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art

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
In the broadest sense, all the processes and products of human skill, imagination, and invention. In contemporary usage, definitions of art usually reflect art theory, and the term may encompass literature, music, drama, painting, and sculpture. Popularly, the term is most commonly used to refer to the visual arts. In Western culture, artistic thought and theories introduced by the ancient Greeks still influence our perceptions and judgements of art. Representation and inspiration Two currents of thought run through our ideas about art. In one, first considered by the Greek philosopher Aristotle ( c. 384 BC ), art is concerned with mimesis (imitation), the representation of appearances, and gives pleasure through the accuracy and skill with which it represents the real world. The other view, derived from the Greek philosopher Plato ( c. 427 BC ), holds that the artist is inspired by the Muses (or by God, or by the inner impulses, or by the collective unconscious) to express that which…
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Full text Article ART

From Dictionary of Visual Discourse: A Dialectical Lexicon of Terms
‘We spend our days, each one of us, in looking for the secret of life. Well, the secret of life is in art’ Oscar Wilde, 1997: 4; also 1991: 28 ‘Nothing is so ignoble that art cannot sanctify it’ Oscar Wilde, 1991:190 ‘The essence of art is poetry. The essence of poetry, in turn, is the founding of…
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Full text Article ART

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
Canonical art-historical surveys offer varying interpretations that obfuscate the perceived antagonism between Romanticism and its predecessors, particularly neoclassicism. Robert Rosenblum has referred to period markers as “semantic straitjackets,” and Lorenz Eitner has offered a generational…
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Full text Article art

From Word Origins
Like arm, arthritis , and article, art goes back to an Indo-European root *ar- , which meant ‘put things together, join’. Putting things together implies some skill: hence Latin ars ‘skill’. Its stem art- produced Old French art , the source of the English word. It brought with it the notion of…
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Full text Article art

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Anthropology has had a long and continuing engagement with art and some of the major figures in the history of anthropology from Haddon and Boas to Firth and Lévi-Strauss have written significant works on art. However, it is perhaps the case that anthropologists have in general failed to capitalize…
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Full text Article Art

From Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World
©WERNER FORMAN ARCHIVE/HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP...
Islamic art is generally reckoned to cover all of the visual arts produced in the lands where Muslims were an important, if not the most important, segment of society. Islamic art differs from terms like Buddhist or Christian art, for example, because it refers not only to the arts produced by or…
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Full text Article Art

From Encyclopedia of World Trade: From Ancient Times to the Present Full text Article A-Z Entries
Trade has been essential to the development and dissemination of art throughout human history. From the time humans began producing art, they relied on trade to obtain raw materials and to disseminate their creations. It is through this exporting of artistic products from one area to another that…
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Full text Article art

From Encyclopedia of Society and Culture in the Medieval World
Coptic wall painting of the martyrdom of the...
The art of the medieval world was very diverse and as sophisticated and complex as art of the modern world. Medieval artists were constantly working with their audiences, trying to communicate ideas or to satisfy an audience's desires. This complex interaction between artist, art, and audience was…
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Full text Article ART

From Dictionary of Untranslatables
FRENCH art GERMAN Kunst GREEK technê [τέχνη] ITALIAN arte LATIN ars ➤ AESTHETICS , BEAUTY , BILDUNG , GENIUS , GOÛT , …
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From Latin American History and Culture: Encyclopedia of Early Modern Latin America (1820s to 1900)
(1820s–1900) A general term used to describe many forms of creative expression, including music, literature, and drama, the term also specifically refers to visual arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture, and photography. Artistic expressions in 19th-century Latin America made a transition…
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Full text Article ART

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
The works of art, by being publicly exhibited and offered for sale, are becoming articles of trade, following as such the unreasoning laws of markets and fashion; and public and even private patronage is swayed by their tyrannical influence. [Speech to the Royal Academy, May 1851] To the…
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