Portal:The arts

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T H E A R T S P O R T A L

An artist's palette

The arts or creative 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...)

Outline of performing arts
Outline of the visual arts

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Image 1

The main approach to Brougham Castle

Brougham Castle (pronounced /ˈbruːm/) is a medieval building about 2 miles (3.2 km) south-east of Penrith, Cumbria, England. The castle was founded by Robert I de Vieuxpont in the early 13th century. The site, near the confluence of the rivers Eamont and Lowther, had been chosen by the Romans for a Roman fort called Brocavum. The castle, along with the fort, is a scheduled monument: "Brougham Roman fort and Brougham Castle".

In its earliest form, the castle consisted of a stone keep, with an enclosure protected by an earthen bank and a wooden palisade. When the castle was built, Robert de Vieuxpont was one of the only lords in the region who were loyal to King John. The Vieuxponts were a powerful land-owning family in North West England, who also owned the castles of Appleby and Brough. In 1264, Robert de Vieuxpont's grandson, also named Robert, was declared a traitor, and his property was confiscated by Henry III. Brougham Castle and the other estates were eventually returned to the Vieuxpont family, and stayed in their possession until 1269, when the estates passed to the Clifford family through marriage. (Full article...)
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Seen in 2007

550 Madison Avenue (also 550 Madison; formerly known as the Sony Tower, Sony Plaza, and AT&T Building) is a postmodern skyscraper on Madison Avenue between 55th and 56th Streets in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee with associate architect Simmons Architects, the building is a 647-foot-tall (197-meter), 37-story office tower with a facade made of pink granite. It was completed in 1984 as the headquarters of AT&T Corp. and later became the American headquarters of Sony. A four-story granite annex to the west was demolished and replaced with a shorter annex in the early 2020s.

A large entrance arch at the base of the building faces east toward Madison Avenue, flanked by arcades with smaller flat arches. A pedestrian atrium, running through the middle of the city block between 55th and 56th Streets, was also included in the design; a plaza was built in its place in the 2020s. The presence of the atrium enabled the building to rise higher without the use of setbacks because of a provision in the city's zoning codes. The ground-level lobby is surrounded by retail spaces, which were originally a public arcade. The office stories are accessed from a sky lobby above the base. Atop the building is a broken pediment with a circular opening. Opinion of the building has been mixed ever since its design was first announced in March 1978. (Full article...)
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Fountain of Time in southeast Washington Park at the western edge of the Midway Plaisance

Fountain of Time, or simply Time, is a sculpture by Lorado Taft, measuring 126 feet 10 inches (38.66 m) in length, situated at the western edge of the Midway Plaisance within Washington Park in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. The sculpture is inspired by Henry Austin Dobson's poem "Paradox of Time". Its 100 figures passing before Father Time were created as a monument to the 100 years of peace between the United States and the United Kingdom following the Treaty of Ghent in 1814. Father Time faces the 100 from across a water basin. The fountain's water was turned on in 1920, and the sculpture was dedicated in 1922. It is a contributing structure to the Washington Park United States Registered Historic District, which is a National Register of Historic Places listing.

Part of a larger beautification plan for the Midway Plaisance, Time was constructed from a new type of molded, steel-reinforced concrete that was claimed to be more durable and cheaper than alternatives. It was said to be the first of any kind of finished work of art made of concrete. Before the completion of Millennium Park in 2004, it was considered the most important art installation in the Chicago Park District. Time is one of several Chicago works of art funded by Benjamin Ferguson's trust fund. (Full article...)
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Harvey Kurtzman's Jungle Book is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Harvey Kurtzman, published in 1959. Kurtzman aimed it at an adult audience, in contrast to his earlier work for adolescents in periodicals such as Mad. The social satire in the book's four stories targets Peter Gunn-style private-detective shows, Westerns such as Gunsmoke, capitalist avarice in the publishing industry, Freudian pop psychology, and lynch-hungry yokels in the South. Kurtzman's character Goodman Beaver makes his first appearance in one of the stories.

