Sculpture, Performance and photography - Everything you need to know about Visual arts

Visual art encompasses an extremely broad range of mediums, styles, and practices. Sculpture, performance art, photography, collage and more. If you’re not familiar with visual art as a category of art or as individual sub-categories of visual art, that’s understandable. Visual art is a very broad category. It is also probably the most accessible form of art. That said, depending on your personal interests and career aspirations, the world of visual arts might seem intimidating and confusing. Therefore, if you want to learn more about visual art, don't hesitate any longer and keep reading this site.

What is visual art?

Visual art is both a category of art and a set of artistic practices. In general, visual art refers to art that primarily uses the visual properties of artists and their materials to create something. More specifically, visual art is art that uses visual media such as painting, drawing, paper and plastic arts, photography, film or video, installation, architecture, and performance. Visual art has a long history as evidenced by cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Chinese brush paintings. Visual art has been used for a wide variety of functions and has been seen as a special language for communication and self-expression.

Why visual art is important to people

While the visual arts are an extremely broad category of art, each medium plays an important role in different aspects of human life. Sculpture, for example, is an important form of public art that plays a role in shaping our physical environment. The visual arts – and sculpture, in particular – are often used to commemorate people and events, as in the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. or the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Visual art also plays an important role in education. It is used to inform, inspire, and educate students about different cultures, places, and people, both in the past and present. The visual arts are also used by psychologists and psychiatrists to help patients communicate their feelings and emotions.

Visual Art Extended to Include Modern Forms

Visual art is a very broad category, but it also includes many sub-categories. In this section, we’re going to explore a few different kinds of art that are often grouped under the visual arts, including sculpture, photography, and collage.

• Sculpture - Sculpture is the art of shaping or combining materials (often stone, clay, metal, wood, or fibre) to create three-dimensional forms. Sculpture is one of the oldest forms of visual art. The oldest surviving example is a 12,000-year-old piece of Venus figurine.


• Photography - Photography is the art of recording light or other electromagnetic radiation with chemicals or other materials in a way that creates images. The first known photograph was produced with a camera obscura nearly 200 years ago.


• Collage - Collage is the practice of cutting up and rearranging paper, fabric, or other materials to create new images and textures. Collage has been around since the early 20th century and has become increasingly popular in visual art.