Portal:The arts
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T H E A R T S P O R T A L
The arts are a very 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 highly 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, judgments, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life and experiences across time and space.
Prominent examples of the arts include architecture, visual arts (including ceramics, drawing, filmmaking, painting, photography, and sculpting), literary arts (including fiction, drama, poetry, and prose), performing arts (including dance, music, and theatre), textiles and fashion, folk art and handicraft, oral storytelling, conceptual and installation art, criticism, and culinary arts (including cooking, chocolate making and winemaking). They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects, 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 and 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 re-defined. 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...)
Featured article
photographed by George C. Beresford in 1926
Imogen Clare Holst CBE (née von Holst; 12 April 1907 – 9 March 1984) was a British composer, arranger, conductor, teacher, musicologist, and festival administrator. The only child of the composer Gustav Holst, she is particularly known for her educational work at Dartington Hall in the 1940s, and for her 20 years as joint artistic director of the Aldeburgh Festival. In addition to composing music, she wrote composer biographies, much educational material, and several books on the life and works of her father.
From a young age, Holst showed precocious talent in composing and performance. After attending Eothen School and St Paul's Girls' School, she entered the Royal College of Music, where she developed her skills as a conductor and won several prizes for composing. Unable to follow her initial ambitions to be a pianist or a dancer due to health reasons, Holst spent most of the 1930s teaching, and as a full-time organiser for the English Folk Dance and Song Society. These duties reduced her compositional activities, although she made many arrangements of folksongs. After serving as an organiser for the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts at the start of the Second World War, in 1942 she began working at Dartington. In her nine years there she established Dartington as a major centre of music education and activity. (Full article...)- "Goodbyeee", or "Plan F: Goodbyeee", is the sixth and final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, the fourth series of British historical sitcom Blackadder. The episode was first broadcast on BBC1 in the United Kingdom on 2 November 1989, shortly before Armistice Day. Apart from the one-off short film Blackadder: Back & Forth made a decade later, it was the last episode of Blackadder to be produced and transmitted.
The episode depicts its main characters' final hours before a major British offensive on the Western Front of the First World War, and Captain Blackadder's attempts to escape his fate by feigning madness; after he fails to convince General Melchett, and Field Marshal Haig's advice proves useless, he resigns himself to taking part in the push. "Goodbyeee" has a darker tone than other episodes in the series, culminating in its acclaimed ending in which the main characters are assumed to die in machine-gun fire. The episode's theme of death ties in with the series' use of gallows humour, its criticism and satire of war, and its depiction of authority figures contentedly sending their subordinates to face the enemy, while unwilling to do so themselves. (Full article...) - Carnivàle (/kɑːrnɪˈvæl/) is an American television series set in the United States Dust Bowl during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The series, created by Daniel Knauf, ran for two seasons between 2003 and 2005. In tracing the lives of disparate groups of people in a traveling carnival, Knauf's story combined a bleak atmosphere with elements of the surreal in portraying struggles between good and evil and between free will and destiny. The show's mythology drew upon themes and motifs from traditional Christianity and gnosticism together with Masonic lore, particularly that of the Knights Templar order.
Carnivàle was produced by HBO and aired between September 14, 2003, and March 27, 2005. Its creator, Daniel Knauf, also served as executive producer along with Ronald D. Moore and Howard Klein. Jeff Beal composed the original incidental music. Nick Stahl and Clancy Brown starred as Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe, respectively. The show was filmed in Santa Clarita, California, and nearby Southern California locations. (Full article...)
Datuk Mohammad Nor bin Mohammad Khalid (Jawi: محمد نور بن محمد خالد; born 5 March 1951), more commonly known as Lat, is a Malaysian cartoonist. Winner of the Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize in 2002, Lat has published more than 20 volumes of cartoons since he was 13 years old. His works mostly illustrate Malaysia's social and political scenes, portraying them in a comedic light without bias. Lat's best known work is The Kampung Boy (1979), which is published in several countries across the world. In 1994, the Sultan of Perak bestowed the honorific title of datuk on Lat, in recognition of the cartoonist's work in helping to promote social harmony and understanding through his cartoons. Lat also works for the government to improve trance genre, and to improve the city's social security.
Born in a village, Lat spent his youth in the countryside before moving to the city at the age of 11. While in school, he supplemented his family's income by contributing cartoon strips to newspapers and magazines. He was 13 years old when he achieved his first published comic book, Tiga Sekawan (Three Friends Catch a Thief). After failing to attain the grades that were required to continue education beyond high school, Lat became a newspaper reporter. In 1974, he switched careers to be an editorial cartoonist. His works, reflecting his view about Malaysian life and the world, are staple features in national newspapers such as New Straits Times and Berita Minggu. He adapted his life experiences and published them as his autobiographies, The Kampung Boy and Town Boy, telling stories of rural and urban life with comparisons between the two. (Full article...)
