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100-454: Personification is the representation of a thing or abstraction as a person. It is, in other words, considered an embodiment or an incarnation. In the arts , many things are commonly personified. These include numerous types of places, especially cities, countries , and continents , elements of the natural world such as the trees or four seasons , four elements , four cardinal winds , five senses , and abstractions such as virtues, especially

200-617: A daimōn who has obtained the person at his birth by lot, is an idea which we find in Plato, undoubtedly from earlier tradition. The famous, paradoxical saying of Heraclitus is already directed against such a view: 'character is for man his daimon ' ". The Hellenistic Greeks divided daemons into good and evil categories: agathodaímōn ( ἀγαθοδαίμων , "noble spirit"), from agathós ( ἀγαθός , "good, brave, noble, moral, lucky, useful"), and kakodaímōn ( κακοδαίμων , " malevolent spirit "), from kakós ( κακός , "bad, evil"). They resemble

300-421: A daimōnion (literally, a "divine something") that frequently warned him—in the form of a "voice"—against mistakes but never told him what to do. The Platonic Socrates, however, never refers to the daimonion as a daimōn ; it was always referred to as an impersonal "something" or "sign". By this term he seems to indicate the true nature of the human soul , his newfound self-consciousness . Paul Shorey sees

400-542: A characteristically constant feature of human life have developed into stylized and intricate forms. This is achieved through sustained and deliberate study, training, or theorizing within a particular tradition, generations, and even between civilizations . The arts are a vehicle through which human beings cultivate distinct social, cultural, and individual identities while transmitting values, impressions, judgements, ideas, visions, spiritual meanings, patterns of life, and experiences across time and space. Prominent examples of

500-528: A classical model as Botticelli does, personifications in art tend to be relatively static, and found together in sets, whether of statues decorating buildings or paintings, prints or media such as porcelain figures. Sometimes one or more virtues take on and invariably conquer vices. Other paintings by Botticelli are exceptions to such simple compositions, in particular his Primavera and The Birth of Venus , in both of which several figures form complex allegories. An unusually powerful single personification figure

600-482: A detailed description of a lost painting by Apelles (4th century BC) called the Calumny of Apelles , which some Renaissance painters followed, most famously Botticelli . This included eight personifications of virtues and vices: Hope, Repentance, Perfidy, Calumny, Fraud, Rancour, Ignorance, Suspicion, as well as two other figures. Platonism , which in some manifestations proposed systems involving numbers of spirits,

700-615: A dialogue between the author and "Lady Philosophy". Fortuna and the Wheel of Fortune were prominent and memorable in this, which helped to make the latter a favourite medieval trope. Both authors were Christians, and the origins in the pagan classical religions of the standard range of personifications had been left well behind. A medieval creation was the Four Daughters of God , a shortened group of virtues consisting of: Truth, Righteousness or Justice, Mercy, and Peace. There were also

800-489: A divine spirit, but, for example, the ills released by Pandora are deadly deities, keres , not daimones . From Hesiod also, the people of the Golden Age were transformed into daimones by the will of Zeus , to serve mortals benevolently as their guardian spirits; "good beings who dispense riches…[nevertheless], they remain invisible, known only by their acts". The daimones of venerated heroes were localized by

900-603: A female personification is treated at some length, and makes speeches. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse from the Book of Revelation can be regarded as personification figures, although the text does not specify what all personify. According to James J. Paxson in his book on the subject " all personification figures prior to the sixth century A.D. were ... female"; but major rivers have male personifications much earlier, and are more often male, which often extends to "Water" in

1000-473: A group of people. In a pottery or ceramic factory, a group of people design, manufacture, and decorate the pottery. Some pottery is regarded as art pottery . In a one-person pottery studio, ceramists or potters produce studio pottery . Ceramics excludes glass and mosaics made from glass tesserae . Conceptual art is art wherein the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. The inception of

1100-489: A major printing center, along with "Typosine", a new muse of printing. A large gilt-bronze statue by Evelyn Beatrice Longman , something of a specialist in "allegorical" statues, was commissioned by AT&T for the top of their New York headquarters. Since 1916 it has been titled at different times as the Genius of Telegraphy , Genius of Electricity , and since the 1930s Spirit of Communication . Shakespeare's spirit Ariel

