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For a topic outline on this subject, see List of basic art topics. For the main article, see The arts.

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The Arts Portal

Art is the expression of creativity or imagination. The word art comes from the Latin word ars, which, loosely translated, means "arrangement". Art is commonly understood as the act of making works (or artworks) which use the human creative impulse and which have meaning beyond simple description. While art is often distinguished from crafts and recreational hobby activities, this boundary can at times be hard to define. The term creative arts denotes a collection of disciplines whose principal purpose is the output of material for the viewer or audience to interpret. As such, art may be taken to include forms ranging from literary forms (prose writing and poetry); performance-based forms (dance, acting, drama, and music); visual and "plastic arts" (painting, sculpture, photography, illustration); to forms that also have a functional role, such as architecture and fashion design. Art may also be understood as relating to creativity, æsthetics and the generation of emotion.

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The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII is the marble tomb monument for Antipope John XXIII, Baldassare Coscia, created by Donatello and Michelozzo, and located in the Florence Baptistry adjacent to the Duomo. It was commissioned by the executors of Coscia's will after his death on December 22, 1419 and completed during the 1420s, establishing it as one of the early landmarks of Renaissance Florence. According to Ferdinand Gregorovius, the tomb is "at once the sepulchre of the Great Schism in the church and the last Papal tomb which is outside Rome itself". The tomb monument's design included three Virtues, Coscia's family arms, a gilded bronze effigy supported above an inscription-bearing sarcophagus, a Madonna and Child in a half-lunette, and a canopy. At the time of its completion, the monument was the tallest sculpture in Florence, and one of very few tombs within the Baptistry or the neighboring Duomo. The tomb monument was the first of several collaborations between Donatello and Michelozzo, and the attribution of its various elements to each of them has been debated by art historians, as have the interpretations of its design and iconography. (more...)

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Selected Picture

The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai, an example of woodcut printmaking.

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Featured biography

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life. After she studied at the Amherst Academy for seven years in her youth, she spent a short time at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary before returning to her family's house in Amherst. Thought of as an eccentric by the locals, she became known for her penchant for white clothing and her reluctance to greet guests or, later in life, even leave her room. Dickinson was a prolific private poet; fewer than a dozen of her nearly eighteen hundred poems were published during her lifetime. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote; they contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often utilize slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Many of her poems deal with themes of death and immortality, two subjects which infused her letters to friends. Despite unfavorable reviews and skepticism of her literary prowess during the late 19th and early 20th century, critics now consider Dickinson to be a major American poet. (more...)

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Did you know...

... that the 1957–1958 CBS sitcom Mr. Adams and Eve featured Howard Duff and Ida Lupino, then married to each other in real life, as a fictitious husband/wife acting duo living in Beverly Hills?
... that in 1960, the CBS anthology series The DuPont Show with June Allyson featured Harpo Marx in the role of a deaf mute who witnesses a gangland murder?
... that the South Park episode "The Coon" spoofs such dark comic book movies as The Dark Knight, The Spirit and Watchmen?
... that Davy Crockett (1954–1955) was the first miniseries in the history of television, although the term "miniseries" had not yet been coined?