The preschool educational television program Sesame Street was first aired on public television stations on November 10, 1969, and reached its 52nd season in 2021. The history of Sesame Street has reflected changing attitudes to developmental psychology, early childhood education, and cultural diversity. Featuring Jim Henson's Muppets, animation, live shorts, humor and celebrity appearances, it was the first television program of its kind to base its content and production values on laboratory and formative research, and the first to include a curriculum "detailed or stated in terms of measurable outcomes". Initial responses to the show included adulatory reviews, some controversy and high ratings. By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was broadcast in over 120 countries, and 20 independent international versions had been produced. It has won eleven Grammys and over 150 Emmys in its history—more than any other children's show.
The show was conceived in 1966 during discussions between television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and Carnegie Corporation vice president Lloyd Morrisett. Their goal was to create a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them", such as helping young children prepare for school. After two years of research, the newly formed Children's Television Workshop (CTW) received a combined grant of $8 million from the Carnegie Corporation, the Ford Foundation and the U.S. federal government to create and produce a new children's television show. (Full article...)
Belton House is a Grade I listed country house in the parish of Belton near Grantham in Lincolnshire, England, built between 1685 and 1688 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, 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. (Full article...)
Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman is the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft's unfinished novelistic sequel to her revolutionary political treatise A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). The Wrongs of Woman was published posthumously in 1798 by her husband, William Godwin, and is often considered her most radical feminist work.
Wollstonecraft's philosophical and gothic novel revolves around the story of woman imprisoned in an insane asylum by her husband. It focuses on the societal rather than the individual "wrongs of woman" and criticizes what Wollstonecraft viewed as the patriarchal institution of marriage in eighteenth-century Britain and the legal system that protected it. However, the heroine's inability to relinquish her romantic fantasies also reveals women's collusion in their oppression through false and damaging sentimentalism. The novel pioneered the celebration of female sexuality and cross-class identification between women. Such themes, coupled with the publication of Godwin's scandalous Memoirs of Wollstonecraft's life, made the novel unpopular at the time it was published. (Full article...)- Sir Michael Murray Hordern CBE (3 October 1911 – 2 May 1995) was an English actor whose career spanned nearly 60 years. He is best known for his Shakespearean roles, especially that of King Lear, which he played to much acclaim on stage in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1969 and London in 1970. He then successfully assumed the role on television five years later. He often appeared in film, rising from a bit part actor in the late 1930s to a member of the main cast; by the time of his death he had appeared in nearly 140 cinema roles. His later work was predominantly in television and radio.
Born in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, into a family with no theatrical connections, Hordern was educated at Windlesham House School where he became interested in drama. He went on to Brighton College where his interest in the theatre developed. After leaving the college he joined an amateur dramatics company, and came to the notice of several influential Shakespearean directors who cast him in minor roles in Othello and Macbeth. During the Second World War he served on HMS Illustrious where he reached the rank of lieutenant commander. Upon his demobilisation he resumed his acting career and made his television debut, becoming a reliable bit-part actor in many films, particularly in the war film genre. (Full article...)
Adelheid Luise "Adele" Spitzeder ([ˈaːdl̩haɪt ʔaˈdeːlə ˈʃpɪtˌtseːdɐ]; 9 February 1832 – 27 or 28 October 1895), also known by her stage name Adele Vio, was a German actress, folk singer, and con artist. Initially a promising young actress, Spitzeder became a well-known private banker in 19th-century Munich when her theatrical success dwindled. Running what was possibly the first recorded Ponzi scheme, she offered large returns on investments by continually using the money of new investors to pay back the previous ones. At the height of her success, contemporary sources considered her the wealthiest woman in Bavaria.
Opening her bank in 1869, Spitzeder managed to fend off attempts to discredit her for a few years before authorities were able to bring her to trial in 1872. Because Ponzi schemes were not yet illegal, she was convicted instead of bad accounting and mishandling customers' money and sentenced to three years in prison. Her bank was closed and 32,000 people lost 38 million gulden, the equivalent of almost 400 million euros in 2017 money, causing a wave of suicides. Her personal fortune in art and cash was stripped from her. (Full article...)- "A Rugrats Chanukah", titled onscreen as simply "Chanukah" and sometimes called the "Rugrats Chanukah Special", is a special episode of Nickelodeon's animated television series Rugrats. The first episode of the show's fourth season and the sixty-sixth overall, it tells the story of the Jewish holiday Chanukah through the eyes of the Rugrats, who imagine themselves as the main characters. Meanwhile, Grandpa Boris and his long-time rival, Shlomo, feud over who will play the lead in the local synagogue's Chanukah play. Since most American children's television programs have Christmas specials, this is the first Chanukah episode of a children's television series.