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1200-462: A male personification for the governing assembly of free citizens, and Boule , a female one for the ruling council. These appear in art but are often hard to identify if not labelled. Personification in the Bible is mostly limited to passing phrases which can probably be regarded as literary flourishes, with the important and much-discussed exception of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs , 1–9, where

1300-441: A means of developing capacities of attention and sensitivity and ends in themselves , the arts can simultaneously be a form of response to the world. It is a way to transform our responses and what we deem worthwhile goals or pursuits. From prehistoric cave paintings to ancient and contemporary forms of ritual to modern-day films , art has served to register, embody, and preserve our ever-shifting relationships with each other and

1400-473: A number of key works, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition ( 1936 ), by C. S. Lewis was an exploration of courtly love in medieval and Renaissance literature. The classical repertoire of virtues, seasons, cities and so forth supplied the majority of subjects until the 19th century, but some new personifications became required. The 16th century saw the new personification of

1500-505: A remarkable degree of continuity from late antiquity until the 18th century". Female personifications tend to outnumber male ones, at least until modern national personifications , many of which are male. Personifications are very common elements in allegory , and historians and theorists of personification complain that the two have been too often confused, or discussion of them dominated by allegory. Single images of personifications tend to be titled as an "allegory", arguably incorrectly. By

1600-406: A scale from good to bad. ... [Plutarch] speaks of ‘great and strong beings in the atmosphere, malevolent and morose, who rejoice in [unlucky days, religious festivals involving violence against the self, etc.], and after gaining them as their lot, they turn to nothing worse.’ ... The use of such malign daemones by human beings seems not to be even remotely imagined here: Xenocrates' intention

1700-596: A strong element of liberty, perhaps culminating in the Statue of Liberty . The long poem Liberty by the Scottish James Thomson (1734), is a lengthy monologue spoken by the " Goddess of Liberty ", describing her travels through the ancient world, and then English and British history, before the resolution of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 confirms her position there. Thomson also wrote

1800-509: Is a performance over time that combines any number of instruments, objects, and art within a predefined or less well-defined structure, some of which can be improvised. Performance art may be scripted, unscripted, random, or carefully organized—even audience participation may occur. John Cage is regarded by many as a performance artist rather than a composer, although he preferred the latter term. He did not compose for traditional ensembles. Cage's composition Living Room Music , composed in 1940,

1900-403: Is a quartet for unspecified instruments, really non-melodic objects, that can be found in the living room of a typical house, hence the title. The applied arts are the application of design and decoration to everyday, functional objects to make them aesthetically pleasing. The applied arts include fields such as industrial design , illustration , and commercial art. The term "applied art"

2000-411: Is called a choreographer. Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social , cultural , aesthetic , artistic , and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance ) to codified virtuoso techniques such as ballet . In sports: gymnastics, figure skating , and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines. In martial arts, " kata " is compared to dances. Music

2100-666: Is conducive to involvement in more traditional art forms. In 2011, the National Endowment of the Arts included video games in its definition of a "work of art", and the Smithsonian American Art Museum presented an exhibit titled The Art of the Video Game in 2012. Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of art. Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or

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2200-445: Is defined as an art form whose medium is a combination of sounds. Though scholars agree that music generally consists of a few core elements , their exact definitions are debated. Commonly identified aspects include pitch (which governs melody and harmony), duration (including rhythm and tempo ), intensity (including dynamics), and timbre . Though considered a cultural universal , definitions of music vary wildly throughout

2300-470: Is depicted in Melencolia I (1514) an engraving by Albrecht Dürer . Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time ( c.  1545 ) by Agnolo Bronzino has five personifications, apart from Venus and Cupid. In all these cases, the meaning of the work remains uncertain, despite intensive academic discussion, and even the identity of the figures continues to be argued over. Around 300 BC, Demetrius of Phalerum

2400-596: Is literally "acquaintance with letters", as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary . The noun "literature" comes from the Latin word littera , meaning "an individual written character ( letter )." The term has generally come to identify a collection of writings , which in Western culture are mainly prose (both fiction and non-fiction), drama, and poetry. In much, if not all, of

2500-471: Is often categorized as the performing arts of music, the word itself is Italian for "works", because opera combines artistic disciplines into a singular artistic experience. In a traditional opera, the work uses the following: the sets, costumes, acting, the libretto , singers and an orchestra. The composer Richard Wagner recognized the fusion of so many disciplines into a single work of opera, exemplified by his cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen ("The Ring of

