Portal:The arts
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T H E A R T S P O R T A L
The arts are a wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling, and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both dynamic and a characteristically constant feature of human life, they have developed into innovative, stylized, and sometimes intricate forms. This is often achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, and/or theorizing within a particular tradition, across generations, and even between civilizations. The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space.
Prominent examples of the arts include:
- visual arts (including architecture, ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting)
- literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose)
- performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre)
They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects and performances, convey insights and experiences, and construct new environments and spaces.
The arts can refer to common, popular, or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated, systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as the combination of artwork with the written word in comics. They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography. By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually redefined. The practice of modern art, for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo.
As both a means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity and as ends in themselves, the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world and a way that our responses and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits are transformed. From prehistoric cave paintings to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual to modern-day films, art has served to register, embody, and preserve our ever-shifting relationships to each other and to the world. (Full article...)
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Featured articles are displayed here, which represent some of the best content on English Wikipedia.-
Soultaker is a 1990 American fantasy horror film written by Vivian Schilling and directed by Michael Rissi. It stars Joe Estevez in the title role, alongside Vivian Schilling, Gregg Thomsen, Chuck Williams, Robert Z'Dar, and David "Shark" Fralick. The film follows a group of young adults who try to flee from the titular "Soultaker" when their souls are ejected from their bodies after a car accident. Inspired by discussions with Action International Pictures producer Eric Parkinson, the script was based on a real-life car accident which Schilling was involved in.
The film was shot in five weeks on a $250,000 budget. Originally planned for a direct-to-video release, it saw limited theatrical screenings, with eight prints distributed in United States. Since its release, the film has received negative reviews, but won the Saturn Award for "Best Genre Video Release" in 1992. A sequel was planned, and actors such as James Earl Jones and Faye Dunaway were named for the cast, but the film was never made and Schilling turned its premise into a novel which was titled Quietus, published in 2002. Soultaker was featured in the tenth-season premiere episode of the comedy television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1999. (Full article...) -
Segundo Romance (English: Second Romance) is the tenth studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel, released on 30 August 1994 through WEA Latina. Like Miguel's 1991 album Romance, Segundo Romance comprises cover versions of boleros (Latin ballads) written between 1934 and 1993. It was produced by Miguel with Juan Carlos Calderón, Kiko Cibrian and Armando Manzanero and recorded in early 1994 at the Record Plant in Los Angeles.
Miguel promoted the album with tours in the United States and Latin America from August to December 1994. Four singles were released: "El Día Que Me Quieras", "La Media Vuelta", "Todo y Nada", and "Delirio". The former two reached the top of the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart in the United States. (Full article...) -
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Jane Marian Joseph (31 May 1894 – 9 March 1929) was an English composer, arranger and music teacher. She was a pupil and later associate of the composer Gustav Holst, and was instrumental in the organisation and management of various of the music festivals which Holst sponsored. Many of her works were composed for performance at these festivals and similar occasions. Her early death at age 35, which prevented the full realisation of her talents, was considered by her contemporaries as a considerable loss to English music.
Holst first observed Joseph's potential when he was teaching her composition at St Paul's Girls' School. She began to act as his amanuensis in 1914, when he was composing The Planets, her special responsibility being the preparation of the score for the "Neptune" movement. She continued to assist Holst with transcriptions, arrangements and translations, and was his librettist for the choral ballet The Golden Goose. (Full article...) -
Constance Stokes (née Parkin, 22 February 1906 – 14 July 1991) was an Australian modernist painter who worked in Victoria. She trained at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School until 1929, winning a scholarship to continue her study at London's Royal Academy of Arts. Although Stokes painted few works in the 1930s, her paintings and drawings were exhibited from the 1940s onwards. She was one of only two women, and two Victorians, included in a major exhibition of twelve Australian artists that travelled to Canada, the United Kingdom and Italy in the early 1950s.
Influenced by George Bell, Stokes was part of the Melbourne Contemporary Artists, a group Bell established in 1940. Her works continued to be well-regarded for many years after the group's formation, in contrast to those by many of her Victorian modernist colleagues, with favourable reviews from critics such as Sir Philip Hendy in the United Kingdom and Bernard William Smith in Australia. (Full article...) -
Boulez in 1968
Pierre Louis Joseph Boulez (French pronunciation: [pjɛʁ lwi ʒozεf bulɛz]; 26 March 1925 – 5 January 2016) was a French composer, conductor and writer, and the founder of several musical institutions. He was one of the dominant figures of post-war contemporary classical music.
