ArtWorks as an Investments

The word ART comes from the Latin "ars", or "skill", and it still retains this original meaning, as in "the art of cooking". But it has come to have a wider significance. In the broadest sense, art embraces all the creative disciplines - literature, poetry, drama, music, dance, and the visual arts. However, as most commonly used, the term art means the visual arts, those areas of artistic creativity that communicate primarily through the eye.

Line, form or shape, color, space, and light and shade are the basic elements of the visual arts, which can be divided into three main categories: painting, sculpture, and architecture, the first two of which are generally called the "fine arts." The graphic arts - among them woodcutting, etching, engraving, and lithography - fall loosely within the category of painting. Decorative art constitutes a discrete category, one more closely linked to the fine arts in earlier periods than it has been in modern times. Open-ended, live-action performance art often includes elements of both the visual and performing arts.

Directions of Art:

- Western art

for generations virtually the only area of art studied seriously and widely. Western art is characterized by an extraordinary richness that reflects the great diversity of European and American civilization throughout often turbulent history. Like Western philosophy, it remained based for the most part on the classicism of Greece and Rome, as well as the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, until the 20th century, when the complexity of modern society ushered in sweeping changes.

- Asian Art

Asian art is usually broken down according to the regional, religious, and cultural differences of people living in this part of the world. The main geographical areas are West Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia. The dominant religio-philosophical currents in Asian history have been Hinduism, Buddism, Islam, Taoism, and Confucianism. In keeping with precedents set in scholarly studies of Asian art, this entry divides Asian art into the following: Ancient Near Eastern and Islamic; Indian (Hindu and Buddhist); and East Asian (China, Korea, and Japan).

While there is remarkable variety and richness in the traditions of Asian art, certain common features can be seen in some eases. Through many periods of Asian history, artists working in pictorial forms tended to emphasize symbolic features over naturalistic rendering, often developing comparatively abstract designs. Artisans and artists made numerous technological advances in bronze, ceramic, and other media, allowing the decorative arts to occupy a significant standing in many Asian - art traditions. In addition, calligraphers developed their script styles into high art in the Islamic world and East Asia.

- African art, Oceanic art, and Native American art

Until the early 20th century the art of the native peoples of Africa, Oceania, and North America was little known by those outride the field of anthropology. Collections were largely made by museums of natural history, where they were either put into storage or displayed in crowded cases with little regard to their placement or description. Although a number of important studies of this material were published during the last part of the 19th century, they were of a specialized nature, and the public at large remained ignorant of the remarkable artistic achievements of the world's indigenous cultures.

Just after the turn of the century, however, artists of the School of Paris, led by Pablo Picasso, first saw and responded to the powerful forms of African sculpture that had begun to appear on the art market. Much of it was from the French colonies of Liberia, the Ivory Coast (Cote d'Ivoire), and the French Sudan (Mali). Besides Picasso, others who collected the wood masks and figures and incorporated their forms into their works of art were Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, André Derain, and Maurice de Vlaminck. The stylized planar forms of some African works had a profound influence on the development of cubism. By the 1920s, surrealist artists such as Paul Klee, André Masson, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, and Joan Miro found reflections of the subconscious dream world they were seeking to depict in the art of the Pacific Islanders, the Eskimo, and the American Indians.

This new appreciation opened the way for a broader acceptance of what was then called primitive art. Private collections began to be formed, and, following the groundbreaking exhibition titled African Negro Art, held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1935, art museums in Europe and the United States began to collect and display the indigenous arts of the world in their galleries. Activity has expanded, so that today many of the major art museums in the West have their own departments specializing in these arts. The term primitive art, however, has largely fallen from use, having been replaced by geographical designations such as are used in this article.

General observations

In studying the arts of these cultures, several underlying concepts and common denominators should be noted. Few of the societies that created these works regarded them as art in the sense that the term is used elsewhere in art history. The objects were instead made to bring certain beneficial results to the people who depended on them. They might have provided a bridge to the spirit world, served as emblems of status, or been used in an educational context. As such, they were not thought of as art (the word art rarely exists in native vocabularies) but were judged in terms of their success in achieving their purpose. Their appearance is therefore governed by their function. If a particular work happens to incorporate such elements as balance, form, and beauty in its conception, it is because those elements help to make it effective. Another work made to inspire awe or fear might appear as threatening, aggressive, or "ugly". From this it can be understood that in a preindustrial culture, artists must produce works mat can be immediately understood and recognized by the people using them. The artists often serve long apprenticeships under established masters, learning their crafts as well as the myths and traditions that ultimately suffuse their creations. Although they are able to express their individuality in certain details and small deviations of form, they work in an essentially conservative environment

In addition, these artists rarely seek to depict reality. When they give tangible form to supernatural beings, they are showing creatures that have no counterparts in nature Instead they attempt to show the nature of the spirit ana the forces in its control. Similarly, if a spirit is believed to have a known animal counterpart, an artist will attempt to distill its essence into his or her creation rather than portray it as it actually appears. If a beneficent human ancestor is the subject, the artist might try to create an idealized I image that transmits vitality, wisdom, and moderation in its conception.

The objects on display in museums must be understood in terms of the philosophical and ceremonial contexts from which they are far removed Their original appearance was quite different from that which viewers now experience. Masks are shown apart from the costumes with which they were worn, unaccompanied by the music and the I dance motions that gave them their life. Prestige objects no longer decorate the individuals who took pride in them, and ancestor figures have been taken away from their shrines and altars. Once fresh and colorful pigments and vegetable fibers that were added to some objects each time they were used have faded or fallen away. Concerning materials, indigenous artists use whatever might be available to them to enhance their creations. Much of what is used comes from the immediate environment, but exotic additions obtained by trade are often incorporated into the art as well. In historic times the availability of mass-produced goods from the industrial world has given rise to entirely new but legitimate expressions of native art, the beadwork of Native American peoples being but one of many examples. Thus age and materials are not necessarily criteria by which a piece of native art is judged to be authentic. Rather, they concern the purpose for which the work was made and whether it was in response to a traditional need.

- Native American art,
which only in the 20th century were taken out of the realm of anthropology and ethnography, to be looked at in terms of their art-historical significance; and, lastly, a history of the discipline of art history, of necessity concentrating on its Eurocentric beginnings but acknowledging as well the importance of its many late-20th-century components, influences, and perspectives, including traditional formalism, Marxism, semiotics, and gender studies.