2600-617: Is referred to as a drafter , draftswoman , or draughtsman . Drawing can be used to create art used in cultural industries such as illustrations , comics, and animation. Comics are often called the "ninth art" ( le neuvième art ) in Francophone scholarship, adding to the traditional "Seven Arts". Painting is considered to be a form of self-expression. Drawing, gesture (as in gestural painting ), composition , narration (as in narrative art ), or abstraction (as in abstract art ), among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest

2700-595: Is something of a mixture of styles, sometimes formal and classical, at others a woman of the streets of Paris personified. The Dutch Maiden is one of the earliest of these figures, and was mainly visual from the start, her efforts to repulse unwelcome Spanish advances shown in 16th-century popular prints . The arts The arts or creative arts are a vast range of human practices of creative expression , storytelling , and cultural participation. The arts encompass diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing, and being in an extensive range of media . Both dynamic and

2800-573: Is that local colour is defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident, for example, in the art of India , Tibet , and Japan . Islamic art avoids the representation of living beings, particularly humans and other animals, in religious contexts. It instead expresses religious ideas through calligraphy and geometrical designs. In the Middle Ages, liberal arts were taught in European universities as part of

2900-514: Is the art and science of designing buildings and structures . A wider definition would include the design of the built environment, from the macro level of urban planning , urban design , and landscape architecture , to the micro level of creating furniture. The word architecture comes from the Latin architectūra , from architectus "master builder, director of works." Architectural design usually must address feasibility and cost for

3000-464: Is the branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound, and spectacle. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki , classical Indian dance , and Chinese opera . Areas exist in which artistic works incorporate multiple artistic fields, such as film, opera, and performance art. While opera

3100-730: Is the first writer on rhetoric to describe prosopopoeia, which was already a well-established device in rhetoric and literature, from Homer onwards. Quintilian 's lengthy Institutio Oratoria gives a comprehensive account, and a taxonomy of common personifications; no more comprehensive account was written until after the Renaissance. The main Renaissance humanists to deal with the subject at length were Erasmus in his De copia and Petrus Mosellanus in Tabulae de schematibus et tropis , who were copied by other writers throughout

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3200-422: Is the most blessed existence, the highest origin of everything. ‘This is the god. On such a principle heaven depends, and the cosmos.’ The highest, the best is one; but for the movement of the planets a plurality of unmoved movers must further be assumed. In the monotheism of the mind, philosophical speculation has reached an end-point. That even this is a self-projection of a human, of the thinking philosopher,

3300-708: Is the principal product. Performing arts are distinguished by this performance element in contrast with disciplines such as visual and literary arts, where the product is an object that does not require a performance to be observed and experienced. Each discipline in the performing arts is temporal in nature, meaning the product is performed over a period of time. Products are broadly categorized as being either repeatable (for example, by script or score) or improvised for each performance. Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers , including actors , magicians , comedians , dancers , musicians , and singers . Performing arts are also supported by

3400-537: Is towards these daemones that we direct purifications and apotropaic rites , all kinds of divination, the art of reading chance utterances, and so on.’ ... This account differs from that of the early Academy in reaching back to the other, Archaic, view of daemones as souls, and thus anticipates the views of Plutarch and Apuleius in the Principate ... It clearly implies that daemones can cause illness to livestock: this traditional dominated view has now reached

3500-440: Is used in distinction to the fine arts , where the latter is defined as arts that aim to produce objects that are beautiful or provide intellectual stimulation but have no primary everyday function. In practice, the two often overlap. Video games are multidisciplinary works that include non-controversially artistic elements such as visuals and sound, as well as an emergent experience from the nature of their interactivity. Within

3600-561: The Academy , of the daemon as a potentially dangerous lesser spirit: Burkert states that in the Symposium , Plato has "laid the foundation" that would make it all but impossible to imagine the daimon in any other way with Eros , who is neither god nor mortal but a mediator in between, and his metaphysical doctrine of an incorporeal, pure actuality, energeia  ... identical to its performance: ‘thinking of thinking’, noesis noeseos

3700-489: The Four Elements . The predominance of females is at least partly because Latin grammar gives nouns for abstractions the female gender. Pairs of winged victories decorated the spandrels of Roman triumphal arches and similar spaces, and ancient Roman coinage was an especially rich source of images, many carrying their name, which was helpful for medieval and Renaissance antiquarians. Sets of tyches representing

