Genre. Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes.
Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the normal meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium and a type of subject matter, is also used in the visual arts.
Thus, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting, the great periods of genre works, may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with history painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious, and still life and architectural painting at the bottom.
But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works. The following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th cent
Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the normal meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium and a type of subject matter, is also used in the visual arts.
Thus, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting, the great periods of genre works, may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with history painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious, and still life and architectural painting at the bottom.
But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works. The following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th cent
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