Work of art in the context of Authorial intent

Media, or mediums, are the core types of material (or related other tools) used by an artist, composer, designer, etc. to create a work of art. For example, a visual artist may broadly use the media of painting or sculpting, which themselves have more specific media within them, such as watercolor paints or marble.

The following is a list of artistic categories and the media used within each category:

Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing buildings or other structures. The term comes from Latin architectura; from Ancient Greek ἀρχιτέκτων (arkhitéktōn) 'architect'; from ἀρχι- (arkhi-) 'chief' and τέκτων (téktōn) 'creator'. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural symbols and as works of art. Historical civilizations are often identified with their surviving architectural achievements.

The practice, which began in the prehistoric era, has been used as a way of expressing culture by civilizations on all seven continents. For this reason, architecture is considered to be a form of art. Texts on architecture have been written since ancient times. The earliest surviving text on architectural theories is the 1st century BC treatise De architectura by the Roman architect Vitruvius, according to whom a good building embodies firmitas, utilitas, and venustas (durability, utility, and beauty). Centuries later, Leon Battista Alberti developed his ideas further, seeing beauty as an objective quality of buildings to be found in their proportions. In the 19th century, Louis Sullivan declared that "form follows function". "Function" began to replace the classical "utility" and was understood to include not only practical but also aesthetic, psychological, and cultural dimensions. The idea of sustainable architecture was introduced in the late 20th century.

Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine (a printer); however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.

Prints are created by transferring ink from a matrix to a sheet of paper or other material, by a variety of techniques. Common types of matrices include: metal plates for engraving, etching and related intaglio printing techniques; stone, aluminum, or polymer for lithography; blocks of wood for woodcuts and wood engravings; and linoleum for linocuts. Screens made of silk or synthetic fabrics are used for the screen printing process. Other types of matrix substrates and related processes are discussed below.

Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium, such as clay, wax, paint – or even plastic in the modern sense of the word (a ductile polymer) – to create works of art. The term is used more generally to refer to the visual arts (such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, architecture, film and photography), rather than literature and music. Materials for use in the plastic arts, in the narrower definition, include those that can be carved or shaped, such as stone or wood, concrete, glass, or metal.

Artistic merit is the artistic quality or value of any given work of art, music, film, literature, sculpture or painting.

Ballet (French: [balɛ]) is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of dance with its own vocabulary. Ballet has been influential globally and has defined the foundational techniques which are used in many other dance genres and cultures. Various schools around the world have incorporated their own cultures. As a result, ballet has evolved in distinct ways.

A ballet as a unified work comprises the choreography and music for a ballet production. Ballets are choreographed and performed by trained ballet dancers. Traditional classical ballets are usually performed with classical music accompaniment and use elaborate costumes and staging, whereas modern ballets are often performed in simple costumes and without elaborate sets or scenery.

An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or academics in any medium. Audience members participate in different ways in different kinds of art. Some events invite overt audience participation and others allow only modest clapping and criticism and reception.

Media audience studies have become a recognized part of the curriculum. Audience theory offers scholarly insight into audiences in general. These insights shape our knowledge of just how audiences affect and are affected by different forms of art. The biggest art form is the mass media. Films, video games, radio shows, software (and hardware), and other formats are affected by the audience and its reviews and recommendations.

In literature, the tone of a literary work expresses the writer's attitude toward or feelings about the subject matter and audience.

The concept of a work's tone has been argued in the academic context as involving a critique of one's innate emotions: the creator or creators of an artistic piece deliberately push one to rethink the emotional dimensions of one's own life due to the creator or creator's psychological intent, which whoever comes across the piece must then deal with.

Religious art is a visual representation of religious ideologies and their relationship with humans. Sacred art directly relates to religious art in the sense that its purpose is for worship and religious practices. According to one set of definitions, artworks that are inspired by religion but are not considered traditionally sacred remain under the umbrella term of religious art, but not sacred art.

Other terms often used for art of various religions are cult image, usually for the main image in a place of worship, icon in its more general sense (not restricted to Eastern Orthodox images), and "devotional image" usually meaning a smaller image for private prayer or worship. Images can often be divided into "iconic images", just showing one or more figures, and "narrative images" showing moments from an episode or story involving sacred figures.