3800-707: The Impressionists ). Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics, with the name later adopted as a badge of honour by the artists of the style with the original negative meaning forgotten, e.g. Impressionism and Cubism . Artists have had an uneasy relationship with their critics. Artists usually need positive opinions from critics for their work to be viewed and purchased. Many variables determine judgement of art such as aesthetics, cognition or perception. Aesthetic, pragmatic, expressive, formalist, relativist, processional, imitation, ritual, cognition, mimetic, and postmodern theories, are some of

3900-532: The Palazzo Pubblico of Siena . In the Allegory of Bad Government Tyranny is enthroned, with Avarice, Pride, and Vainglory above him. Beside him on the magistrate's bench sit Cruelty, Deceit, Fraud, Fury, Division, and War, while Justice lies tightly bound below. The so-called Mantegna Tarocchi ( c.  1465 –75) are sets of fifty educational cards depicting personifications of social classes,

4000-594: The Trivium , an introductory curriculum involving grammar , rhetoric , and logic , and of the Quadrivium , a curriculum involving the "mathematical arts" of arithmetic , geometry , music, and astronomy . In modern academia , the arts can be grouped with, or as a subset of, the humanities . The arts have been classified as seven: painting, architecture, sculpture, literature, music, performing , and cinema. Some view literature, painting, sculpture, and music as

4100-446: The builder , as well as function and aesthetics for the user . In modern usage, architecture is the art and discipline of creating or inferring an implied or apparent plan for a complex object or system . Some types of architecture manipulate space, volume, texture, light, shadow, or abstract elements, to achieve pleasing aesthetics. Architectural works may be seen as cultural and political symbols , or works of art. The role of

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4200-428: The daimonion not as an inspiration but as "a kind of spiritual tact checking Socrates from any act opposed to his true moral and intellectual interests." Regarding the charge brought against Socrates in 399 BC, Plato surmised "Socrates does wrong because he does not believe in the gods in whom the city believes, but introduces other daemonic beings..." Burkert notes that "a special being watches over each individual,

4300-456: The seven virtues , made up of the four classical cardinal virtues of prudence , justice , temperance and courage (or fortitude), these going back to Plato 's Republic , with the three theological virtues of faith , hope and charity . The seven deadly sins were their counterparts. The major works of Middle English literature had many personification characters, and often formed what are called "personification allegories" where

4400-405: The video game community , debates surround whether video games should be classified as an art form and whether game developers — AAA or indie —should be classified as artists. Hideo Kojima , a video game designer considered a gaming auteur , argued in 2006 that video games are a type of service rather than an art form. In the social sciences, cultural economists show how playing video games

4500-428: The 16th century. From the late 16th century theoretical writers such as Karel van Mander in his Schilder-boeck (1604) began to treat personification in terms of the visual arts . At the same time the emblem book , describing and illustrating emblematic images that were largely personifications, became enormously popular, both with intellectuals and artists and craftsmen looking for motifs. The most famous of these

4600-424: The 1870s, but now has some actual Hindu temples . Personification is found very widely in classical literature, art and drama, as well as the treatment of personifications as relatively minor deities, or the rather variable category of daemons . In classical Athens, every geographical division of the state for local government purposes had a personified deity which received some cultic attention, as well as Demos ,

4700-430: The 18th century, and such "complaints only grow louder in the nineteenth century". According to Andrew Escobedo, there is now "an unstated scholarly consensus" that "personification is a kind of frozen or hollow version of literal characters", which "depletes the fiction". Personifications, often in sets, frequently appear in medieval art , often illustrating or following literary works. The virtues and vices were probably

4800-599: The Americas and made the four continents an appealing new set, four figures being better suited to many contexts than three. The 18th-century discovery of Australia was not so quickly followed by an addition to the set, if only for reasons of geometry; Australia is not included in the continents at the corners of the Albert Memorial (1860s). This does have a set of three-figure groups representing agriculture , commerce , engineering and manufacturing , typical of

4900-685: The Arabic jinni (or genie ), and in their humble efforts to help mediate the good and ill fortunes of human life, they resemble the Christian guardian angel and adversarial demon , respectively. Eudaimonia ( εὐδαιμονία ) came to mean "well-being" or "happiness". The comparable Roman concept is the genius who accompanies and protects a person or presides over a place (see genius loci ). A distorted view of Homer 's daemon results from an anachronistic reading in light of later characterizations by Plato and Xenocrates , his successor as head of

