Art criticism is the discussion or evaluation of visual art.
The critic is “minimally required to be a connoisseur,” which means he must have a “sound knowledge” of the history of art. The critic is often faced with a choice: to defend old standards, values, and hierarchies against new ones or to defend the new against the old. There are thus avant-garde critics, who become advocates of art that departs from and even subverts or destabilizes prevailing norms and conventions and becomes socially disruptive, as well as reactionary critics, who defend the old order of thinking and values and the socially established familiar art that goes along with them.
Art critics usually criticize art in the context of aesthetics or the theory of beauty. One of criticism's goals is the pursuit of a rational basis for art appreciation.  The art critic views art at exhibitions, galleries, museums or artists' studios.

The variety of artistic movements has resulted in a division of art criticism into different disciplines, each using vastly different criteria for their judgements. The most common division in the field of criticism is between historical criticism and evaluation, a form of art history, and contemporary criticism of work by living artists. Some art movements themselves were named disparagingly by critics, with the name later adopted as a sort of badge of honor by the artists of the style (e.g. Impressionism, Cubism) .
The first writer to acquire an individual reputation as an art critic in 18th C. France was La Font de Saint-Yenne who wrote about the Salon of 1737 and wrote primarily to entertain while including anti-monarchist rhetoric in his prose. A dominating figure in 19th century art criticism was French poet Charles Baudelaire, whose first published work was his art review Salon of 1845, which attracted immediate attention for its boldness. Many of his critical opinions were novel in their time, including his championing of Eugène Delacroix and Gustave Courbet. When Édouard Manet's famous Olympia (1865), a portrait of a nude courtesan, provoked a scandal for its blatant realism, Baudelaire worked privately to support his friend.
Jackson Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Harold Rosenberg spoke of the transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". Art critics today work not only in print media-in specialist art magazines as well as newspapers, but also on the internet, on TV and on radio, and in art museums and galleries. Many are also employed in universities or as art educators for museums. Art critics curate exhibitions and are frequently employed to write exhibition catalogues. Art critics have their own organization, a UNESCO non-governmental organisation, called the International Association of Art Critics which has around 76 national sections and a political non-aligned section for refugees and exiles.
The new conceptual orientation .Throughout the 20th century, another school of thought developed alongside these critics’ interest in pure form.  Although they professed conceptual aims, these movements in fact helped broaden expression. Constructivism and De Stijl developed and refined the rational, geometric style that became de rigueur in modern International Style architecture by such architects. Despite the conceptual nature of their critical statements, therefore, these movements resisted being easily categorized as purely formal or conceptual.
Since in the early 21st century, online art critical websites and art blogs have cropped up around the world to add their voices to the art world. Some notable art blogs and art blog writers who have focused on art criticism include Art Fag City, Bad at Sports, Art Critical , Neoteric Art , James Wagner, Fallon and Rosof , CultureGrrl , Edward Winkleman's blog, Sharon Butler's Two Coats of Paint.
Many cultures have strong traditions of art evaluation. For these and other regional approaches to art evaluation and historiography, see art, African arts, Central Asian arts, East Asian arts, Islamic arts, Native American art and architecture, Oceanic arts, South Asian and arts, Southeast Asian.
Theoretical criticism—criticism that attempts to establish an artistic program on a rational basis and that also regards art as the exemplification and embodiment of ideas.

Philoshophy of Art:

Philosophy, science and art differ principally according to their subject-matter and also the means by which they reflect, transform and express it.
Equally true is the fact that no thinking and emotionally developed person can remain indifferent to literature, poetry, music, painting, sculpture and architecture. Art is a combination of man's cognitive and evaluative attitudes to reality recorded in words, colours, plastic forms or melodically arranged sounds. Like philosophy, art also has a profoundly communicative function. Through it people communicate to one another their feelings, their most intimate and infinitely varied and poignant thoughts.  The main responsibility of art to society is the formation of a view of the world, a true and large-scale assessment of events, a rational, reasoning orientation of man in the world around him, a true assessment of his own self. And indeed all the great writers, poets, composers, sculptors, architects, painters, in short, all the most outstanding and brilliant exponents of art were imbued with a sense of the exceptional importance of progressive philosophy and not only kept abreast of but were often responsible for its achievements.

