ART

the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others. The term art may also designate one of a number of modes of expression conventionally categorized by the medium utilized or the form of the product; thus the term art can refer to painting, sculpture, filmmaking, music, dance, literature, and many other modes of aesthetic expression, and all of them are collectively called the arts. The term art may further be employed to distinguish a particular object, environment, or experience as an instance of aesthetic expression, as distinct from others of its ilk. Traditionally, the arts are divided into the fine and the liberal arts. The latter are concerned with skill of expression in language, speech, and reasoning. The fine arts, a translation of the French beaux-arts, are more concerned with purely aesthetic ends, or, in short, with the beautiful. Many forms of expression combine aesthetic concerns with utilitarian purposes; pottery, architecture, metalworking, and advertising design may be cited as examples. It may be useful to conceive of the various arts as occupying different regions along a continuum that ranges from purely aesthetic purposes at one end to purely utilitarian purposes at the other. This polarity of purpose is reflected also in the related terms artist and artisan, the latter understood as one who gives considerable attention to the utilitarian. This should by no means be taken as a rigid scheme, however. Even within one form of art, motives may vary widely; thus a potter or a weaver may create a highly functional worka salad bowl, for example, or a blanketthat is at the same time beautiful, or he may create works that have no purpose whatever beyond being admired. Another traditional system of classification, applied to the fine arts, establishes such categories as literature (including poetry, drama, story, and so on), the visual arts (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.), the graphic arts (painting, drawing, design, and other forms expressed on flat surfaces), the plastic arts (sculpture, modeling), the decorative arts (enamelwork, furniture design, mosaic, etc.), the performing arts (theatre, dance, music), music (as composition), and architecture (often including interior design). Art is treated in a number of articles. For general discussions of the foundations, principles, practice, and character of art and the arts, see aesthetics; art, philosophy of; art conservation and restoration; art criticism. For surveys of the traditional categories of art, see the articles referred to in the entries architecture; dance; drawing; literature; music; painting; sculpture; theatre. For the decorative arts and furnishings, see basketry; enamelwork; floral decoration; furniture; glassware; interior design; lacquerwork; metalwork; mosaic; pottery; rug and carpet; stained glass; tapestry. For discussions of other types of art, see broadcasting; calligraphy; marketing; mask; motion picture; motion picture, history of; motion picture technology; photography; printmaking; rhetoric. For treatments of the various arts as practiced by non-European peoples and culturesfor whom objects considered art in Western categories may also have great ritual, religious, or social significancesee African arts; Central Asian arts; East Asian arts; Egyptian art; Islamic arts; Native American arts; Oceanic arts; South Asian arts; Southeast Asian arts.