5000-549: The French Roman de la Rose (13th century). The English mystery plays and the later morality plays have many personifications as characters, alongside their biblical figures. Frau Minne , the spirit of courtly love in German medieval literature, had equivalents in other vernaculars. In Italian literature Petrach 's Triomphi , finished in 1374, is based around a procession of personifications carried on "cars", as

5100-633: The Nibelung"). He did not use the term opera for his works, but instead Gesamtkunstwerk ("synthesis of the arts"), sometimes referred to as "music drama" in English, emphasizing the literary and theatrical components, which were as important as the music. Classical ballet is another form that emerged in the 17th century in which orchestral music is combined with dance. Other works in the late 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries have fused other disciplines in creative ways, such as performance art. Performance art

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5200-413: The action going, and when the medieval versifier went out on one fine spring morning and lay down on a grassy bank, one of these ladies rarely failed to appear to him in his sleep and to explain her own nature to him in any number of lines". Personification as an artistic device is easier to discuss when belief in the personification as an actual spiritual being has died down; this seems to have happened in

5300-455: The ancient Graeco-Roman world, probably even before Christianisation . In other cultures, especially Hinduism and Buddhism , many personification figures still retain their religious significance, which is why they are not covered here. For example, Bharat Mata was devised as a Hindu goddess figure to act as a national personification by intellectuals in the Indian independence movement from

5400-536: The architect, though changing, has been central to the design and implementation of pleasingly built environments, in which people live. Ceramic art is art made from ceramic materials (including clay ), which may take forms such as pottery , tile , figurines , sculpture, and tableware . While some ceramic products are considered fine art , others are considered decorative , industrial , or applied art objects. Ceramics may also be considered artefacts in archaeology . Ceramic art can be made by one person or by

5500-455: The arrival of Christianity , now as symbolic personifications stripped of religious significance. An exception was the winged goddess of victory, Victoria / Nike , who developed into the visualisation of the Christian angel. Generally, personifications lack much in the way of narrative myths , although classical myth at least gave many of them parents among the major Olympian deities . The iconography of several personifications "maintained

5600-421: The arts and politics, particularly between various kinds of art and power , occurs across history and cultures . As they respond to events and politics, the arts take on political as well as social dimensions, becoming themselves a focus of controversy and a force of political and social change . One observation is that an artist has a free spirit . For instance Pushkin , a well-regarded writer, attracted

5700-693: The arts include: visual arts (including architecture , ceramics , drawing , filmmaking , painting , photography , and sculpting ), literary arts (including fiction , drama , poetry , and prose ), and performing arts (including dance , music , and theatre ). They can employ skill and imagination to produce objects and performances , convey insights and experiences , and construct new environments and spaces. The arts can refer to common, popular, or everyday practices as well as more sophisticated, systematic, or institutionalized ones. They can be discrete and self-contained or combine and interweave with other art forms, such as combining artwork with

5800-502: The audacity of his sensual fancy, and in his propensity for making fun of major and minor tyrants." Artists use their work to express their political views and promote social change, from influencing negatively in the form of hate speech to influencing positively through artivism . Governments use art, or propaganda , to promote their own agendas. Daemon (classical mythology) Daimons are lesser divinities or spirits, often personifications of abstract concepts, beings of

5900-409: The central four arts, of which the others are derivative; drama is literature with acting, dance is music expressed through motion , and song is music with literature and voice . Film is sometimes called the "eighth" and comics the "ninth art" in Francophone scholarship, adding to the traditional "Seven Arts". Cultural fields like gastronomy are only sometimes considered as arts. Architecture

6000-412: The construction of shrines, so as not to wander restlessly, and were believed to confer protection and good fortune on those offering their respects. One tradition of Greek thought, which found agreement in the mind of Plato , was of a daimon which existed within a person from their birth, and that each individual was obtained by a singular daimon prior to their birth by way of lot . Homer 's use of

6100-507: The deities, these figures were not always depicted without considerable moral ambiguity: On this account, the other traditional notion of the daemon as related to the souls of the dead is elided in favour of a spatial scenario which evidently also graduated in moral terms; though [Plato] says nothing of that here, it is a necessary inference from her account, just as Eros is midway between deficiency and plenitude. ... Indeed, Xenocrates ... explicitly understood daemones as ranged along