Kurtzman created the satirical Mad in 1952, but left its publisher EC Comics in 1956 after a dispute over financial control. After two failed attempts with similar publications, Kurtzman proposed Jungle Book as an all-original cartoon book to Ballantine Books to replace its successful series of Mad collections, which had moved to another publisher. Ballantine accepted Kurtzman's proposal, albeit with reservations about its commercial viability. It was the first mass-market paperback of original comics published in the United States. Though it was not a financial success, Jungle Book attracted fans and critics for its brushwork, satirical adult-oriented humor, experimental dialogue balloons, and adventurous page and panel designs. (Full article...)
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Me and Juliet is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II. The sixth stage collaboration by Rodgers & Hammerstein, it tells a story of romance backstage at a long-running musical: assistant stage manager Larry woos chorus girl Jeanie behind the back of her electrician boyfriend, Bob. Me and Juliet premiered in 1953 and was considered a modest success — it ran for much of a year on Broadway and had a limited run in Chicago (altogether nearly 500 performances), and returned a small profit to its backers.

Rodgers had long wanted to write a musical comedy about the cast and crew backstage at a theatre. After Rodgers and Hammerstein had another hit with The King and I in 1951, Rodgers proposed the backstage project to his partner. Hammerstein was unenthusiastic, thinking the subject matter trivial, but agreed to do the project. The play required complex machinery, designed by Jo Mielziner, so that the audience could view action not only on the stage of the theatre where the show-within-the-show (also named Me and Juliet) takes place, but in the wings and on the light bridge (high above the stage, from which the lighting technicians train spotlights) as well. (Full article...)
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View from the Manhattan Municipal Building

The Surrogate's Courthouse (also the Hall of Records and 31 Chambers Street) is a historic building at the northwest corner of Chambers and Centre Streets in the Civic Center of Manhattan in New York City. Completed in 1907, it was designed in the Beaux Arts style. John Rochester Thomas created the original plans while Arthur J. Horgan and Vincent J. Slattery oversaw the building's completion. The building faces City Hall Park and the Tweed Courthouse to the south, as well as the Manhattan Municipal Building to the east.

The Surrogate's Courthouse is a seven-story steel-framed structure with a granite facade and elaborate marble interiors. The architects used a fireproof frame so the structure could safely accommodate the city's paper records. The exterior is decorated with 54 sculptures by Philip Martiny and Henry Kirke Bush-Brown, as well as three-story colonnades with Corinthian columns along Chambers and Reade Streets. The basement houses the New York City Municipal Archives. The fifth floor contains the New York Surrogate's Court for New York County, which handles probate and estate proceedings for the New York State Unified Court System. (Full article...)
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The Heart of Thomas (Japanese: トーマの心臓, Hepburn: Tōma no Shinzō) is a 1974 Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Moto Hagio. Originally serialized in Shūkan Shōjo Comic, a weekly manga magazine publishing shōjo manga (manga aimed at young and adolescent women), the series follows the events at a German all-boys gymnasium following the suicide of student Thomas Werner. Hagio drew inspiration for the series from the novels of Hermann Hesse, especially Demian (1919); the Bildungsroman genre; and the 1964 film Les amitiés particulières. It is one of the earliest works of shōnen-ai, a genre of male-male romance manga aimed at a female audience.

The Heart of Thomas was developed and published during a period of immense change and upheaval for shōjo manga as a medium, characterized by the emergence of new aesthetic styles and more narratively complex stories. This change came to be embodied by a new generation of shōjo manga artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, of which Hagio was a member. Hagio originally developed the series as a personal project that she did not expect would ever be published. After changing publishing houses from Kodansha to Shogakukan in 1971, Hagio published a loosely-adapted one-shot (standalone single chapter) version of The Heart of Thomas titled The November Gymnasium (11月のギムナジウム, Jūichigatsu no Gimunajiumu) before publishing the full series in 1974. (Full article...)
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Cover of The Tower Treasure, the first Hardy Boys mystery

The Hardy Boys, brothers Frank and Joe Hardy, are fictional characters who appear in several mystery series for children and teens. The series revolves around teenagers who are amateur sleuths, solving cases that stumped their adult counterparts. The characters were created by American writer Edward Stratemeyer, the founder of book packaging firm Stratemeyer Syndicate. The books were written by several ghostwriters, most notably Leslie McFarlane, under the collective pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon.

The Hardy Boys have evolved since their debut in 1927. From 1959 to 1973, the first 38 books were extensively revised, largely to remove depictions of ethnic stereotypes; they were also targeted towards younger readers by being rewritten in a simpler, action-oriented style to compete with television. (Full article...)
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Title page from the second volume of Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838)

The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men comprised ten volumes of Dionysius Lardner's 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia (1829–1846). Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read.