Since antiquity, philosophers have been theorizing about art, as well as criticizing it. Plato, for example, regarded art as an inferior form of knowledge, indeed, no more than an illusion of knowledge or copy of a copy. In the Republic he describes the painter as a “creator of appearances,” stating that “what he creates is untrue,” a resemblance of existence” rather than a “real existence.”
Aristotle took a somewhat different approach to his theory of art, although he also regarded art as a form of imitation. In his Poetics, perhaps the most influential work on art ever written, he makes it clear that art is a moral issue, since it deals with human character. “The objects of imitation…represent men either as better than in real life, or as worse, or as they are.”
The ancient philosopher Plotinus saw art as more mystical than mundane. He was the founder of Roman Neoplatonism, and his thinking about art reflects that of Plato, with important, influential differences.
Kant is best known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. In the chapter "Analytic of the Beautiful" of the Critique of Judgment, Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure which attends the 'free play' of the imagination and the understanding.
Sigmund Freud also wrote about art and the artists mainly surrealism and Dali. Dali is one of few who is able to convince that this other world could also be real. It may be because he did not paint from his imagination or by combining real elements into surreal components. Freud  divided the mind into the conscious mind (or the ego) and the unconscious mind.
Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego.
Freud, together with Karl Marx and Albert Einstein, as the "architects of the modern age", while nevertheless remarking, ".
Tolstoy defines  that "Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.”
The value of art, then, is one with the value of empathy.

Aesthetics:
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste. More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as " Various attempts have been made to define Post-modern aesthetics critical reflection on art, culture and nature."
The foundation of the Indian aesthetic theory can be traced to Bharatamuni's Natyashastra (natya meaning "drama" and shastra meaning "science of") where he gave his theory of beauty (theory of rasa) which was later elaborately developed by learned scholars. The nine emotions or navarasa described in ancient indian aesthetic philosophy can be seen as being indicative of prime human emotions. The nine rasas were the backbone of Indian and formed the premise from which traditions of dance, music, theatre, art and literature evolved. So profound was the impact of this philosophy that it came to be regarded as the ‘fifth Veda’. The nine rasas of ancient Indian thought are: shringara (erotic love), karuna (compassion), adbhuta (awe, wonderment), shanta (peace, equanimity), hasya (laughter, mirth), veer (valour, heroism), bhaya (fear), vibhatsa (disgust) and raudra (anger, fury).

Art Conservation and Restoration:
Conservation and restoration is a profession devoted to the preservation of cultural heritage for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive conservation.

Art colleges  and Art Institutes:
 
Yale University
New Haven/United States       
Harvard University
Cambridge/United States       
University of Oxford
Oxford/United Kingdom    
UCLA 
Los Angeles/United States      
University of Cambridge
Cambridge/United Kingdom       
Royal College of Art
London/United Kingdom       
California Institute of the Arts 
Valencia/United States   
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco/United States   
Universite Paris Sorbonne
Paris/France   
The School of Art and Design Berlin
Berlin/Germany
 Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design
London/United Kingdom,
 The Academy of Fine Arts Prague
Prague/Czech Republic
The University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame/United States

The main Art colleges in India are :  Sir J J College of art  , Delhi College of Art,  The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Government College of Art & Craft , Kolkata, Banaras Hindu University (BHU) and few more.
One has to clear the entrance test to get admission in these art colleges., There are many coaching centres and personal tutors who guide for art college  examinations.
Painting classes in Delhi : join  coaching classes  for admission in Art colleges and Art institutes in Delhi. Learn painting in oil, acrylic, water colors, dry and oil pastels, charcoal, sketching, shading, drawing in detail .                                                                    
Special art workshop: learn to make Paper Mache masks,pottery, ceremics,  puppets, mud sculptures and toys, embossed paintings, paintings in different mediums, different textures etc.
Register your name for different workshops.

