Talk:Taryn Simon

Article is a sales piece
I'm willing to assume Ms. Simon is a wonderful artist. But this article lacks all credibility & is merely annoying.

One instantly can form the impression it was written by her not-very sophisticated agent, or a rabid fan. Badiacrushed (talk) 16:58, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Noting source
. postdlf (talk) 21:03, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

External link
I have added a link to a video in which the artist talks about her current exhibition at Tate Modern, called 'A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters'. She talks about the works and the specific order of them in the exhibition. T.Broch (talk) 13:40, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Spurious reference
In this edit (25 January 2013), SPA Carytijerina (contributions) adds:

In, Beyond Photogaphy, the essay that [Homi Bhabha] contributed to the book, he writes, "Simon juxtaposes the visual and the textual in a kind of montage which is neither totalising or teleological. Her critique of progressivism leads her to describe her concatenation of image and text in the following way:


 * 'There is no end result. There is only disorientation or the unknown. It's an equation that folds out on itself again and again. X+Y does not equal something. It doesn't equal infinity either. It just mutates into another question.'

Such a statement is difficult to reconcile with an art that has demonstrated a sustained formal interest in lists, catalogues, indexes, collections, case studies, and assemblages."

(The material that preceded this was unsourced.) In this edit of 2 July 2015 by special-purpose IP 173.56.80.21 (contributions), the above is replaced with

Such a statement is difficult to reconcile with an art that has demonstrated a sustained formal interest in lists, catalogues, indexes, collections, case studies, and assemblages."

Thereafter the unsourced material has been spuriously sourced to a "private correspondence".

I'm about to remove this spurious reference. -- Hoary (talk) 09:36, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Plagiarism and another spurious reference
In this edit of 9 December 2012, special-purpose IP 78.52.132.64 (contributions) pasted in a chunk copied from an article in the magazine W, correctly identifying the source but neglecting to show that it was a quotation.

In this edit of 18 January 2013, SPA Carytijerina (contributions) changed the attribution to "Art Forum, Summer, 2012, page 249", with the edit summary "adding further citations".

I've just now edited the article, both to fix that and to remove a bogus reference. Before my edit, the article attributed the claim that "Her father and grandfather both worked extensively with image and text" to the article in W. The article doesn't say this about her father and doesn't even mention her grandfather. If there were thirty hours in the day I'd look through the history of this (WP) article to investigate the history of this specious claim as well.

Somebody with access to a copy of Art Forum of Summer 2012 may wish to see if it reproduces the W article, or anyway presents something very similar to its content. As it is, I view this article (a remarkable percentage of which was created by a series of SPAs and SP IPs) with considerable suspicion. The whole thing should really be checked. How much of it is plagiarized? How many of the "references" actually say what they're presented as saying? -- Hoary (talk) 22:29, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

No, oldest to newest
In this edit (among a series), User:GogoW24 switches the list of books from chronological to reverse chronological order. However, in Wikipedia: Chronological lists, including all timelines and lists of works, should be in earliest-to-latest chronological order.

GogoW24, please revert this and any similar change you have made.

Additionally, when you edit any article, please provide an edit summary. Thank you. -- Hoary (talk) 00:27, 28 February 2017 (UTC)


 * No response of any kind. I've therefore reversed the order myself just now, to oldest-to-newest.


 * Oldest-to-newest is the way it should stay. Anyone who doesn't like this order is welcome to take up the matter at Wikipedia talk:Stand-alone lists. -- Hoary (talk) 23:37, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

One of a series
This article is one of a series of similar articles concerning marginally significant artists....Each seems aimed primarily at promotion and each is thinly sourced....There are other similarities.....

