Facts about Art & Fun Insights on Art from different Cultures and Periods
Art facts stretch across time, from the ancient frescoes of Roman and Greek art to the bold expressions of abstract and modern art. Our platform offers a curated collection of insights, fun facts about art, and deep dives into various movements like Impressionism and Realism. These nuggets of knowledge, compiled and curated by art lovers and history buffs, are presented in easy-to-digest, flashcard-like idea cards, inviting you to explore a vast amount of fun facts about art as a habit to replace doomscrolling with.
Explore over 10000 Unique Idea Cards with Facts About Art - curated by our community
Deepstash brings the gallery to you with an expansive array of art facts, fun art history or even different retrospectives on Greek, Roman or recent epochs. Discover the intricacies of medieval art, the elegance of Art Deco, and the transformative power of abstract art. Each idea card is a portal to understanding the context, technique, and impact of different art forms and pieces, from fun facts about Roman art to the groundbreaking insights of modern art movements. Our platform is your guide through the ages, illuminating the fascinating world of art history and culture.
Uncover Fascinating Art Facts and Insights from Around the World
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Before Sesame Street, music wasn't even considered as a means to teach children. But Sesame Street changed that and proved that kids are very receptive to a grammar lesson contained in a song.
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In 1915, a Danish company for decorative arts launched a magazine to promote local craftsmanship.
It was made to compete against the Art Noveau movement. Social commentary pressed more on the arts, which paved the way for Art Deco - an industrially-driven design philosophy.
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Graffiti, or the practice of writing, drawing, painting or doodling on walls and other surfaces is as old as man himself, with prehistoric and ancient cave paintings of hunting scenes being the first documented proof of the same. The word comes from the Greek term ‘graphein’ and means to ‘scratch, draw or write’.
Graffiti was employed during World War II to create brotherhood among soldiers, who felt a connection with the words and images on the walls left by other soldiers.
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In about a decade, the ‘vandalism’ of infrastructure and public property became a big problem in NYC, as it had a negative psychological effect on every citizen. The authorities put in measures to make it harder for the writers to hit their targets, but it just made the game more challenging and interesting for the artists.
Extreme steps were taken in 1984 to clear NYC of Subway car/train graffiti, and commuters had to face hardships, but the practice of street graffiti flourished in the coming decades.
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Many artists made the concept of writing and drawing graffiti faster and more uniform by using stencils, which were made of cardboard and had the cut out of the intended art. Multiple stencils were used in creative ways to add depth and a striking visual element to the viewer.
Stencils became handy and popular as they could be used a number of times and the writer/artist only took a few seconds to complete the graffiti and flee the scene.
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Though street art is an accepted form of art, it is still considered as vandalism.
Many artists have the option to create artworks in galleries and museums, and get paid for it, but the adrenaline rush of doing something illegal, or going against the authorities is alluring to the artists basic instincts of adventure and thrill.
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Art is not only a great source of pleasure in our lives but can also further enrich and deepen our understanding of the world around us.
Developing a casual understanding of art is not that difficult. All it takes is moderate attention to detail, a bit of patience, and a willingness to reflect on your feelings.
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Art should appeal to you first through your senses. It should grab your eye in some way, such as its subject matter, its use of color, its realistic appearance, a visual joke, or any other factors.
Once you've gotten an overall look at the painting, ask yourself what the subject of the painting is. It might be a landscape, a person or group of people, a scene from a story, a building, an animal, etc. Some paintings will be abstract.
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Style is the mark of the artist's individual creativity on the canvas.
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A large part of the appeal of art is emotional - some artists want to evoke strong reactions such as awe, anger, disgust, etc.
Knowing that an artist may deliberately evoke an emotional response, take a moment and question your immediate reaction. If a work angers you, ask yourself why it upsets you. If your feelings are happy, ask why the painting makes you feel happy.
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A leader can gain much from simply focussing on the other person and listening carefully.
A common mistake many leaders make is to make their communication a one-way street, robbing other people the opportunity to add value to their ideas and decisions. Listening to your audience/peers is a great way to get their attention, provided the leader is not multitasking at the time.