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6200-528: The exception of the agathodaemon , honored first with a libation in ceremonial wine-drinking, especially at the sanctuary of Dionysus , and represented in iconography by the chthonic serpent . Burkert suggests that, for Plato, theology rests on two Forms : the Good and the Simple; which "Xenocrates unequivocally called the unity god" in sharp contrast to the poet's gods of epic and tragedy. Although much like

6300-411: The expression of Christian themes due to the overlap of church and state . Eastern art has generally worked in style akin to Western medieval art , namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade, and reflection). A characteristic of this style

6400-417: The expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be a wide variety of topics, such as photographic , abstract, narrative, symbolistic ( Symbolist art ), emotive ( Expressionism ), or political in nature ( Artivism ). Some modern painters incorporate different materials, such as sand , cement, straw , wood, or strands of hair, for their artwork texture . Examples of this are

6500-406: The field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of art history , and contemporary criticism of work by living artists. Despite perceptions that criticism is a lower-risk activity than making art, opinions of current art are liable to corrections with the passage of time. Critics of the past can be ridiculed for dismissing artists now venerated (like the early work of

6600-523: The fifth and seventeenth centuries". Late antique philosophical books that made heavy use of personification and were especially influential in the Middle Ages included the Psychomachia of Prudentius (early 5th century), with an elaborate plot centered around battles between the virtues and vices, and The Consolation of Philosophy ( c.  524 ) by Boethius , which takes the form of

6700-454: The four cardinal virtues and seven deadly sins , the nine Muses , or death . In many polytheistic early religions, deities had a strong element of personification, suggested by descriptions such as "god of". In ancient Greek religion , and the related ancient Roman religion , this was perhaps especially strong, in particular among the minor deities. Many such deities, such as the tyches or tutelary deities for major cities, survived

6800-470: The irritation of Russian officialdom and particularly the Tsar , since he "instead of being a good servant of the state in the rank and file of the administration and extolling conventional virtues in his vocational writings (if write he must), composed extremely arrogant and extremely independent and extremely wicked verse in which dangerous freedom of thought was evident in the novelty of his versification, in

6900-415: The late 20th century personification seemed largely out of fashion, but the semi-personificatory superhero figures of many comic book series came in the 21st century to dominate popular cinema in a number of superhero film franchises. According to Ernst Gombrich , "we tend to take it for granted rather than to ask questions about this extraordinary predominantly feminine population which greets us from

7000-656: The lyrics for Rule Britannia , and the two personifications were often combined as a personified "British Liberty", to whom a large monument was erected in the 1750s on his estate at Gibside by a Whig magnate . But, sometimes alongside these formal figures, a new type of national personification has arisen, typified by John Bull (1712) and Uncle Sam ( c.  1812 ). Both began as figures in more or less satirical literature but achieved their prominence when taken into political cartoons and other visual media. The post-revolutionary Marianne in France, official since 1792,

7100-399: The major cities of the empire were used in the decorative arts . Most imaginable virtues and virtually every Roman province was personified on coins at some point, the provinces often initially seated dejected as "CAPTA" ("taken") after its conquest, and later standing, creating images such as Britannia that were often revived in the Renaissance or later. Lucian (2nd century AD) records

7200-628: The many theories to criticize and appreciate art. Art criticism and appreciation can be subjective based on personal preference toward aesthetics and form, or on the elements and principles of design and by social and cultural acceptance. Arts in education is a field of educational research and practice informed by investigations into learning through arts experiences. In this context, the arts can include performing arts education (dance, drama, music), literature and poetry, storytelling , visual arts education in film, craft , design, digital art , media and photography. A strong relationship between

7300-539: The most common, and the virtues appear in many large sculptural programmes, for example the exteriors of Chartres Cathedral and Amiens Cathedral . In painting, both virtues and vices are personified along the lowest zone of the walls of the Scrovegni Chapel by Giotto ( c.  1305 ), and are the main figures in Ambrogio Lorenzetti 's Allegory of Good and Bad Government (1338–39) in

7400-560: The planets and heavenly bodies, and also social classes. A new pair, once common on the portals of large churches, are Ecclesia and Synagoga . Death envisaged as a skeleton, often with a scythe and hour-glass , is a late medieval innovation, that became very common after the Black Death . However, it is rarely seen in funerary art "before the Counter-Reformation ". When not illustrating literary texts, or following

