Art

The arts is a broad subdivision of culture, composed of many expressive disciplines. It is a broader term than "art", which as a description of a field usually means only the visual arts (comprising fine art, decorative art, architecture and crafts). The arts encompasses visual arts, literature, the performing arts, including music, drama, film, dance and related media, and by some definitions other areas such as fashion. A more complete list is given below. There are many more disciplines that are not listed above. What is listed above are the major arts.

The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of the ten ancient civilizations:
Mesopotamia
Persia
Egypt
India
China
Greece
Rome
Pre-Columbian
Africa
Oceania
Template:Folklore-stub FolkLore
Ancient Greek art saw the veneration of the animal form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus' thunderbolt).
In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages, the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths.
Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan.


An artist's palette
Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead.
The physical and rational certainties depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology by Freud, but also by unprecedented technological development. Paradoxically the expressions of new technologies were greatly influenced by the ancient tribal arts of Africa and Oceania, through the works of Paul Gauguin and the Post-Impressionists, Pablo Picasso and the Cubists, as well as the Futurists and others.
Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art.