Born in Montbrison, in the Loire department of France, the son of an engineer, Boulez studied at the Conservatoire de Paris with Olivier Messiaen, and privately with Andrée Vaurabourg and René Leibowitz. He began his professional career in the late 1940s as music director of the Renaud-Barrault theatre company in Paris. He was a leading figure in avant-garde music, playing an important role in the development of integral serialism in the 1950s, controlled chance music in the 1960s and the electronic transformation of instrumental music in real time from the 1970s onwards. His tendency to revise earlier compositions meant that his body of work was relatively small, but it included pieces considered landmarks of twentieth-century music, such as Le Marteau sans maître, Pli selon pli and Répons. His uncompromising commitment to modernism and the trenchant, polemical tone in which he expressed his views on music led some to criticise him as a dogmatist. (Full article...) -
El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie (or simply El Camino) is a 2019 American neo-Western crime thriller film. Part of the Breaking Bad franchise, it serves as a sequel and epilogue to the television series Breaking Bad. It continues the story of Jesse Pinkman, who partnered with former teacher Walter White throughout the series to build a crystal meth empire based in Albuquerque. Series creator Vince Gilligan wrote, directed, and produced El Camino; Aaron Paul reprised his role as Jesse Pinkman. Several Breaking Bad actors also reprised their roles, including Jesse Plemons, Krysten Ritter, Charles Baker, Matt Jones, Robert Forster, Jonathan Banks, and Bryan Cranston. Forster died on the day of El Camino's release, making the film one of his final on-screen appearances.
Gilligan began considering the story of El Camino while writing Breaking Bad's series finale. He approached Paul with the idea for the film in 2017, near the tenth anniversary of the show's premiere, and completed the script several months later. Principal photography began in secret in New Mexico in November 2018, lasting nearly 50 days. The project remained unconfirmed until Netflix released a trailer on August 24, 2019. (Full article...) -
Hebron Church (also historically known as Great Capon Church, Hebron Lutheran Church, and Hebron Evangelical Lutheran Church) is a mid-19th-century Lutheran church in Intermont, Hampshire County, in the U.S. state of West Virginia. Hebron Church was founded in 1786 by German settlers in the Cacapon River Valley, making it the first Lutheran church west of the Shenandoah Valley. The congregation worshiped in a log church, which initially served both Lutheran and Reformed denominations. Its congregation was originally German-speaking; the church's documents and religious services were in German until 1821, when records and sermons transitioned to English.
The church's congregation built the present Greek Revival-style 1+1⁄2-story church building in 1849, when it was renamed Hebron on the Cacapon. The original log church was moved across the road and subsequently used as a sexton's house, Sunday school classroom, and public schoolhouse (attended by future West Virginia governor Herman G. Kump). (Full article...) -
Marvel's Spider-Man is a 2018 action-adventure game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man, it tells an original narrative that is inspired by the long-running comic book mythology, while also drawing from various adaptations in other media. In the main story, the super-human crime lord Mister Negative orchestrates a plot to seize control of New York City's criminal underworld. When Mister Negative threatens to release a deadly virus, Spider-Man must confront him and protect the city while dealing with the personal problems of his civilian persona, Peter Parker.
Gameplay is presented from the third-person perspective with a primary focus on Spider-Man's traversal and combat abilities. Spider-Man can freely move around New York City, interacting with characters, undertaking missions, and unlocking new gadgets and suits by progressing through the main story or completing tasks. Outside the story, the player is able to complete side missions to unlock additional content and collectible items. Combat focuses on chaining attacks together and using the environment and webs to incapacitate numerous foes while avoiding damage. (Full article...) -
Cento Vergilianus de laudibus Christi (Latin: [ˈkɛntoː wɛrɡɪlɪˈaːnʊs deː ˈlau̯dɪbʊs ˈkʰriːstiː]; A Virgilian Cento Concerning the Glory of Christ) is a Latin poem arranged by Faltonia Betitia Proba (c. AD 352–384) after her conversion to Christianity. A cento is a poetic work composed of verses or passages taken from other authors and re-arranged in a new order. This poem reworks verses extracted from the work of Virgil to tell stories from the Old and New Testament of the Christian Bible. Much of the work focuses on the story of Jesus Christ.