7500-466: The porches of cathedrals, crowds around our public monuments, marks our coins and our banknotes, and turns up in our cartoons and our posters; these females variously attired, of course, came to life on the medieval stage, they greeted the Prince on his entry into a city, they were invoked in innumerable speeches, they quarreled or embraced in endless epics where they struggled for the soul of the hero or set

7600-456: The priestess Diotima teaches Socrates that love is not a deity, but rather a "great daimōn" (202d). She goes on to explain that "everything daimōnion is between divine and mortal" (202d–e), and she describes daimōns as "interpreting and transporting human things to the gods and divine things to men; entreaties and sacrifices from below, and ordinances and requitals from above..." (202e). In Plato's Apology of Socrates , Socrates claimed to have

7700-554: The requirements for large public schemes of the period. A rather late example is the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City (1901–07), which has large groups for the four continents by the entrance, and 12 figures personifying seafaring nations from history high on the facade. The invention of movable type printing saw Dame Imprimerie ("Lady Printing Press") introduced to the pageants of Lyons ,

7800-502: The same nature as both mortals and deities, similar to ghosts , chthonic heroes, spirit guides , forces of nature, or the deities themselves (see Plato's Symposium ). According to Hesiod's myth, "great and powerful figures were to be honoured after death as a daimon…" A daimon is not so much a type of quasi-divine being, according to Walter Burkert , but rather a non-personified "peculiar mode" of their activity. In Hesiod 's Theogony , Phaëton becomes an incorporeal daimon or

7900-400: The services of other artists or essential workers, such as songwriting and stagecraft . Performers adapt their appearance with tools such as costumes and stage makeup . Dance generally refers to human movement , either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual , or performance setting. Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this

8000-606: The term in the 1960s referred to a strict and focused practice of idea-based art that defied traditional visual criteria associated with the visual arts in its presentation as text. Through its association with the Young British Artists and the Turner Prize during the 1990s, its popular usage, particularly in the United Kingdom, developed as a synonym for all contemporary art that does not practice

8100-408: The theory of beauty. A goal of art criticism is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation but it is questionable whether such criticism can transcend prevailing sociopolitical circumstances. The variety of artistic movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different disciplines, which may each use different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in

8200-629: The traditional skills of painting and sculpture. Drawing is a means of making an image using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils , pen and ink, inked brushes , wax coloured pencils , crayons , charcoals , pastels , and markers . Digital tools with similar effects are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are line drawing, hatching , cross-hatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling , and blending. An artist who excels in drawing

8300-597: The visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the plastic arts . Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, such as clay), in stone , metal, ceramics , wood, and other materials, but shifts in sculptural processes have led to almost complete freedom of materials and processes following modernism . A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast . Literature (also known as literary arts or language arts )

8400-469: The whole work is an allegory, largely driven by personifications. These include Piers Plowman by William Langland ( c.  1370 –90), where most of the characters are clear personifications named as their qualities, and several works by Geoffrey Chaucer , such as The House of Fame (1379–80). However, Chaucer tends to take his personifications in the direction of being more complex characters and give them different names, as when he adapts part of

8500-413: The word techne . Ancient Greek art brought the veneration of the animal form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty, and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features, e.g. Zeus ' thunderbolt. In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages , the dominant church insisted on

8600-495: The words theoí ( θεοί , "gods") and daímones ( δαίμονες ) suggests that, while distinct, they are similar in kind. Later writers developed the distinction between the two. Plato in Cratylus speculates that the word daimōn ( δαίμων , "deity") is synonymous to daēmōn ( δαήμων , "knowing or wise"); however, it is more probably daiō ( δαίω , "to divide, to distribute destinies, to allot"). In Plato's Symposium ,

8700-406: The works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer . Photography as an art form refers to photographs that are created in accordance with the creative vision of the photographer. Art photography stands in contrast to photojournalism , which provides a visual account of news events, and commercial photography, the primary focus of which is to advertise products or services. Sculpture is the branch of

8800-496: The world as they are based on diverse views of nature , the supernatural, and humanity. Music is differentiated into composition and performance, while musical improvisation may be regarded as an intermediary tradition. Music can be divided into genres and subgenres, although the dividing lines and relationships between genres are subtle, open to individual interpretation, and controversial. Theatre or theater (from Greek theatron ( θέατρον ); from theasthai , "behold" )

