Art

"Art" is a word with multiple similar but distinct meanings. It is generally associated with visual arts, like painting, sculpture, etching, etc., but this is not its only definition.

Broadly speaking, the word "art" is commonly applied to works from various media that are believed to have lasting worth, although this is extremely subjective. Calling a work "art" (or not) can be controversial, as it is a judgment of quality that can offend both sides of the argument. There are some who believe everything is art, and some who believe only a few things are art, or apply stipulative definitions, like "art is something that makes you feel." When people talk about "True Art," this is generally what they're thinking of.

"Art" is also a title applied to various kinds of media. There are performance arts, such as Ballet and Theatre. Literature and Film are their own categories of art, as is Sequential Art (though it took longer to gain status as an artform and some people still believe it isn't; see the above paragraph). Whether Video Games are "art" is still a subject of controversy, as there are those who believe a game's primary focus of entertainment nullifies any artistic merit.^[1]

For a partial listing of artforms, see Media. See Art Tropes for a list of tropes relating to visual arts.

The visual arts have hundreds if not thousands of years of works to sample from, and art varies from culture to culture, so cataloging it all is no easy feat. Some distinct categories are:

↑ Please do not debate this here; we're just stating why it's a matter of debate, not opening the floor to argument.

[1] Please do not debate this here; we're just stating why it's a matter of debate, not opening the floor to argument.

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