MORAL/INTELLECTUAL Concerned with content and values Used not only to discover meaning, but also to determine whether

er works of literature are both true and significant. TOPICAL/HISTORICAL Stresses the relationship of lit to its historical period Investigates relationships of this sort, including the elucidation of words and concepts that todays readers may not immediately understand. NEW CRITICAL/FORMALIST Focuses on literary texts as formal works of art, and for this reason it can be seen as a reaction against the topical/historical approach. STRUCTURALIST Stems from the attempt to find relationships and connections among elements that appear to be separate and discrete. Attempts to discover the forms unifying all lit FEMINIST Holds that most of lit presents a masculine/patriarchal view in which the role of women is negated or at best minimized. Seeks to raise consciousness about the importance and unique nature of women in lit.

Often called proletarian lit

PSYCHOLOGICAL/PSYCHOANALYTIC Provided a new key to the understanding of character by claiming that behavior is caused by hidden unconscious motives. Treat lit somewhat like information about patients in therapy. ARCHETYPAL/SYMBOLIC/MYTHIC Presupposes that human life is built up out of patterns, or archetypes, that are similar throughout various cultures and historical times. Used to support the claim that the very best lit is grounded in archetypal patterns. Looks for archetypes such as Gods creation of human beings, the sacrifice of a hero, or the search for paradise. DECONSTRUCTIONIST Produces a type of analysis that stresses ambiguity and contradiction. Assumes that there is no central truth because circumstances and time, which are changeable and sometimes arbitrary, govern the world of the intellect. There is not one correct interpretation, but only interpretations, with each one possessing its own validity. READER-RESPONSE Rooted in the branch of philosophy that deals with the understanding of how things appear (phenomenology). Holds that the readier is a necessary third party in the author-text-reader relationship that constitutes literary work. The work is not fully created until readers make a transaction with it by assimilating it and actualizing it in the light of their own knowledge and experience.

The visual arts are those creations we can look at, such as a drawing or a painting. Here is a partial list: drawing painting sculpture architecture photography film printmaking

And the decorative arts of ceramics furniture and interior design jewelry making metal crafting wood working

Any one of these disciplines is a type of visual art. This is the simple explanation. You can stop reading right here, confident that you know what the visual arts are. Or you can keep reading and get a bit of background on that often-abused phrase "The Arts". "The Arts", as a term, has an interesting history. During the Middle Ages, The Arts were very scholarly, limited to seven in number and did not involve creating anything at which people looked. They were:

grammar rhetoric dialectic logic arithmetic geometry astronomy music

To further confuse matters, these seven Arts were known as the Fine Arts, in order to distinguish them from the "Useful Arts". Why? Only "fine" people - those who didn't do manual labor studied them. (Presumably, the Useful Arts people were too busy being useful to have need of an education.) At some point in the ensuing centuries, people realized there was a difference between a science and an art. The phrase Fine Arts came to mean anything that had been created to please the senses. After losing the sciences, the list now included music, dance, opera and literature, as well as what we normally think of as "art": painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts. (By the way, I have no idea whatever happened to the "Useful Arts", but can only hope that phrase was beaten to death by manual laborers who were annoyed by the "fine" snub.) That list of Fine Arts got a little long, didn't it? Apparently others thought so, too, because during the 20th-century we started to split the Fine Arts up into Visual Arts (painting, sculpture, etc.), Auditory Arts (music, drama, spoken literature) and Performance Arts (which can be either visual, auditory or a combination of the two - but are performed).

Now, I really should stop here, but feel compelled to make one more observation. Within the world of the visual arts, people still make distinctions between "Fine" art and everything else and it gets really confusing, at times. For instance, we'll talk about painting and sculpture, and automatically classify these as Fine Arts. The decorative arts, which are, sometimes, of a finer nature and craftsmanship than Fine arts, are not called "Fine". Additionally, visual artists sometimes refer to themselves (or are referred to, by others) as fine artists, as opposed to commercial artists. But! Some commercial art is really wonderful - "Fine", I would say. And, since an artist needs to sell art in order to remain a working artist (unless his or her grandfather invented, say, Velcro, and he or she exists off a trust fund or two), a strong argument could be made that most art is commercial. (See? This is exactly the kind of silly wording that puts people off Art.) It would really simplify matters if we could all just stick with visual, auditory, performance or literary - when we speak of The Arts - and eliminate "Fine" altogether. Substitute instead the words "good" and "bad", with the huge understanding that 6.3 billion people are going to have 6.3 billion different opinions on that which constitutes each. Life, however, will never be that simple - much less Art. In any case, I hope this has explained what visual art is, as well as helping to cut through some of that other Art lingo. Thanks for writing and asking questions!