Arts Abbreviations

What is Art?

Art is the expression of an aesthetic ideal (that is, an ideal of beauty) through creative activity. It is a universal human manifestation (exists in all cultures) that produces things recognized as beautiful by society. A work of art conveys an idea, a feeling, a belief or an emotion. But art can also have a transgressive purpose, exposing to the world a critical and not always pleasant view of reality.

Art is linked to aesthetics, because it is considered a faculty or act by which, working a matter, image or sound, man creates beauty by striving to give expression to the material or immaterial world that inspires him. The term art comes from the Latin word ars, which means “talent”, “knowing how to do”.

There are many definitions of art and its meaning varies by time and culture. Currently, the word art is used to designate artistic activity or the product of artistic activity. As an activity, art is a human creation with aesthetic values conquered from a set of techniques.

For the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), art imitates nature ( mimesis ), but also sometimes completes it. According to Aristotle, the natural propensity of man to imitate is at the origin of artistic activity.

For the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), art differs from nature for being a rational and free activity. Thus, a spider’s web, although it may look beautiful, is not a work of art, since it is a mechanical and natural task.

For Kant, art also differs from science, since to produce a work of art it is not enough to have knowledge about a certain subject – it is necessary to have the ability to do it. Kant defines aesthetic art as that whose immediate purpose is the feeling of pleasure, not only the pleasure linked to sensations, but also the pleasure of reflection.

The difficulty in defining art lies in its direct relationship and dependence on the historical and cultural conjuncture that give rise to it. This is because when a style is created and stabilized, it breaks with established systems and codes.

For primitive peoples, art, religion and science walked together in the figure and, originally, art could be understood as the product or process in which knowledge is used to perform certain skills.

Art is a reflection of the human being and often represents their social condition and essence of being a thinker.

Art history

The history of art is a science that studies artistic movements, changes in aesthetic appreciation, works of art and artists. This analysis is carried out according to the social, political and religious aspects of the time being studied. Several other sciences serve as an aid to the history of art, such as numismatics, paleography, history, archeology, etc.

Through the history of art it is possible to learn a little about the human being through the evolution of the different expressions and artistic manifestations.

Type of arts

Art presents itself through various forms such as plastic, music, sculpture, cinema, theater, dance, architecture, etc. There are several expressions that serve to describe different manifestations of art, for example: fine arts, performing arts, graphic art, visual arts, etc.

Some authors (such as Hegel and Ricciotto Canudo) and thinkers have organized the different arts into a numbered list. The inclusion of some art forms was not very consensual, but with the evolution of technology, this is the most common list these days:

1st Art – Music;
2nd Art – Dance / Choreography;
3rd Art – Painting;
4th Art – Sculpture / Architecture;
5th Art – Theater;
6th Art – Literature;
7th Art – Cinema;
8th Art – Photography;
9th Art – Comics;
10th Art – Computer and Video Games;
11th Art – Digital art.

List of Acronyms Related to Arts