The arts: their diversity and forms
Art is how people turn experience into something that can be seen, heard or lived in: a line of calligraphy, a melody, a scene on stage, a house that shelters from the heat. Here is an overview of the main art forms, with special attention to Arab and Islamic arts.
How are the arts classified?
Reference works traditionally divide the arts into visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking), performing arts (music, theatre, dance), literary arts (poetry and prose) and applied arts that combine beauty with function, such as architecture, design and crafts. Classification is a tool for understanding rather than a strict boundary — cinema, for example, combines image, sound, story and performance.
In Saudi Arabia, the cultural sector reflects this diversity: the Ministry of Culture oversees 11 cultural commissions — Literature, Publishing & Translation; Fashion; Film; Heritage; Architecture & Design; Visual Arts; Museums; Theater & Performing Arts; Libraries; Music; and Culinary Arts.
Visual arts
Painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking and contemporary digital and installation art. In the Islamic tradition, visual art also includes geometric and floral ornament (arabesque) and miniature painting.
Arabic calligraphy
In 2021 UNESCO inscribed "Arabic calligraphy: knowledge, skills and practices" on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, following a joint nomination by 16 Arab states led by Saudi Arabia. UNESCO describes it as the artistic practice of handwriting the 28 Arabic letters fluidly to convey harmony and beauty — traditionally with a reed or bamboo qalam and ink made of honey, soot and saffron, and today also in paint and spray on walls ("calligraffiti").
Music
Music organizes sound in time through melody, rhythm and harmony. Arabic music is distinguished by the maqam system and quarter tones, instruments such as the oud, qanun and ney, and local styles such as samri, ardah and Hijazi tarab.
Theatre and performing arts
Theatre relies on live presence between performer and audience, and includes drama, comedy, musical shows and folk dance. Arab culture has old performance roots such as the hakawati (storyteller) and shadow play.
Literature
Literature is the art of the word: poetry, the novel, the short story and the essay. Poetry has long been called "the register of the Arabs", from the Mu'allaqat to Nabati poetry and the modern poem; prose stretches from the maqamat and One Thousand and One Nights to the contemporary Arabic novel.
Architecture and design
Architecture is art you live in. Arab examples include Najdi mud-brick houses, the wooden rawasheen of Historic Jeddah — a UNESCO World Heritage site — and the domes, minarets and arches of Islamic architecture.
Cinema
Cinema, "the seventh art", brings all the arts together in the moving image. Saudi Arabia has seen notable growth in filmmaking with the Film Commission and festivals such as the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah.
Fashion, culinary arts and crafts
The Saudi cultural system treats fashion and culinary arts as cultural sectors in their own right: an embroidered garment or a traditional dish carries the memory of a place just as a painting does — alongside crafts such as Sadu weaving, pottery and carving.
Why does this diversity matter?
Diverse arts mean diverse ways of understanding: someone untouched by a poem may be moved by a melody, and someone who cannot read a painting may read a building.