Raymie Muzquiz directed "A Rugrats Chanukah" from a script by J. David Stem and David N. Weiss. In 1992, Nickelodeon executives had pitched the idea of a Chanukah special to the production team, but the concept was revised and became the 1995 special, "A Rugrats Passover". After production of the Passover episode wrapped, the crew returned to the Chanukah idea. Nickelodeon broadcast "A Rugrats Chanukah" on December 4, 1996; the episode received a Nielsen rating of 7.9 and positive reviews from television critics. Along with other Rugrats episodes featuring Boris and his wife, the special attracted controversy when the Anti-Defamation League compared the character designs to anti-Semitic drawings from a 1930s Nazi newspaper. (Full article...) - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow is a 2005 action-adventure game developed and published by Konami. It is part of Konami's Castlevania video game series and the first Castlevania game released on the Nintendo DS. The game is the sequel to Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and incorporates many elements from its predecessor. Dawn of Sorrow was commercially successful. It sold more than 15,000 units in its first week in Japan and 164,000 units in the United States during the three months after its initial release.
Dawn of Sorrow continues the story of Aria of Sorrow: Dracula has been defeated, with his powers assumed by his reincarnation, Soma Cruz. With the help of his allies, Soma avoids becoming the new dark lord. A cult forms to bring forth a new one by killing Soma. Soma and his allies move to ensure that does not happen. (Full article...) - New York Dolls is the debut album by the American hard rock band New York Dolls. It was released on July 27, 1973, by Mercury Records. In the years leading up to the album, the Dolls had developed a local fanbase by playing regularly in lower Manhattan after forming in 1971. However, most music producers and record companies were reluctant to work with them because of their vulgarity and onstage fashion as well as homophobia in New York; the group later appeared in exaggerated drag on the album cover for shock value.
After signing a contract with Mercury, the Dolls recorded their first album at The Record Plant in New York City with producer Todd Rundgren, who was known for his sophisticated pop tastes and held a lukewarm opinion of the band. Despite stories of conflicts during the recording sessions, lead singer David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain later said Rundgren successfully captured how the band sounded live. Their music on the album incorporated carefree rock and roll, Brill Building pop influences, and campy sensibilities, while Johansen's colloquial and ambiguous lyrics explored themes of urban youth, teen alienation, adolescent romance, and authenticity. (Full article...) - "The Shape of Things to Come" is the 81st episode of the American Broadcasting Company's Lost and is the ninth episode of the fourth season. It aired on April 24, 2008 on ABC in the United States and on CTV in Canada. The episode was written by co-executive producer Drew Goddard and co-producer Brian K. Vaughan in late February 2008 and directed by executive producer Jack Bender in mid-March. The narrative centers on Ben Linus (played by Michael Emerson) as he and the Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 crash survivors at the Barracks come under attack in December 2004, while flashforwards to late 2005 show him recruiting Sayid Jarrah (Naveen Andrews) as a hitman and confronting his enemy Charles Widmore (Alan Dale).
"The Shape of Things to Come" is one of a few Lost episodes to contain footage filmed outside Hawaii. The episode aired as the first of the second batch of fourth-season episodes that were originally planned to air uninterrupted by a hiatus with the rest of the season; however, the 100-day 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike paused production and caused the writers to condense the second half of the season, which aired after a four-week break. "The Shape of Things to Come" received positive critical reviews, and the original broadcast in the United States was viewed by 14 million people. Much praise was directed at Emerson's acting skills, particularly in his reaction to the execution of his character's daughter Alex (Tania Raymonde). His performance in this specific episode received a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for the 60th Primetime Emmy Awards; the episode was also nominated in the category of Outstanding Sound Editing for a Series. (Full article...) 
West façade
The Honan Chapel (Irish: Séipéal Uí Eonáin, formally Saint Finbarr's Collegiate Chapel and The Honan Hostel Chapel) is a small Catholic church built in the Hiberno-Romanesque revival style on the grounds of University College Cork, Ireland. Designed in 1914, the building was completed in 1916 and furnished by 1917. Its architecture and fittings are representative of the Celtic Revival movement and evoke the Insular art style prevalent in Ireland and Britain between the 7th and 12th centuries.
