Portal:The arts

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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 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. (Full article...)

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330 West 42nd Street, also known as the McGraw-Hill Building and formerly the GHI Building, is a 485-foot-tall (148 m), 33-story skyscraper in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Designed by Raymond Hood and J. André Fouilhoux in a mixture of the International Style, Art Deco, and Art Moderne styles, the building was constructed from 1930 to 1931 and originally served as the headquarters of the McGraw-Hill Companies. (Full article...)
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South Pacific is a musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 book Tales of the South Pacific and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism. (Full article...)
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Travis performing in Bolingbrook, Illinois, in 2007

Randy Bruce Traywick (born May 4, 1959), known professionally as Randy Travis, is an American country and gospel music singer and songwriter, as well as a film and television actor. Active since 1979, he has recorded over 20 studio albums and charted over 50 singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, including sixteen that reached the number-one position. (Full article...)
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Lions is the sixth studio album by American rock band the Black Crowes. It was released in 2001 as their first album on V2 Records following their departure from Columbia, and is their only studio album to feature guitarist Audley Freed. Lions was recorded in New York City in January and February of that year, and was produced by Don Was. Bass guitar duties were shared by Rich Robinson and Was, as Greg Rzab had left the band and was not replaced until the tour that followed the release of the album. (Full article...)
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The Sirens and Ulysses, 1837, 442.5 by 297 cm (14 ft 6.2 in by 9 ft 8.9 in)

The Sirens and Ulysses is a large oil painting on canvas by the English artist William Etty, first exhibited in 1837. It depicts the scene from Homer's Odyssey in which Ulysses (Odysseus) resists the bewitching song of the sirens by having his ship's crew tie him up, while they are ordered to block their own ears to prevent themselves from hearing the song. (Full article...)
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"Goodbyeee", or "Plan F: Goodbyeee", is the sixth and final episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, the fourth and final series of British historical sitcom Blackadder. The episode was first broadcast on BBC1 in the United Kingdom on 2 November 1989, shortly before Armistice Day. Apart from the one-off short film Blackadder: Back & Forth made a decade later, it was the last episode of Blackadder to be produced and transmitted. (Full article...)
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Holy Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death) is the fourth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on November 11, 2000, by Nothing and Interscope Records. A rock opera concept album, it is the final installment of a triptych that also included Antichrist Superstar (1996), and marked a return to the industrial metal style of the band's earlier work, after the glam rock-influenced production of Mechanical Animals (1998). After its release, the band's eponymous vocalist said that the overarching story within the trilogy is presented in reverse chronological order: Holy Wood, therefore, begins the narrative. (Full article...)
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William Hogarth

The Four Stages of Cruelty is a series of four printed engravings published by English artist William Hogarth in 1751. Each print depicts a different stage in the life of the fictional Tom Nero. (Full article...)
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Tragic Kingdom is the third studio album by American rock band No Doubt, released on October 10, 1995, by Trauma Records and Interscope Records. It was the final album to feature original keyboardist Eric Stefani, who left the band in 1994. The album was produced by Matthew Wilder and recorded in 11 studios in the Greater Los Angeles area between March 1993 and October 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, the album spawned seven singles, including "Just a Girl", which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart; and "Don't Speak", which topped the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay and reached the top five of many international charts. (Full article...)
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The Pale Emperor is the ninth studio album by American rock band Marilyn Manson. It was released on January 15, 2015, through lead singer Marilyn Manson's Hell, etc. label, and distributed in the United States by Loma Vista Recordings and internationally by Cooking Vinyl. The album was issued in standard and deluxe editions on CD and double LP vinyl, and as a limited edition box set. The standard version of the album contains ten tracks; the deluxe edition includes three acoustic versions as bonus tracks. (Full article...)
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Portrait of Princess Albert de Broglie

The Princesse de Broglie (French: La Princesse de Broglie [la pʁɛ̃.sɛs də bʁɔj]) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French Neoclassical artist Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. It was painted between 1851 and 1853, and shows Pauline de Broglie [fr], who adopted the courtesy title 'Princesse'. Born Pauline de Galard de Brassac de Béarn, she married Albert de Broglie, the future 28th prime minister of France, in 1845. Pauline was 28 at the time of the painting's completion. She was highly intelligent and widely known for her beauty, but she suffered from profound shyness and the painting captures her melancholia. Pauline contracted tuberculosis in her early 30s and died in 1860 aged 35. Although Albert lived until 1901, he was heartbroken and did not remarry. (Full article...)
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Boogeyman 2 is a 2007 American supernatural horror film edited and directed by Jeff Betancourt and the sequel to the 2005 film Boogeyman. The film was written by Brian Sieve and stars Danielle Savre, Matt Cohen, David Gallagher, Mae Whitman, Renee O'Connor, and Tobin Bell. Savre portrays Laura Porter, a woman who witnessed her parents' murder alongside her brother as a child. She believes the killer to be the Boogeyman, and now as an adult seeks group therapy to overcome her phobia of the creature. However, her fears become reality as her fellow patients are murdered one by one. (Full article...)
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Gielgud as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, 1959

Sir Arthur John Gielgud (/ˈɡiːlɡʊd/ GHEEL-guud; 14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31. (Full article...)
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The pilot episode of the television series Smallville premiered on The WB on October 16, 2001. It was written by series developers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, and directed by David Nutter. The Smallville pilot introduces the characters of Clark Kent, an orphaned alien with superhuman abilities, and his friends and family who live in the fictional town of Smallville, Kansas. It follows Clark as he first learns of his alien origins, and attempts to stop a vengeful student from killing Smallville High School students. The episode introduces many themes that were designed to run either the course of the season or the entire series, such as the triangular relationships of the main characters. (Full article...)
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"X-Cops" is the twelfth episode of the seventh season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. Directed by Michael Watkins and written by Vince Gilligan, the installment serves as a "Monster-of-the-Week" story—a stand-alone plot unconnected to the overarching mythology of The X-Files. Originally aired in the United States by the Fox network on February 20, 2000, "X-Cops" received a Nielsen rating of 9.7 and was seen by 16.56 million viewers. The episode earned positive reviews from critics, largely due to its unique presentation, as well as its use of humor. Since its airing, the episode has been named among the best episodes of The X-Files by several reviewers. (Full article...)