Contemporary Fine Arts

This new form of contemporary art - which emerged out of Happenings and Conceptual art to
become a major form of avant-garde art during the late 1960s and 1970s - takes as its medium
the artist himself: the actual artwork being the artist's live actions. (http://www.visual-arts-
cork.com/performance-art.htm, ND)

Contemporary Visual Arts

"Visual Arts" is a modern but imprecise umbrella term for a broad category of art which
includes a number of artistic disciplines from various sub-categories. Its wide ambit renders
meaningless any attempt at definition, so rather than define or compose some diluted
meaning for it, here is a list of its constituent disciplines. (http://www.visual-arts-
cork.com/definitions/visual-art.htm, ND)

Contemporary Design in Arts and Crafts

We're talking about the making of objects removed from necessity - we don't need handmade
objects to survive, anymore - and we're talking about a collective response to industrialization.
These, to me, are the two basic facts about modern crafts. In other words, craft as we know it,
is a recent invention. It is not an antique. It is not a picturesque holdover from a distant bucolic
past. Actually, modern craft went through two reinventions: once in England starting in the
1850's , and second time in Europe and North America after World War II.

Craft still stands against the anonymity of mass-production, and for the personalized object.
Craft still stands against ugliness, and, on occasion, for beauty.
Craft still stands against big-money capitalism, and for small-scale entrepeneurship.
Craft stands against corporate labor, where most workers are replaceable parts in a
bureaucracy, and for individual self-determination.
Craft stands for the rich potential the human body at work, and against disembodiment in all its
forms.
(Bruce Metcalf, 1999, http://www.brucemetcalf.com/pages/essays/contemporary_craft.html)

Contemporary Performing arts

This new form of contemporary art - which emerged out of Happenings and Conceptual art to
become a major form of avant-garde art during the late 1960s and 1970s - takes as its medium
the artist himself: the actual artwork being the artist's live actions. Now popular with an
increasing number of postmodernist artists, Performance art is typically intensely theatrical,
often taking acting and movement to extremes of expression and endurance not permitted in the
theatre.
(http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/performance-art.htm, ND)