Kinetic art is art from any medium that contains movement perceivable by the viewer or that depends on motion for its effects. Canvas paintings that extend the viewer's perspective of the artwork and incorporate multidimensional movement are the earliest examples of kinetic art. More pertinently speaking, kinetic art is a term that today most often refers to three-dimensional sculptures and figures such as mobiles that move naturally or are machine operated. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer. Kinetic art encompasses a wide variety of overlapping techniques and styles.
Naum Gabo, Kinetic Construction, also titled Standing Wave (1919–20)
Édouard Manet, Le Ballet Espagnol (1862).
At the Races, 1877–1880, oil on canvas, by Edgar Degas, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Edgar Degas, The Orchestra at the Opera (c. 1870)
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving and modelling, in stone, metal, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or moulded or cast.
Venus of Hohle Fels, Germany, oldest known sculpture of a human being, 42.000–40.000 BP
Dying Gaul, or The Capitoline Gaul, a Roman marble copy of a Hellenistic work of the late 3rd century BCE, Capitoline Museums, Rome
Assyrian lamassu gate guardian from Khorsabad, c. 800–721 BCE
Michelangelo's Moses, (c. 1513–1515), San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome, for the tomb of Pope Julius II