While scholars have proposed a number of hypotheses to explain why the poem was written, a definitive answer to this question remains elusive. Regardless of Proba's intent, the poem would go on to be widely circulated, and it eventually was used in schools to teach the tenets of Christianity, often alongside Augustine of Hippo's De doctrina Christiana. But while the poem was popular, critical reception was more mixed. A pseudonymous work purportedly by Pope Gelasius I disparaged the poem, deeming it apocryphal, and many also believe that St. Jerome wrote negatively of Proba and her poem. Other thinkers like Isidore of Seville, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio wrote highly of Proba, and many praised her ingenuity. During the 19th and 20th centuries the poem was criticized as being of poor quality, but recent scholars have held the work in higher regard. (Full article...) -
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (/ˈiːvlɪn ˈsɪndʒən ˈwɔː/; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945), and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–1961). He is recognised as one of the great prose stylists of the English language in the 20th century.
Waugh was the son of a publisher, educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford. He worked briefly as a schoolmaster before he became a full-time writer. As a young man, he acquired many fashionable and aristocratic friends and developed a taste for country house society. (Full article...) -
Arular is the debut studio album by British recording artist M.I.A. It was released on 22 March 2005 in the United States, and one month later in the United Kingdom, with a slightly different track listing. In 2004, the album's release was preceded by two singles and a mixtape. M.I.A. wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the album, while collaborators included Justine Frischmann, Switch, Diplo, Richard X, Ant Whiting and Greg "Wizard" Fleming.
The album's title is the political code name used by her father, Arul Pragasam, during his involvement with Sri Lankan Tamil militant groups, and themes of conflict and revolution feature heavily in the lyrics and artwork. Musically, the album incorporates styles that range from hip hop and electroclash to dancehall, baile funk, and punk. M.I.A. created the basic backing tracks using a Roland MC-505 sequencer/drum machine given to her by long-time friend Frischmann. (Full article...) -
Capon Chapel ( /ˈkeɪpən/ KAY-pən), also historically known as Capon Baptist Chapel and Capon Chapel Church, is a mid-19th century United Methodist church located near to the town of Capon Bridge, West Virginia, in the United States. Capon Chapel is one of the oldest existing log churches in Hampshire County, along with Mount Bethel Church and Old Pine Church.
A Baptist congregation was gathering at the site of the present-day church by at least 1756. Primitive Baptist minister John Monroe (1750–1824) is credited for establishing a place of worship at this site; he is interred in the church's cemetery. The land on which Capon Chapel was built originally belonged to William C. Nixon (1789–1869), a member of the Virginia House of Delegates; later, it was transferred to the Pugh family. The first documented mention of a church at the Capon Chapel site was in March 1852, when Joseph Pugh allocated the land to three trustees for the construction of a church and cemetery. (Full article...) -
Moonraker is the third novel by the British author Ian Fleming to feature his fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond. It was published by Jonathan Cape on 5 April 1955 and featured a cover design conceived by Fleming. The plot is derived from a Fleming screenplay that was too short for a full novel, so he added the passage of the bridge game between Bond and the industrialist Hugo Drax. In the latter half of the novel, Bond is seconded to Drax's staff as the businessman builds the Moonraker, a prototype missile designed to defend England. Unknown to Bond, Drax is German, an ex-Nazi now working for the Soviets; his plan is to build the rocket, arm it with a nuclear warhead, and fire it at London. Uniquely for a Bond novel, Moonraker is set entirely in Britain, which raised comments from some readers, complaining about the lack of exotic locations.
Moonraker, like Fleming's previous novels, was well received by critics. It plays on several 1950s fears, including attack by rockets (following the V-2 strikes of the Second World War), nuclear annihilation, Soviet communism, the re-emergence of Nazism and the "threat from within" posed by both ideologies. Fleming examines Englishness, and the novel shows the virtues and strength of England. Adaptations include a broadcast on South African radio in 1956 starring Bob Holness and a 1958 Daily Express comic strip. The novel's name was used in 1979 for the eleventh official film in the Eon Productions Bond series and the fourth to star Roger Moore as Bond; the plot was significantly changed from the novel to include excursions into space. (Full article...) -
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a four-act play written by Thomas Russell Sullivan in collaboration with the actor Richard Mansfield. It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on the respected London doctor Henry Jekyll and his involvement with Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. After Hyde murders the father of Jekyll's fiancée, Jekyll's friends discover that he and Jekyll are the same person; Jekyll has developed a potion that allows him to transform himself into Hyde and back again. When he runs out of the potion, he is trapped as Hyde and commits suicide before he can be arrested.