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Known as the ‘Jewel Of Italian Renaissance’, the city of Florence has countless groundbreaking developments, seeing advances in politics, finance, business, engineering, philosophy, science, architecture, and artistic creativity. The 15th century CE, the golden age of Florence saw many historic art projects, even after a pandemic killed half of the city’s population.
Currently, Florence is the capital of Tuscany, Italy, and its most populous. The breathtaking scenery and long history make it one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
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Florence was initially well-known for woollen cloth, creating a central marketplace for the best-quality wool, cleaned to perfection.
The success of the fabric business made the Florentines rich, leading to new financial breakthroughs and innovations, like bank loan facilities, which further enhanced the city’s wealth.
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Innovative banking practices like bills of exchange (to facilitate-out-of-city payments) and double-entry bookkeeping, along with the flourishing cloth industry made Florence the wealthiest city in Europe.
The city, flush with wealth, started to focus on art, humanism, creation, enjoyment of life’s pleasures, and intellectual pursuits. It framed itself as ‘The New Rome’ and was a true Renaissance city due to it’s elevated and classist thinking that offered freedom, prosperity and knowledge.
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Some of the most influential educational treatises like ‘On the Manners Of A Gentleman And Liberal Studies’ was written in Florence in the 15th century. Many other literary masterpieces like ‘The Human Comedy’ (by Giovanni Boccaccio) or ‘The Divine Comedy’ by the greatest poet of the city, Dante Alighieri made the city an intellectually rich place.
The celebrated artist Michelangelo was also in Florence in his early days as a painter.
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In 1348, the bubonic plague swept through Italy, and killed almost half of the city’s population, creating widespread loss and disruption.
Yet the city bounced back and entered its golden age in the next century. Many wealthy families understood art and supported Renaissance artists during difficult times.
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Around the 15th Century, Florence was fortunate to have:
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The advanced methods used by creators and artists of Florence(like the four canonical techniques of drawing to produce depth and 3D effects) gave birth to the following masterpieces:
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Visually different from figurative art, abstract art came in the early 20th century and used colours, lines, forms and shapes to create unseen compositions, with little or faint relation with the outside world.
It expanded upon the artist’s freedom of expression, imagination, inner turmoil, spirituality and spontaneity.
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Many historians and artists throughout the century have had contradictory opinions and beliefs about abstract art.
Some people find abstract art the true original expressions, and figurative art being a mere imitation of reality. Others call it a hidden reality, where traces of figurative art are removed and ‘abstracted’ to stoke the imagination.
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There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards, you can remove all traces of reality.
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Abstract art is like an ignition key, cranking up our own inner world of imagination and unlimited possibilities. The image in abstract art is bait. The real magic is in the feeling the overall work of art produces out of the onlooker.
The formless forms of abstract art create inner sounds that evoke sensations and make the person enter the realm of the transcendental.
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Abstract art is a no-art art that does not have any rules.
The abstraction is a freeing concept that allows the artist to tap into their intuition, innovativeness and even inner darkness to spill out what is felt inside, creating multi-dimensional magic on canvas.
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Nature in some ways is abstract, and a merging of art with nature puts the power of the elements, the sun, water, earth, moon, air and light into the ethereal paintings of imaginary new worlds and metaphorical concepts.
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The spontaneousness of abstract art makes the entire process a journey of self-discovery, where the artist does not know where the brush and canvas will take him.
The structure and openness of abstract art are conducive to unexpected twists, turns and tangents, transmogrifying the content into a moving, speaking piece of work.
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Figurative art and conventional photography have a limitation of simply imitating or reproducing on canvas what is already existing in reality, and thus is constrained to an extent.
Abstract art is powerful as it transcends the limits of thought and provides unlimited possibilities to explore the many dimensions of human emotions, with each artist using a unique, visual language of lines and colour.
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Street style refers to everyday looks seen on the streets. These looks make an impact on the people who pass them by.
Reasons street style inspires trends:
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The Enlightenment was a movement that promoted values of reason, evidence-based knowledge, free inquiry, individual liberty, humanism, limited government, and the separation of church and state.