The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography in the Cabinet Cyclopaedia. Within the set of ten, the three-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of Italy, Spain and Portugal (1835–37) and the two-volume Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men of France (1838–39) consist of biographies of important writers and thinkers of the 14th to 18th centuries. Most of them were written by the Romantic writer Mary Shelley. Shelley's biographies reveal her as a professional woman of letters, contracted to produce several volumes of works and paid well to do so. Her extensive knowledge of history and languages, her ability to tell a gripping biographical narrative, and her interest in the burgeoning field of feminist historiography are reflected in these works. (Full article...)
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The front of the mansion, with the 1913 addition at left

The Clemuel Ricketts Mansion (also known as the Stone House, the William R. Ricketts House, and Ganoga) is a Georgian-style house made of sandstone, built in 1852 or 1855 on the shore of Ganoga Lake in Colley Township, Sullivan County, Pennsylvania in the United States. It was home to several generations of the Ricketts family, including R. Bruce Ricketts and William Reynolds Ricketts. Originally built as a hunting lodge, it was also a tavern and post office, and served as part of a hotel for much of the 19th century.

After 1903 the house served as the Ricketts family's summer home; they kept it even as they sold over 65,000 acres (26,000 ha) to the state of Pennsylvania from 1920 to 1950. The house was included in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) in 1936 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in 1983. A group of investors bought the lake, surrounding land, and house in 1957 and developed them privately for housing and recreation. The house became the Ganoga Lake Association's clubhouse, and is not open to the public. (Full article...)
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Belton House, south front

Belton House is a Grade I listed country house in the parish of Belton near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, built between 1685 and 1687 by Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet. It is surrounded by formal gardens and a series of avenues leading to follies within a larger wooded park. Belton has been described as a compilation of all that is finest of Carolean architecture, said to be the only truly vernacular style of architecture that England had produced since the Tudor period. It is considered to be a complete example of a typical English country house; the claim has even been made that Belton's principal façade was the inspiration for the modern British motorway signs which give directions to stately homes.

For about three centuries until 1984, Belton House was the seat of the Brownlow family, which had first acquired land in the area in the late 16th century. Their heirs, the Cust family, were created Baron Brownlow in 1776. Despite his great wealth Sir John Brownlow, 3rd Baronet, chose to build a comparatively modest house rather than one of the grand Baroque palaces being built by others at the time. The contemporary, if provincial, Carolean style was the selected choice of design. Nevertheless, the new house was fitted with the latest innovations, such as sash windows for the principal rooms, and followed the latest thinking on house-planning, in seeking to separate those parts of the building that were for the use of the family from the areas where servants carried out their domestic duties. Successive generations made changes to the interior of the house which reflected their changing social position and tastes, yet the fabric and design of the house changed little. (Full article...)
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Yeats photographed in 1903 by Alice Boughton

William Butler Yeats (13 June 1865 – 28 January 1939) was an Irish poet, dramatist and writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and along with Lady Gregory founded the Abbey Theatre, serving as its chief during its early years. He was awarded the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature, and later served two terms as a Senator of the Irish Free State.

A Protestant of Anglo-Irish descent, Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland. His father practised law and was a successful portrait painter. He was educated in Dublin and London and spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry from an early age, when he became fascinated by Irish legends and the occult. While in London he became part of the Irish literary revival. His early poetry was influenced by John Keats, William Wordsworth, William Blake and many more. These topics feature in the first phase of his work, lasting roughly from his student days at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin until the turn of the century. His earliest volume of verse was published in 1889, and its slow-paced and lyrical poems display debts to Edmund Spenser, Percy Bysshe Shelley and the poets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. (Full article...)
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Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 (English: Oral Fixation, Vol. 1) is the sixth studio album by Colombian singer-songwriter Shakira. It was released on 3 June 2005 by Epic Records. After attaining international success in 2001 with her fifth studio album and first English-language record, Laundry Service, Shakira wanted to release a fifth Spanish-language project as a follow-up. In the vein of her earlier work, Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 is a Latin pop album. Shakira enlisted Rick Rubin as executive producer, also working with Gustavo Cerati, Lester Mendez, Luis Fernando Ochoa and Jose "Gocho" Torres.