After reading the novella, Mansfield was intrigued by the opportunity to play a dual role. He secured the right to adapt the story for the stage in the United States and the United Kingdom, and asked Sullivan to write the adaptation. The play debuted in Boston in May 1887, and a revised version opened on Broadway in September of that year. Critics acclaimed Mansfield's performance as the dual character. The play was popular in New York and on tour, and Mansfield was invited to bring it to London. It opened there in August 1888, just before the first Jack the Ripper murders. Some press reports compared the murderer to the Jekyll–Hyde character, and Mansfield was suggested as a possible suspect. Despite significant press coverage, the London production was a financial failure. Mansfield's company continued to perform the play on tours of the U.S. until shortly before his death in 1907. (Full article...)
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Sculpture credit: Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Apollo and Daphne is a life-sized Baroque marble sculpture by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini, created between 1622 and 1625. Housed in the Galleria Borghese in Rome as part of the Borghese Collection, the work depicts the climax of the story of Apollo and Daphne in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Apollo clutches Daphne's hip, pursuing her as she flees from him. Apollo wears a laurel crown, and Daphne is portrayed halfway through her metamorphosis from human form into the laurel tree, with her arms already transforming into its branches as she flees and calls to her father to save her from Apollo.
Did you know...
- ... that Frank Lloyd Wright's textile block work, Storer House (pictured), was restored in the 1980s by Joel Silver, producer of the films Die Hard and The Matrix?
- ... that Swiss illustrator Albert Lindegger was responsible for murals at the headquarters of the cantonal police and the crematorium in Berne?
- ... that U.S. Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Harry S. Truman once lived in the Kennedy-Warren Apartment Building?
In this month
- 9 April 2000 – Jackie Evancho is born. At the age of 10, she becomes the youngest singer in history with a platinum album, O Holy Night.
- 10 April 1900 – Scottish soprano Mary Garden makes her professional debut singing the title role in Gustave Charpentier's Louise at the Opéra-Comique in Paris
- 11 April 1869 – Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland, designer of the Nobel Peace Prize medal, is born near Halse og Harkmark
- 12 April 1937 – Abdülhak Hâmid Tarhan, an early 20th-century Turkish playwright and poet who was one of the leading lights of the Turkish Romantic period dies in Istanbul
- 23 April 1616 – William Shakespeare (pictured), often considered the greatest English playwright, dies in Stratford-upon-Avon at the age of 52
- 29 April 1968 – Hair, which defined the genre of the "rock musical", has its Broadway premiere at the Biltmore Theatre
News
- August 5: DaBaby Levitating remix losing US radio audiences after the rapper's comments on HIV/AIDS
- June 11: Taylor Swift's Evermore records biggest sales week of the year as it returns to No 1 on album chart
- May 27: Olivia Rodrigo's song good 4 u debuts at No 1 on US Billboard Hot 100 chart
- May 25: 'Rock and roll never dies': Italy wins Eurovision after 30 years
- February 10: Disney to shut down Blue Sky Studios, animation studio behind 'Ice Age'
Featured biography
Henry Moore was a British artist and sculptor. Born into a poor mining family in the Yorkshire town of Castleford, he became well-known for his large-scale abstract cast bronze and carved marble sculptures; substantially supported by the British art establishment, Moore helped to introduce a particular form of modernism into Britain. His ability to satisfy large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy towards the end of his life. However, he lived frugally and most of his wealth went to endow the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts. His signature form is a pierced reclining figure, first influenced by a Toltec-Maya sculpture known as "Chac Mool", which he had seen as a plaster cast in Paris in 1925. Early versions are pierced conventionally as a bent arm reconnects with the body. Later, more abstract versions, are pierced directly through the body in order to explore the concave and convex shapes. These more extreme piercings developed in parallel with Barbara Hepworth's sculptures. Hepworth first pierced a torso after misreading a review of one of Henry Moore's early shows. (Full article...)
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