The artistic disciplines of fine arts classified as plastic arts are, basically, painting, sculpture and architecture, but we can also include among them drawing, engraving, ceramics, goldsmithing and wall painting.
As plastic arts we call all those forms of artistic expression that manipulate and mold materials to build shapes and images in order to present a world view or reality according to a set of aesthetic values.
Plastic arts for children is a subject in school that involves manipulating, transforming, modifying or shaping materials for the creation of artistic forms in order to sensitize students to aesthetic criteria of composition, such as figure and background, proportion, color, movement or planes, etc.
Visual arts can also be a university career that offers students the possibility of developing their creative potential in the different disciplines of plastic.
In the career of plastic arts the student is trained in the different principles and concepts common to all artistic disciplines, as well as in the different problems inherent in artistic creation and art history.
Fine art plastic arts
The term plastic arts dates from the nineteenth century and would come to establish a difference with respect to the disciplines that belong to the 7 fine arts, thus excluding dance, music, literature and cinema within them.
In this sense, the visual arts cover painting, sculpture and architecture, such as:
Plastic arts and painting
Roots, Frida Kahlo, 1943
The painting is one of the oldest expressions of visual arts. Its origin dates back to 36,000 years ago with the cave paintings found in the Chauvet Cave in France.
Plastic arts and sculpture
David, Michelangelo Buonarroti, 1501-1504
The sculpture as art reached its peak in ancient Greece. In this sense, sculpture as a plastic discipline bases its aesthetic values on what we call classical art, which refers mainly to those created during the Hellenic period.
Plastic arts and architecture
Salisbury Cathedral, United Kingdom, 1220-1320
The architecture is a form of plastic arts and belongs to one of the 7 fine arts. Architecture has taken various forms of artistic expression throughout the history of art, following prevailing styles of artistic trends such as, for example, Gothic architecture, Baroque architecture and art nouveau architecture.
Visual arts and plastic arts
The differentiation between visual arts and plastic arts began to be problematized only in the twentieth century, with the emergence of new forms of artistic expression that are characterized by the predominance of the visual and the absence of plastic work of materials.
The visual arts, then, come to expand the possibilities of art outside its traditional places of representation, moving it to new formats and forms of expression such as photography, video art, graffiti, digital art, performance or interventions.
In spite of everything, the concept of visual arts is so broad that it can cover from traditional disciplines such as painting and sculpture, to more recent forms of expression related to computer science.