ART
We call lots of
things art today. We use the term visual
arts to describe the arts we can see. Painting, sculpture, and architecture
have long been the major visual arts in Europe and North America. Today, we
include photography, furniture, pottery, jewelry, and many other arts and
crafts among the visual arts.
Sometimes we
speak of the fine arts, other forms of expressions that appeal to our sense of
beauty and form. This broader category includes literature, music, and dance,
in addition to the visual arts.
Painting,
sculpture, and architecture have all been around for a long time. We tend to
consider them the most important forms of art.
People painted
and drew on the walls of caves during the Stone Age, as long as 32.000 years
ago. They made pictures of animals, probably the animals they hunted for food.
Over time,
artists started painting different subjects. They painted landscapes, portraits
of people, religious figures, and still lives (fruit, flowers, and other
objects that don’t move).
Sculpture is as
old as painting. The first sculptures we know about are small human figures.
The human figure remained the most popular subject of sculpture until the 20th
century. Today, sculptors are concerned more with the materials of
sculpture than with the subjects. They even make sculptures out of junk and
other objects they find lying around