8900-450: The world, artistic linguistic expression can be oral as well and include such genres as epic , legend , myth , ballad , other forms of oral poetry, and folktales . Comics, the combination of drawings or other visual arts with narrating literature, are called the "ninth art" ( le neuvième art ) in Francophone scholarship. Performing arts comprise dance, music, theatre, opera , mime , and other art forms in which human performance

9000-407: The world. The arts are considered various practices or objects done by people with skill, creativity, and imagination across cultures and history, viewed as a group. These activities include painting, sculpture, music, theatre, literature, and more. Art refers to the way of doing or applying human creative skills, typically in visual form. In Ancient Greece , art and craft were referred to by

9100-487: The written word in comics . They can also develop or contribute to some particular aspect of a more complex art form, as in cinematography . By definition, the arts themselves are open to being continually redefined. The practice of modern art , for example, is a testament to the shifting boundaries, improvisation and experimentation, reflexive nature, and self-criticism or questioning that art and its conditions of production, reception, and possibility can undergo. As both

9200-520: Was naturally conducive to personification and allegory , and is an influence on the uses of it from classical times through various revivals up to the Baroque period. According to Andrew Escobedo, "literary personification marshalls inanimate things, such as passions, abstract ideas, and rivers, and makes them perform actions in the landscape of the narrative." He dates "the rise and fall of its [personification's] literary popularity" to "roughly, between

9300-587: Was adopted by the sculptor Eric Gill as a personification of broadcasting, and features in his sculptures on Broadcasting House in London (opened 1932). A number of national personifications stick to the old formulas, with a female in classical dress, carrying attributes suggesting power, wealth, or other virtues. Libertas , the Roman goddess of liberty , had been important under the Roman Republic , and

9400-521: Was becoming fashionable in courtly festivities; it was illustrated by many different artists. Dante has several personification characters, but prefers using real persons to represent most sins and virtues. In Elizabethan literature many of the characters in Edmund Spenser 's enormous epic The Faerie Queene , though given different names, are effectively personifications, especially of virtues. The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) by John Bunyan

9500-525: Was first made remains unanswerable. Much the same thought as [Plato's] is to be found in an explicitly Pythagorean context of probably late Hellenistic composition, the Pythagorean Commentaries , which evidently draws on older popular representations: ‘The whole air is full of souls. We call them daemones and heroes, and it is they who send dreams, signs and illnesses to men; and not only men, but also to sheep and other domestic animals. It

9600-578: Was not reflected on in ancient philosophy. In Plato there is an incipient tendency toward the apotheosis of nous . ... He needs a closeness and availability of the divine that is offered neither by the stars nor by metaphysical principles. Here a name emerged to fill the gap, a name which had always designated the incomprehensible yet present activity of a higher power, daimon . Daemons scarcely figure in Greek mythology or Greek art : they are felt, but their unseen presence can only be presumed, with

9700-562: Was somewhat uncomfortably co-opted by the empire; it was not seen as an innate right, but as granted to some under Roman law. She had appeared on the coins of the assassins of Julius Caesar , defenders of the Roman republic . The medieval republics, mostly in Italy, greatly valued their liberty, and often use the word, but produce very few direct personifications. With the rise of nationalism and new states, many nationalist personifications included

9800-512: Was the Iconologia of Cesare Ripa , first published unillustrated in 1593, but from 1603 published in many different illustrated editions, using different artists. This set at least the identifying attributes carried by many personifications until the 19th century. From the 20th century into the 21st, the past use of personification has received greatly increased critical attention, just as the artistic practice of it has greatly declined. Among

9900-455: Was the last great personification allegory in English literature, from a strongly Protestant position (though see Thomson's Liberty below). A work like Shelley 's The Triumph of Life , unfinished at his death in 1822, which to many earlier writers would have called for personifications to be included, avoids them, as does most Romantic literature, apart from that of William Blake . Leading critics had begun to complain about personification in

10000-400: Was to provide an explanation for the sheer variety of polytheistic religious worship; but it is the potential for moral discrimination offered by the notion of daemones which later ... became one further means of conceptualizing what distinguishes dominated practice from civic religion, and furthering the transformation of that practice into intentional profanation ... Quite when the point

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