18th century Paris served as a place for intellectual discourse where philosophes birthed the Age of Enlightenment. Paris earned the nickname "the City of Light."
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Paris is France's capital. With over two million residents, it is the most populous city today.
Since the 17th century, Paris continues to serve as a significant centre of diplomacy, commerce, high fashion, cuisine, science, and the arts. It is known as a top tourist destination, famed for its architectural landmarks, museums, restaurants, and atmosphere. Paris is also a popular destination for weddings and honeymoons.
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Don't write more, live more.
When you live your life and have amazing experiences, you can use it as material.
This is why it’s always important to keep a pen and paper handy. You never know when an idea will strike. Or where.
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We all come to art history from some perspective. From this perspective, we are likely to build our mental map of how individual artists and styles of art fit together. When we want to place an artist on the art timeline, we should keep in mind that generalisations are useful only up to a point.
For example, Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky would fit into the movement known as Expressionism (1905-1930). But, his work took on different forms as he associated with various artists in other European cities.
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The way we interact and understand art is dependent on how the narrative of art history has been produced.
For example, art flourished during the Renaissance. One of the main sources about artists of this time comes from the book 'Lives of the Artists', written by Italian Giorgio Vasari during the 16th-century. Vasari draws a similarity between the passage of time and the artistic achievement of Italian artists. In writing about his fellow countrymen, Vasari wanted to promote the Italian Renaissance to the elevated position of high-achievement in all of art history.
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The idea that art is about progress is appealing to historians because it gives a simple linear-narrative framework. But this view tends to be exclusive in that it views Western art as the main story of art history without considering Islamic art, Turkish art, Japanese art, or West Africa's art.
Vasari was an Italian living in Florence and interested in how the art around him was made. We should remember that all art history is tilted with a bias towards the storytelling.
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In similar respects to the Dadaism movement, the pop art movement in UK and US, made art out of simple everyday objects or famous figures found within culture.
Pop Art borrowed objects and people from any source, recontextualized them, and then distributed them as an accessible piece of art for everyone to take part on a mass scale, bridging the gap between high and low art, showcasing the wonder, value, humor, foolishness, and relatability that can be found and shared in everyday life.
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The elements and principles of art and design are the foundation of the language we use when we speak about art.
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The visual elements of a composition should feel balanced and stable. Imbalance causes the viewer to feel disturbed.
Balance can be achieved in three ways:
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Contrast is when each element of art in a composition is made stronger in relation to the other. When next to each other, contrasting elements are among the first places that the viewer's eye is drawn.
Examples of contrast:
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It is mainly achieved through contrast.
A visually dominant area of the composition creates emphasis and commands the viewer's attention.
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It moves the viewer's eye around and inside the image.
A sense of movement can be created by diagonal or curvy lines, edges, the illusion of space, repetition, and energetic mark-making.
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A pattern is a consistent repetition of any of the elements of art or any combination of it.
Some classic patterns are spirals, grids, weaves.
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Rhythm comes from movement implied through the elements of art in an organised but varied way.
While pattern demands consistency, rhythm relies on variety, similar to rhythm in music.
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A painting will feel unified when all the elements fit together comfortably.
A painting needs both unity and variety. Too much unity makes it dull, and too much variety creates chaos. The best is to have areas of interest in your composition along with places for your eyes to rest.
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First seen in the mid-19th century, impressionist art captured the immediate impression of scenery or moment, communicated by the artist using light, reflection and separated colours.
The capturing of light was done using short brushstrokes done quickly and freely, making the painting appear rough and messy to some.
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Impressionist art was looked at with disdain by art critics, as it was commonly accepted that any serious artist would minimize brush strokes and create a glossy, refined painting, not something with visible dots, blobs and smears.
During the first Impressionist art exhibition in 1874, the conservative painters and critics saw this kind of art as unfinished and unprofessional, turning the word ‘impressionist’ into a derogatory term.
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In 1874, the group of artists who drew in the rough and messy ‘impressionist’ style clubbed together in France and pooled their resources, promoting their art in their very own exhibition.
