The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics, photography, video, filmmaking, design, crafts and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual art, and textile arts also involve aspects of visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual…
An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art – especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools can offer elementary, secondary, post-secondary, or undergraduate programs, and can also…
History and development Neolithic pottery Early forms of art in China are found in the Neolithic Yangshao culture, which dates back to the 6th millennium BC. Archeological findings such as those at…
Sculpture Chinese Buddhist sculpture Chinese ritual bronzes from the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties come from a period of over a thousand years from c. 1500 BC, and have exerted a continuing influence over Chinese…
Antiquit Ancient Near East Ancient Near East stretched from Turkey and the Mediterranean seaboard in the west to Iran and the Arabian peninsula in the east. Over time, multiple civilizations appeared, lived and disappeared here. One of the…
Philosophical history Citizenship and self-reflection Since the late 19th century, a central justification for the humanities has been that it aids and encourages self-reflection—a self-reflection that, in turn, helps develop…
History of visual art Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (1107–1187) of Song Dynasty; fan mounted as album leaf on silk, four columns in cursive script. The great traditions in art have a foundation in…
The arts and humanities are academic disciplines that study human culture, context and achievement. They span a huge range of subject areas and enormous timeframes, examining the many different ways in…
The sociology of mathematical knowledge Studies of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics. Since Eugene Wigner raised…
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archaeological evidence for scientific reasoning is tens of…