Its construction was initiated and supervised by the Dublin solicitor John O'Connell, a leading member of the Celtic Revival and Arts and Crafts movements. He was funded by Isabella Honan (1861–1913), the last member of a wealthy Cork family, who made a significant donation towards the construction of the chapel. O'Connell oversaw both the design and the commissioning of its building and furnishings. He guided the architect James F. McMullen and the builders John Sisk and Sons, and the craftsmen and artists involved in its artwork. (Full article...)
Hemming's Cartulary is a manuscript cartulary, or collection of charters and other land records, collected by a monk named Hemming around the time of the Norman Conquest of England. The manuscript comprises two separate cartularies that were made at different times and later bound together; it is in the British Library as MS Cotton Tiberius A xiii. The first was composed at the end of the 10th or beginning of the 11th century. The second section was compiled by Hemming and was written around the end of the 11th or the beginning of the 12th century. The first section, traditionally titled the Liber Wigorniensis, is a collection of Anglo-Saxon charters and other land records, most of which are organized geographically. The second section, Hemming's Cartulary proper, combines charters and other land records with a narrative of deprivation of property owned by the church of Worcester.
The two works are bound together in one surviving manuscript, the earliest surviving cartulary from medieval England. A major theme is the losses suffered by Worcester at the hands of royal officials and local landowners. Included amongst the despoilers are kings such as Cnut and William the Conqueror, and nobles such as Eadric Streona and Urse d'Abetot. Also included are accounts of lawsuits waged by the Worcester monks in an effort to regain their lost lands. The two sections of the cartulary were first printed in 1723. The original manuscript was slightly damaged by fire in 1733, and required rebinding. A new printed edition is in production as of 2010. (Full article...)
Featured picture
Stained-glass credit: unknown; photographed by Jan Mehlich
Chromostereopsis is a visual illusion in which the impression of depth is conveyed in two-dimensional color images. This 1564 stained-glass window, in the Bielsko-Biała Museum and Castle in Poland, exhibits this effect, with contrasting depth perception in the red and blue areas. The window, an example of Standesscheibe, depicts the coat of arms of Unterwalden, a canton of the Old Swiss Confederacy.
Did you know...
- ... that the Art Deco Montecito Apartments (pictured) had been the home of Ronald Reagan, James Cagney, Montgomery Clift, and George C. Scott before becoming a senior citizens' housing project?
- ... that the Skyline Towers apartment building in Saint Paul, Minnesota is often referred to as a "ghetto in the sky"?
- ... that the Japanese visual novel 5 has been described by its development team as a "noisy northern province love comedy"?
In this month
- 4 October 1974 – American poet Anne Sexton dies by suicide at her home in Weston, Massachusetts
- 10 October 1881 – London's Savoy Theatre, built by the impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte to showcase the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, opens with a production of Patience
- 11 October 1910 – Italian composer and musicologist Francesco Balilla Pratella completes his Manifesto of Futurist Musicians, one of the earliest signs of Futurism's influence in fields outside the visual arts
- 17 October 1896 – The first performance of Anton Chekhov's play The Seagull is booed by the audience, after which Chekhov decides to give up writing plays
- 25 October 1881 – Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso (pictured), one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, is born in Málaga
- 4 October 1927 - Gutzon Borglum began working on Mt. Rushmore
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
Pierre Rossier was a pioneering Swiss photographer whose albumen photographs, which include stereographs and cartes-de-visite, comprise portraits, cityscapes and landscapes. He was commissioned by the London firm of Negretti and Zambra to travel to Asia and document the progress of the Anglo-French troops in the Second Opium War and, although he failed to join that military expedition, he remained in Asia for several years, producing the first commercial photographs of China, the Philippines, Japan and Siam (now Thailand). He was the first professional photographer in Japan, where he trained Ueno Hikoma, Maeda Genzō, Horie Kuwajirō, as well as lesser known members of the first generation of Japanese photographers. In Switzerland he established photographic studios in Fribourg and Einsiedeln, and he also produced images elsewhere in the country. Rossier is an important figure in the early history of photography not only because of his own images, but also because of the critical impact of his teaching in the early days of Japanese photography. (Full article...)
Featured audio
Movement V of Suite du Premier Ton (Suite in C major) from Louis-Nicolas Clérambault's 1710 set of compositions, Livre d'Orgue, performed by Ashtar Moïra.
Selected quote
| “ | All the world's a stage / And all the men and women merely players / They have their exits and their entrances / And one man in his time plays many parts ... | ” |
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