French critics, who were used to the official, acceptable exhibitions, were further perplexed at the audacity and how the limits of art were pushed beyond recognition.
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Impressionist art was a shift from mythology, historical events and other kinds of 'epic' paintings towards street life in Paris, contemporary life, rural leisure life, and other new places that were never explored by painters before.
The mixing of colours captured the shifting of light, with innovative use of saturation, mixing, and broken colours, giving a vivid intensity to the same.
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Most of the impressionist artists lived in Paris, France during the late 19th century and were friends, often meeting at Café Guerbois.
These groundbreaking artists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre-August Renoir, Camille Pissarro and many others, left an indelible mark on art.
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There is no one dominant philosophy or ideology. Contemporary art is characterized by its global nature. It is also not media-dependent. The whole idea of art as a series of movements is "a modernist schema" more useful for scholars and others to understand the past than for artists working in the present.
Today's art crosses boundaries in terms of discipline. For example, artists can be designers, focus on mass consumption, work in fashion or even collaborate with industrial designers.
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"Rather than offering answers, contemporary art asks questions."
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Crypto art is a digital art form. It is treated like physical artwork collections, and owners may have verified ownership of a piece of crypto art. The art world has long had established systems for collection paintings or sculptures.
But until now, although it was produced, there was no clear way for people to collect digital artwork. Crypto art and NFTs allow you to do just that.
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Crypto art can take many forms, from digital graphics to music, VR dreamscapes, or programmable art. These digital assets can have a collector’s value and can represent items, including still graphic images, photography, GIFs, videos, music & much more.
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Yes, crypto art can be authenticated and is usually genuine. Just as paintings are signed and authenticated, crypto art can be verified.
Crypto art or “NFT-based artworks” have been selling for thousands or even millions of dollars through reputable auction houses such as Christie’s over the past year.
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Many of the most famous crypto artists have been well known in the digital art space for some time but others are younger, newer artists finding their audience in a digital-first world.
The beauty of crypto art is its democratization of the art scene. Technology has allowed a wider variety of artists and digital creators to get their work out to the world and find new fans and buyers.
One of the biggest names in the digital art market is Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple. Hhis piece “Everyday: The First 5000 days” sold for $69.3 million in March 2021.
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You can certainly copy a digital file, including art sold with an NFT. In some cases, the owner can buy the rights to reproduction.
An NFT grants you ownership of the work, but it can be copied with permission or illegally. This is not actually that different from the reproductions we see all the time of traditional artwork. Just as the Mona Lisa has been reproduced countless times in print and digital, so too can crypto art. But only one person can own the original of any artwork.
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The Ethereum blockchain is one of the most popular networks for digital artists to join and sell their artwork on. It is currently the most extensive network for crypto art.
Some marketplaces like Raible and Mintable offer a complete range of digital art. Others like Ephemera cater mainly to photographers.
Crypto art marketplaces require a portfolio review to gain entry. Make sure you are working with the most reputable and focused marketplace for each artistic medium.
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Do some research before making a big purchase or investment.
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Art isn’t a knock-knock joke, and squinting at an exhibit isn’t going to elicit a punch line. Everyone — artists and viewers alike — will have a unique experience. As in the rest of life, there will be times when you can’t relate to the artist, or even understand where they're coming from. Accept that, and move on. Don’t write off art, an entire genre, or even a particular work just because it doesn’t agree with you at the moment. As you go through life, your tastes will change.
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Assuming you have the aforementioned human intelligence, then you also have artistic ability. Anything that you consider to be art will be. Walk backward through a crosswalk. Take a photo. Instagram it. Experiment. Cook an amazing meal (bonus points if you don’t look at a recipe). I guarantee you’ll feel better about art after exercising your right to create.
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“Every artist was first an amateur”
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“Creativity takes courage”
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"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up "
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“You don’t take a photograph, you make it”
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Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
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Composition describes the arrangement of visual elements in a painting or work of art. The elements of composition are not the same as the elements of art.
The elements of composition help to give structure to the layout of the painting and the way it is presented. They also lead the viewer's eye to wander around the whole painting, taking in everything and finally returning to rest on the focal point.
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