A still life (pl.: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or human-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewelry, coins, pipes, etc.).

With origins in Ancient Greco-Roman art and the Middle Ages, still-life painting emerged as a distinct genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has remained significant since then. One advantage of the still-life artform is that it allows an artist much freedom to experiment with the arrangement of elements within a composition of a painting. Still life, as a particular genre, began with Netherlandish painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the English term still life derives from the Dutch word stilleven. Early still-life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Later still-life works are produced with a variety of media and technology, such as found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound.

An old master print (also spaced masterprint) is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition (mostly by Old Masters). The term remains current in the art trade, and there is no easy alternative in English to distinguish the works of "fine art" produced in printmaking from the vast range of decorative, utilitarian and popular prints that grew rapidly alongside the artistic print from the 15th century onwards. Fifteenth-century prints are sufficiently rare that they are classed as old master prints even if they are of crude or merely workmanlike artistic quality. A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term.

The main techniques used, in order of their introduction, are woodcut, engraving, etching, mezzotint and aquatint, although there are others. Different techniques are often combined in a single print. With rare exceptions printed on textiles, such as silk, or on vellum, old master prints are printed on paper. This article is concerned with the artistic, historical and social aspects of the subject; the article on printmaking summarizes the techniques used in making old master prints, from a modern perspective.

Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks in the fine arts. The glass objects created are typically intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement, rather than fulfill functions (other than perhaps as vases) such as tableware. Though usage varies, the term is properly restricted to glass made as art in small workshops, typically with the personal involvement of the artist who designed the piece. This is in contrast to art glass, made by craftspeople in factories, and glass art, covering the whole range of glass with artistic interest made throughout history. Both art glass and studio glass originate in the 19th century, and the terms compare with studio pottery and art pottery, but in glass the term "studio glass" is mostly used for work made in the period beginning in the 1960s with a major revival in interest in artistic glassmaking.

Pieces are often unique, or made in a small limited edition. Their prices may range from a few hundred to hundreds of thousands of dollars (US). For the largest installations, the prices are in the millions.

Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), also aquarelle (French: [akwaʁɛl]; from Italian diminutive of Latin aqua 'water'), is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork.

The conventional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper, usually special types of watercolor paper. Other supports or substrates include stone, ivory, silk, reed, papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, leather, fabric, wood, and watercolor canvas (coated with a gesso that is specially formulated for use with watercolors). Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton. This gives the surface the appropriate texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolor papers are usually cold-pressed papers that provide better texture and appearance. Transparency is the main characteristic of watercolors. "It consists of a mixture of pigments, binders such as gum arabic and humectants such as glycerin, which together with other components, allow the color pigment to join and form the paint paste, which we know as watercolor. With regard to the colors, the quality of the pigments and their degree of concentration, it is what determines how good the watercolor is and also its price. A paint that has a high concentration of pigment, professional type, allows us to use it with a large amount of water without losing the intensity of color." Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white. In the 19th century this could be controversial, and not regarded as "true watercolor" in the English tradition, but by about 1880 this dispute was over.

Art history is an academic discipline devoted to the study of artistic production and visual culture throughout human history. Art historians use a historical method or a philosophy, such as historical materialism or critical theory, to analyze artworks. Among other topics, they study art's impact on societies and cultures, the relationship between art and politics, and how artistic styles and formal characteristics of works of art have changed throughout history. As a discipline, art history is distinguished from art criticism, which is concerned with establishing a relative artistic value for critiquing individual works, and aesthetics, which is a branch of philosophy.

The study of art’s history emerged as a way to document and interpret artistic production. Early traditions of art-historical writing developed in several cultures, including Ancient Greece, Imperial China, and Renaissance Italy, each producing influential figures and approaches that shaped later scholarship. As an academic discipline, art history emerged in the 19th century and was a largely Eurocentric field, concentrating on Western definitions of the fine and decorative arts, particularly painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture.

In the philosophy of art, an interpretation is an explanation of the meaning of a work of art. An aesthetic interpretation expresses a particular emotional or experiential understanding most often used in reference to a poem or piece of literature, and may also apply to a work of visual art or performance.