Art and Craft:
Arts and crafts comprise a whole host of activities and hobbies that are related to making things with one's hands and skill. There are almost as many variations on the theme of "arts and crafts".

Folk art and Tribal art:
Folk and tribal art in India takes on different manifestations through varied medium such as pottery, painting, metalwork, dhokra art, paper-art, weaving and designing of objects such as jewelry and toys.
It is in art where life and creativity are inseparable. The tribal arts have a unique sensitivity, as the tribal people possess an intense awareness very different from the settled and urbanized people. Folk art also includes the visual expressions of the wandering nomads. This is the art of people who are exposed to changing landscapes as they travel over the valleys and highlands of India. They carry with them the experiences and memories of different spaces and their art consists of the transient and dynamic pattern of life.

Fashion and Art:
Fashion is style of one’s representation. Fashion is an exploration that unites cultural, historical and community boundaries. It is the element that has helped to shape one’s own life and the way it ties lives together, bringing life from the past to the present and into the future .Fashion is no doubt a form of art. Since ages, there has been strong impact of art on fashion and fashion on art.
Fashion is not a new thing at all. In our Indian culture, both in mythology and epics, we see the reference of ‘’shringar’’ which is nothing but fashion. I try  to portray the moods of female attitude and try to capture the moments in my paintings that are iconic, perpetual, sculptural, formal and many more. Several movies have been made which revolves around fashion and garment industry and the models . I try to prove through my paintings that true fashion does not come only through dresses and cosmetics but it comes through one’s spiritual ecstasy.

Art Galleries and Art meseums:
An art gallery or art museum is a building or space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art. Museums can be public or private, but what distinguishes a museum is the ownership of a collection. Paintings are the most commonly displayed art objects; however, sculpture, decorative arts, furniture, textiles, costume, drawings, pastels, watercolors, collages, prints, artists' books, photographs, and installation art are also regularly shown
Some popular Indian  art galleries selling art to the corporate  are vadehra art gallery, Espace art gallery, Art Konsult gallery ,CIMA art gallery, Pallette art gallery,  Krishna art gallery, Tao art gallery, Sakshi art gallery, Nitanjali art gallery, Art Alternative, Aaakriti art gallery, Dhoomimal art gallery and many more .
There are many international art  galleries and websites selling and promoting artists and artworks like ABS Gallery, Tate Modern, Galerie Gmurzynska, James Cohan Gallery, Barbara Krakow Gallery,  Peter Blum, Mark Moore Gallery, Jonathan Novak Contemporary Art, M Gallery of Fine Art , KM Fine Arts  and many more. Some famous online galleries are Saatchi online, Goiart, Artslant, Art absolutes, Art.com Inc. etc. 

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City,  British Museum, London, The Tate Museum, London ,  The Louvre, Paris,  ,Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Museum of Arts and Crafts, Czech Museum of Fine Arts  . Some of famous Indian museums are National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, Government Museum and Art Gallery, Chandigarh,    Prince of Wales Museum etc.
more museums in United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Oceania, Africa, South America and North America

International Art fairs:
An inde­pen­dent panel of judges has care­fully selected the artists on the basis of their tal­ent for cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful art­works at prices that the pub­lic can afford. Think of the Acces­si­ble Art Fair as a bou­tique – a care­fully selected col­lec­tion of orig­i­nal art­works and the oppor­tu­nity for you the pub­lic to meet the artists and buy. Some important art fairs are mentioned below:
The San Francisco Fine Art Fair, NADA NYC, Whitney Biennial 2012, Fountain Art Fair, Affordable Art Fair Los Angeles, Art Stage Singapore, Abu Dhabi Art Fair,

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