness about the cultures that produced them.

The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the six great ancient civilizations: Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, India, or China. They have also provided us with the first records of how artists worked. For example, this period of Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions

In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Western Middle Ages, art focused on the expression of Biblical and not material truths, and emphasized. "flat" forms).
The western Renaissance saw a return to valuation of the material world, and the place of humans in it, and this paradigm shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body, and the three dimensional reality of landscape.

In the east, Islam?s rejection of iconography led to emphasis on geometric patterns, calligraphy, calligraphy, and architecture. India and Tibet saw emphasis on painted sculptures and dance with religious painting borrowing many conventions from sculpture and tending to bright contrasting colors with emphasis on outlines. China saw many art forms flourish, jade carving, bronzework, pottery (including the stunning terracotta army of Emperor Qin), poetry, calligraphy, music, painting, drama, fiction, etc. Woodblock printing became important in Japan after the 17th century.

The western ?Age of Enlightenment? The late 19th century then saw a host of artistic movements, symbolism, Impressionism, fauvism, etc.

By the 20th century these pictures were falling apart, shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1035752,00.html and of unseen psychology by Freud, www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook36.html
but also by unprecedented technological development accelerated by the implosion of civilisation in two world wars. Thus the parameters of Impressionism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc cannot be maintained very much beyond the time of their invention. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art, such as Pablo Picasso being influenced by African sculpture. Similarly, the west has had huge impacts on Eastern art in 19th and 20th century, with originally western ideas like Communism and Post-Modernism exerting powerful influence on artistic styles.

period, where cultures of the world and of history are seen as changing forms, which can be appreciated and drawn from only with irony.

Characteristics of art

Here are some common characteristics that art often displays, it:

• encourages an intuitive understanding rather than a rational understanding, as, for example, with an article in a scientific journal;
  
• was created with the intention of evoking such an understanding or an attempt at such an understanding in the audience;
  
• was created with no other purpose or function other than to be itself (a radical, "pure art" definition);
  
• is elusive, in that the work may communicate on many different levels of appreciation; For example,in the case of Gericault's Raft of the Medusa, special knowledge concerning the shipwreck that the painting depicts, is not a prerequisite to appreciating it, but allows the appreciation of Gericault's political intentions in the piece.
  
• may offer itself to many different interpretations, or, though it superficially depicts a mundane event or object, invites reflection upon elevated themes;
  
• demonstrates a high level of ability or fluency within a medium; this characteristic might be considered a point of contention, since many modern artists (most notably, conceptual artists) do not themselves create the works they conceive, or do not even create the work in a conventional, demonstrative sense (one might think of Tracey Emin's controversial My Bed);
  
• confers particularly appealing or aesthetically satisfying structures or forms upon an original set of unrelated, passive constituents.
  

Skill

to convey meaning with immediacy and or depth.

A common view is that the epithet ?art?, particular in its elevated sense, requires a certain level of creative expertise by the artist, whether this be a demonstration of technical ability (such as one might find in many works of the Rennaissance) or an originality in stylistic approach such as in the plays of Shakespeare, or a combination of these two.
For example, a common contemporary criticism of some modern art occurs along the lines of objecting to the apparent lack of skill or ability required in the production of the artistic object. One might take Tracey Emin's My Bed, or Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, as examples of pieces wherein the artist exercised little to no traditionally recognised set of skills, but may be said to have innovated by exercising skill in manipulating the mass media as a medium. These approaches are exemplary of a particular kind of contemporary art known as conceptual art.

Judgments of value

Somewhat in relation to the above, the word art is also used to apply judgments of value, as in such expressions like "that meal was a work of art" (the cook is an artist), or "the art of deception," (the highly attained level of skill of the deceiver is praised). For example, Francisco Goya's painting depicting the Spanish shootings of 3rd of May 1808, is a graphic depiction of a firing squad executing several pleading civilians. It can arouse aesthetic or moral feelings, and can be understood as a way of communicating these feelings.

Creative impulse

From one perspective, art is a generic term for any product of the creative impulse, out of which sprang all other human pursuits, such as science via alchemy. One might compare Kandinsky's inner necessity to this popular view.

Symbols

Much of the development of individual artist deals with finding principles for how to express certain ideas through various kinds of symbolism. For example, Vasily Kandinsky developed his use of color in painting through a system of stimulus response, where over time he gained an understanding of the emotions that can be evoked by color and combinations of color. Contemporary artist Andy Goldsworthy, on the other hand, chose to use the medium of found natural objects and materials to arrange temporary sculptures.

Cultural Traditions of Art

Several genres of art are grouped by cultural relevance, examples can be found in terms such as:

• Aboriginal art
  
• African art
  
• American craft
  
• Asian art as found in:
  
  • Buddhist art
    
  • Indian art
    
  • Chinese art
    
  • Japanese art
    
  • Persian art
    
  • Tibetan art
    
  • Thai art
    
  • Laotian art
    
  • Korean art
    
• Islamic art
  
• Latin American Artist
  
• Mexican artist
  
• Papua New Guinea
  
• Visual arts of the United States
  
• Western art
  
  • Italian art
    

See also

• Art Gallery
  
• Abstract art
  
• Aesthetics, a philosophical field related to art
  
• Applied art
  
• Art criticism
  
• Art groups
  
• Art history
  
• Art sale
  
• Art school
  
• Art styles, periods and movements
  
• Art techniques and materials
  
• Art theft
  
• Art.Net
  
• Artist
  
• Artist collective
  
• Beauty
  
• Definition of music
  
• Figurative art
  
• Fine art
  
• Modern art
  
• New Art Criticism
  
• Nudity in art
  

persian art

• What Is Art?
  
• Women in art
  

Bibliography

• Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art. 2003
  
• John Whitehead. But is it Art? 1995
  
• David Novitz, The Boundaries of Art. 1992
  
• Stephen Davies, Definitions of Art. 1991
  

Further reading

• Carl Jung, Man and his Symbols
  
• Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic, 1902
  
• W?adys?aw Tatarkiewicz, A History of Six Ideas: an Essay in Aesthetics, translated from the Polish by Christopher Kasparek, The Hague, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980.
  
• Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art?
  

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