subject: All About Art [print this page] All around us there are beautiful things in nature-the color of a butterfly's wings or a sunset or a landscape; the shape of a mountain or a flower or a face or a body; the music in the song of a bird or the splash of a waterfall. When men copy the beauties of nature, or make beautiful things that they invent themselves, and do so very skillfully, it is called art. The fine arts are painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry and other fine writing, music, drama (plays on the stage), and dancing.
Other arts are known as the useful, or decorative, arts; these include pottery-making, dress-designing, weaving, and many others in which useful things can be made beautiful. Often the graphic arts are considered a separate branch. The graphic arts are printing, bookbinding, and other processes of making books and printed matter.
The love of beauty seems to be something that man is born with. More than fifteen thousand years ago, primitive and ignorant cavemen drew pictures on the walls of their caves, and some of them-for example, the paintings of bulls and bison and other animals on the walls of caves near Altamira, in Spain, and in other parts of Europe-are a match for many of the best modern paintings. More than two thousand years ago the ancient Greeks made statues that are at least as good as, and some believe better than, anything that has been done since. There are separate stories on all the different kinds of art, painting ,and sculpture , and music, and others.
