Art, a disciplined activity that may be limited to skill or expanded to include a distinctive way of looking at the world. The word art is derived from the Latin ars, meaning "skill." Art is skill at performing a set of specialized actions, as, for example, the art of gardening or of playing chess.
Art in its broader meaning, however, involves both skill and creative imagination in a musical, literary, visual, or performance context. Art provides the person or people who produce it and the community that observes it with an experience that might be aesthetic, emotional, intellectual, or a combination of these qualities.
Fine Arts and Decorative Arts
Traditionally, in most societies, art has combined practical and aesthetic functions. In the 18th century in the West, however, a more sophisticated public began to distinguish between art that was purely aesthetic and art that was also practical. …
