ArtCategories

16 categories · one switchboard

Every way to organize art, explained.

Movement or period? Genre or type? Each category means something different — here’s what, and exactly where to explore it.

Art Movements

An art movement is a named current of style and conviction — a group of artists, loosely or tightly bound, pushing art in the same…

What is an art movement? →

Art Periods

An art period is an era — a broad stretch of time whose art shares a worldview, a set of patrons and a material culture. The Renai…

What is an art period? →

Art Techniques

An art technique is a method — the physical how of making art. Impasto, chiaroscuro, etching, fresco: techniques are learnable ski…

What is an art technique? →

Art Genres

An art genre is a category of subject matter — what the picture is about. Portraits, landscapes, still lifes, history paintings: g…

What is an art genre? →

Famous Artists

The artists everyone should know: the painters, printmakers and illustrators whose work defined how we see. From Giotto and Leonar…

Who are the most famous artists? →

Types of Art

Types of art are the mediums — what an artwork physically is. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, textiles, photography, digital: the t…

What are the types of art? →

Art by Country

Every nation carries an artistic tradition shaped by its light, its materials, its faiths and its history. Dutch painters mastered…

How does art differ by country? →

Art Regions & Schools

Art history happened in specific places: Venice traded line for color, Florence perfected drawing, Paris invented the avant-garde …

What is a regional school of art? →

Elements & Principles of Art

The elements of art (line, shape, form, color, value, texture, space) are the raw ingredients; the principles (balance, contrast, …

What are the elements and principles of art? →

AI Art Styles

An AI art style is a reusable visual recipe for image generation — a description of palette, technique, mood and composition that …

What is an AI art style? →

Fine Art

Fine art is art made primarily to be experienced — for beauty, meaning or expression — rather than to serve a practical function. …

What is fine art? →

Visual Art

Visual art is the umbrella over everything made to be seen: painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, ceramics, film, digital…

What is visual art? →

Applied & Decorative Art

Applied art is beauty put to work: design, ceramics, textiles, furniture, glass, metalwork and everything else where artistry serv…

What is applied art? →

Classical Art

Classical art means two things: strictly, the art of ancient Greece and Rome; loosely, any art built on their ideals — balance, pr…

What is classical art? →

Modern Art

Modern art is the century of breaking rules: roughly the 1860s to the 1970s, from Manet's scandals through Impressionism, Cubism, …

What is modern art? →

Contemporary Art

Contemporary art is the art of now — usually dated from about 1970 to the present. It is global, plural and medium-agnostic: insta…

What is contemporary art? →