African Art
African art is a term typically used for the art of Sub-Saharan Africa. Often, casual observers tend to generalize "traditional" African art, but the continent is full of people, societies and civilizations, each with a unique visual culture.
- The creation of art for use by the people, not just for display. This use may be for everyday life such as pottery or for ceremonies such as a funeral.
- Sculpture and other 3 dimensional arts was a preferred art form as opposed to paintings.
- The creation of very colorful works of art.
- Abstract art was favored.
- The human image is a favorite subject.
Oceanic Art
Oceanic art or Oceanian art refers to the creative works made by the native peoples of the Pacific Islands and Australia, including areas as far apart as Hawaii and Easter Island.
The zone encompasses a continent (Australia), the second largest island in the world (New Guinea), several other large islands such as those of New Zealand - and a host of smaller islands littering the huge surface of the Pacific between New Guinea and South America. Not surprisingly, the native tribal art produced in such a vast area is very diverse in form, and for ethnic as well as geographical reasons. Its creators are the descendants of successive settlings by migrants from the west of mixed origins, some Mongoloid, some Melanotic or dark-skinned. Anthropologists and ethnologists usually identify three separate areas in Oceania - namely, Melanesia,Polynesia and Micronesia. There are frequent affinities with the art and culture of the tribes of South-East Asia.
Different to Western Art
Similar to indigenous African art including African sculpture, Oceanic artifacts were not made with any notion of their being "art" as the word is used in the West. Oceanic painting, sculpture and wood-carving were conceived as an integral part of the religious and social ceremony of everyday island life, and were aspects of the various prevalent forms of ancestor-worship and spirit-worship. The focus on fertility is recurrent and there are also more sinister signs of occasional headhunting and ritual cannibalism.
Islamic Art
Islamic art encompasses the visual arts produced from the 7th century onwards by people who lived within the territory that was inhabited by or ruled by culturally Islamic populations. It is thus a very difficult art to define because it covers many lands and various peoples over some 1400 years; it is not art specifically of a religion, or of a time, or of a place, or of a single medium like painting. The huge field of Islamic architecture is the subject of a separate article, leaving fields as varied as calligraphy, painting, glass, ceramics, and textiles, among others.
Indian Art
Indian Art consists of a variety of art forms, including plastic arts (e.g., pottery and sculpture), visual arts(e.g., cave paintings), and textile arts (e.g., woven silk). Geographically, it spans the entire Indian subcontinent, including what is now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Painting and Sculpture From India
The cultural heritage of India is one of the richest and most ancient in the world, rivalled only by Chinese art. The art of sculpture, the most highly respected medium for artists, was widely practised throughout the subcontinent, and buildings were profusely adorned with it. The subject matter of Indian sculpture was almost invariably abstracted human forms that were portrayed to instruct people in the truths of the Hindu Buddhist or Jain religions. Painting in India typically concerned religious deities and kings and was influenced in style by Chinese painting as well as the art of Ancient Persia and other countries from middle and central Asia, as well as Greece. Painting in India encompasses Buddhist murals in the Ajanta caves and the Brihadisvara Temple, to the large frescoes of Ellora to the miniaturist tradition of Mughal, to the mixed-media embellished works from the Tanjore school. The paintings from Gandhar-Taxila are influenced by Persia to the west, while the eastern style of Indian painting - taking inspiration from Indian mythology, grew up around the Nalanda school of art. India culture is also a rich source of architecture and architectural styles, one of its more minor examples being the famous Taj Mahal.
Chinese Art
Chinese art is visual art that, whether ancient or modern, originated in or is practiced in China or by Chinese artists. The Chinese art in the Republic of China (Taiwan) and that of overseas Chinese can also be considered part of Chinese art where it is based in or draws on Chinese heritage and Chinese culture.
Symbolism in Chinese Visual Art
Chinese art is full of symbolism, in that artists typically seek to depict some aspect of a totality of which they are intuitively aware. In addition, Chinese art is packed with specific symbols: bamboo represents a spirit which can be bent by circumstance but not broken; jade represents purity; a dragon often symbolizes the emperor; the crane, long life; a pair of ducks, fidelity in marriage. Plant symbols include: the orchid, another symbol of purity and loyalty; and the pine tree, which symbolizes endurance. Some art critics, however, prefer to describe Chinese art as essentially expressionist, rather than symbolic.
Japanese Art
Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ukiyo-e paintings and woodblock prints, kiri-e, kirigami, origami, and more recently manga—modern Japanese cartooning and comics—along with a myriad of other types of works ...
But traditional Japanese conceptions endured, particularly in the use of modular space in architecture, certain spacing intervals in music and dance, a propensity for certain color combinations and characteristic literary forms. Art from 1603 to 1945 (Edo period and Prewar period) were supported by merchants.