At its release Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 received generally favorable reviews from music critics, who complimented Shakira's evolution from her earlier work. The album debuted at number four on the US Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 157,000 copies. It set the record for the highest debut for a full-length Spanish-language album in the country. Internationally, the album topped the charts in Argentina, Germany, Mexico and Spain. Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 was the Best Latin Rock/Alternative Album at the 2006 Grammy Awards, and the Album of the Year and the Best Female Pop Vocal Album at the Latin Grammy Awards. Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 became the highest selling Latin pop album of the decade in the United States and the second highest selling Latin album overall. As of May 2013, over five million copies of the album were sold worldwide and it is the eighth best-selling Latin album in the United States. (Full article...)
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Exterior of venue during a production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The present building, opened in 1812, is the most recent of four theatres that stood at the location since 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music).

The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially known as "Theatre Royal in Bridges Street", the theatre's proprietors hired prominent actors who performed at the theatre on a regular basis, including Nell Gwyn and Charles Hart. In 1672, the theatre caught fire and Killigrew built a larger theatre on the same plot, renamed the "Theatre Royal in Drury Lane"; it opened in 1674. This building lasted nearly 120 years, under the leaderships of Colley Cibber, David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the last of whom employed Joseph Grimaldi as the theatre's resident Clown. (Full article...)
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Romance is the eighth studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel. It was released by WEA Latina on 19 November 1991. Although the production was originally intended as another collaboration with Juan Carlos Calderón, that plan was scrapped when Calderón was unable to compose songs for the album. Facing a new-material deadline in his recording contract, at his manager's suggestion Miguel chose bolero music for his next project. Mexican singer-songwriter Armando Manzanero was hired by WEA Latina to co-produce the album with Miguel. Recording began in August 1991 at Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, California, with Bebu Silvetti the arranger.

On the album Miguel covers twelve boleros, originally recorded from 1944 to 1986. The first two singles, "Inolvidable" and "No Sé Tú", reached number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart in the United States and spent six months atop the Mexican charts. "Mucho Corazón" and "Cómo" were in the top five of the Hot Latin Songs chart, and "Usted" and "La Barca" received airplay throughout Latin America. Miguel promoted the record with a tour of the United States and Latin America. The album was generally well received by music critics, who praised Miguel's singing and the record's production. The singer received several accolades, including a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Pop Album. (Full article...)

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Joan Baez

Credit: Photo: Rowland Scherman, USIA

American folk singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, performing a duet at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963. Both were relatively new recording artists at the time, with Baez being at the forefront of American roots revival and Dylan having just released his second album. Baez was especially influential in introducing audiences to Dylan's music by recording several of his early songs and inviting him onstage during her own concerts.

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Did you know...

... that Wrigley Square's Millennium Monument (pictured) is a near replica of a monument destroyed in 1953 that stood in almost the exact same location in Chicago, Illinois?
... that French singer Patricia Kaas' 1997 album Dans ma chair was certified Platinum by the SNEP?
... that rock climber Peter Harding developed the art of hanging from one hand jammed into a crack, while smoking a cigarette with the other?

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In this month

5 May 1726 – Handel's opera Alessandro premieres at the King's Theatre in London with Italian castrato singer Senesino in the title role
12 May 1926 – Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1, which he composed at the age of 19 while a student at Leningrad Conservatory, receives its first performance
22 May 1844 – Impressionst painter and printmaker Mary Cassatt (self-portrait pictured) is born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania
26 May 1897 – Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, which later became the subject of numerous theatrical, film and television interpretations, is published by Constable & Co.
29 May 1913 – Igor Stravinsky's ballet The Rite of Spring premieres in Paris and causes a riot in the audience between supporters and opponents of the work

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Featured biography

Robert Peake the Elder (c. 1551–1619) was an English painter active in the later part of Elizabeth I's reign and for most of the reign of James I. In 1604, he was appointed picture maker to the heir to the throne, Prince Henry, and in 1607, serjeant-painter to King James I, a post he shared with John De Critz. Peake is often called "the elder", to distinguish him from his son, the painter and print seller William Peake (c. 1580–1639) and from his grandson, Sir Robert Peake (c. 1605–1667), who followed his father into the family print-selling business. Peake was the only English-born painter of a group of four artists whose workshops were closely connected. The others were De Critz, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and the miniature-painter Isaac Oliver. Between 1590 and about 1625, they specialised in brilliantly coloured, full-length "costume pieces" (example pictured) that are unique to England at this time. It is not always possible to attribute authorship among Peake, De Critz, Gheeraerts and their assistants with certainty. (Full article...)