Talk:History of art

Needed improvements (2018)
This page clearly needs work. What should the first priorities be when editing it? What would the most useful structure of this page be? TravisNygard (talk) 23:15, 10 May 2018 (UTC)
 * I think you are right to strip it down to a basic chronological/regional survey. I think this is still what people expect, even though it will just repeat regional/periood articles like Art of Europe. There should be lots of links. Much of the writing is clearly not by a native speaker, & lots more refs are needed. There is lots that isn't actually about art - the stuff on early writing & then Mesopotamian literature for example, or the first para of "Global Modern and Contemporary". The "Renaissance and Baroque" section is a joke. So just a complete rewrite needed - the leads of relevant articles will supply a good deal of what is needed. This page doesn't get much serious text-editing, & a lot of this has been here 10 years or more. I'd be pretty ruthless. It gets over 500 views a day, & should be far better. Johnbod (talk) 00:41, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Orphaned references in History of art
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of History of art's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "British Museum": From Chinese influences on Islamic pottery: Notice of British Museum "Islamic Art Room" permanent exhibit. From List of Stone Age art:  

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 04:10, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

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 * Blombos Cave engrave ochre 1.jpg

Missing "History of the arts" article?
While reviewing the vital articles list, I noticed that History of the arts redirects to this page, which seems to focus on visual art. We have separate articles for art and the arts, with the latter encompassing a broader subject matter, so why should that not also be the case for the history articles? Sdkb (talk) 08:16, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * The Art history article appears to be more broad: Fine art being restricted to visual art. Coldcreation (talk) 09:03, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Art history seems to be more about the discipline and historiography, as opposed to an overview of the history of the arts. It's a distinction similar to that between History and History of the world. Sdkb (talk) 07:15, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * If I recall, there have been discussions on respective talk pages about merging one or more of these articles. Coldcreation (talk) 08:10, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
 * I don't myself think a WP attempt to cover the global history of music, literature, theatre, dance and visual art together is likely to be a success. Johnbod (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Missing "Women as contributors to the History"
There should be no need for a separate article on women contributors, yet they are largely missing from this account. Why is this?--Po Mieczu (talk) 13:38, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Famously, there were very few women artists we know anything about until the most recent centuries, and little that could be said to be distinct genres or styles attributable to them, above all in the fine arts. See, among other works, Germaine Greer (2 June 2001). The Obstacle Race: The Fortunes of Women Painters and Their Work.. Johnbod (talk) 15:49, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

I think it is a reflection of the historical oppression and limitations women have been subjected to in Western culture as a whole, combined with the brevity and limited level of detail that these brief and highly generalized accounts can accommodate. With the rise of the women's suffrage movement in the mid 19th century, slowly more and more women began appearing as key and defining figures. WiLaFa 17:20, 13 July 2020 (UTC)


 * Thank you both for your observations. Germaine is of her time and is arguably passée, and yes, there are other younger people addressing the overshadowing of women and misattributing their work to men etc. Indeed there are key and defining women who are slowly emerging and I have made a few inserts.
 * Fundamentally, this article, though it has its strengths, is so absurdly skewed it ill serves the reader in several other ways:


 * It is neither the canon, nor an update of Ernst Gombrich.
 * The early stuff and the material which is not frankly Western European, is overwhelmingly ethnocentric, ethnographic or just missing, e.g. where are the art movements of Central and Eastern Europe? After all, since the 19th c. notable people travelled into Paris, Munich, Rome and latterly British and US art schools etc. and often went back home, where are they in this article?
 * We do not see what happens in modern African countries, in the Middle East, in the Arab world, in Iran, and the colossus that was the Soviet Union, let alone the Antipodes, China, SE Asia or Latin America.
 * The title is wholly misleading: the art to which it refers is essentially about what has sold in auction houses or is kept in so-called leading museums and collections in the G8 over the last century or two.
 * The challenge is how to edit an introductory piece which would allow the reader to pursue more detailed searches in related articles, which presumably is what the Art Portal is for. Is there a group who could tackle this, lock, stock and barrel? --Po Mieczu (talk) 01:07, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
 * So your original question was just a dummy? At 288K raw bytes this article is already far too long. It's a wikipedia article, not a book.  It certainly gives the fine arts way more coverage than the decorative arts, but that is true for the vast majority of RS coverage of art.  I can't say I greatly feel the lack of "modern African countries, in the Middle East, in the Arab world, in Iran, and the colossus that was the Soviet Union" (hardly a colossus in art, surely),  but the coverage of Islamic, Indian, Chinese and Japanese art is derisory.  Prints are only mentioned a few times in passing.  "Is there a group who could tackle this" - probably not. Johnbod (talk) 15:13, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

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 * Victor Brauner, 1942, Signe (Le vent), Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris. DSC09041.jpg

Missing Coptic art
In Africa section, a small paragraph to Coptic art of Egypt and Ethiopia is missing. --Sailko (talk) 09:52, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

Too many images
Article is timing out on mobile versions of Wikipedia. Ideally, a page should have no more than 100 images ..MOS:ACCIM.-- Moxy - 12:57, 17 April 2022 (UTC)

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 * Front views of the Venus de Milo.jpg

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Ignored subjects
Islamic and African arts are largely ignored and why is it Sub Saharan and not African art and where is Egypt for that matter??? More needs to be added Nlivataye (talk) 13:22, 9 May 2023 (UTC)
 * For "largely ignored" read "have their own sections"! As has Ancient Egyptian art, which though from Africa is typically seen as different from African art. Johnbod (talk) 13:48, 9 May 2023 (UTC)