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The visual arts are art forms that focus on the formation of works which are primarily visual in nature, such as painting, photography, printmaking, and filmmaking. Those that involve three-dimensional objects, such as statue and architecture, are called plastic arts. Many artistic disciplines involve aspect of the visual arts as well as other types, so these definitions are not strict.

The current usage of the term visual arts includes fine arts as well as crafts, but this was not forever the case. Before the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, visual artist referred to a human being working in the fine arts and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art disciplines. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts movement who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. The movement contrast with modernists who sought to withhold the high arts from the masses by keeping them esoteric. Art schools made a distinction among the fine arts and the crafts in such a way that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of art.