Badiacrushed (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that this article has suffered from some ugly additions, and some of its sections are very much in need of referencing (Public collections and Awards and nominations), but this is definitely not a "marginally significant artist" considering her exhibitions in notable institutions and books published by notable publishers. -Lopifalko (talk) 21:28, 31 July 2017 (UTC)


 * One of these sections (on A Polite Fiction) simply recycled Simon's own description. Half of this was unattributed, half was attributed to some other "source" that itself merely recycled Simon's description. I have altered the section accordingly. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot more of this Wikipedia article turned out to have been recycled from Simon's own descriptions (perhaps subsequently edited to remove conspicuous excesses), but right now I lack either the time or the desire to check. -- Hoary (talk) 22:44, 31 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, maybe it's the HTML errors in the page that are to blame, but for whatever reason the second half of that block quotation isn't normally visible in the page as I view it in Firefox. I have to look in the source (Ctrl-U if using Linux or Windows) in order to read it. -- Hoary (talk) 22:49, 31 July 2017 (UTC)


 * You're partly just repeating yourself, Badiacrushed. But I'm mildly intrigued by your talk of "similar articles concerning marginally significant artists". If these appear to have been created by the same editor(s), please name the articles. -- Hoary (talk) 02:50, 9 August 2017 (UTC)


 * am perhaps repeating myself because it's fairly common (and quite easy) to manipulate Wikipedia for self-promotion -- even by those who are marginally "notable." Extremely easy to find examples of this.....I dimly recall that a contributor to this article has worked on a string of similar articles concerning very marginally notable artists....I certainly don't care enough to make a "federal case" out of it....marshall evidence, etc......The editorial standard "notable" is rather easy to meet. One sees this for example on WIkipedia pages for college professors....many of whom have long lists of basically inconsequential academic articles published in obscure journals ... and thus meet the standard.....Ambitious but not terribly successful artists (there are many thousands)  also flog resumes that include "notable" (but essentially trivial) "accomplishments" and thus qualify....  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Badiacrushed (talk • contribs) 00:06, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

Major source: Simon's website
It turns out that much of the descriptions of Simon's work were taken directly from her website, without this (or any) source being specified, and certainly without any indication (quotation marks, block indentation) that it was in the original wording (sometimes slightly improved, I suppose by subsequent editors who fondly believed that they were improving text original to Wikipedia).

In a recent set of edits, I have tried to label such text properly. But it accounts for a curiously and I think inappropriately high percentage of the entire article. -- Hoary (talk) 23:19, 4 August 2017 (UTC)
 * This is fine work you have done. Finally an answer to where all this bulky prose was coming from, and not even original research. This gives us reason enough to remove it doesn't it? -Lopifalko (talk) 06:43, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * I think that this would be permissible. In the meantime, I've added the POV template. -- Hoary (talk) 00:55, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

COI editing?
Its history shows that this article is one of a small number whose content was considerably augmented by User:GogoW24. I don't know how GogoW24 is related to Simon. However, Simon and Y.Z. Kami are both artists; and on GogoW24's relationship with the latter, see this.

Wikipedia's guideline on "Conflict of interest" says:

"Editors with a COI, including paid editors, are expected to disclose it whenever they seek to influence an affected article's content. Anyone editing for pay must disclose who is paying them, who the client is, and any other relevant affiliation; this is a requirement of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition, COI editors are generally advised not to edit affected articles directly, and to propose changes on talk pages instead."

I invite GogoW24 to describe their status. -- Hoary (talk) 10:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Two weeks have gone by with no response from GogoW24. GogoW24 is of course still very welcome to respond. In the meantime, however, because:


 * (i) GogoW24 wrote the following about Y.Z. Kami and the Wikipedia page about him:


 * We represent the artist, and have worked with him directly in deciding how his page should look. All of the exhibitions and publications are necessary, and our formatting is designed specifically for this.


 * (ii) it beggars belief that a contributor would work (as part of their remunerated job) to promote one artist (Kami) on Wikipedia but would edit the article on another (Simon) in a similar style but disinterestedly


 * I'm about to put the COI template on the article.


 * Again, I'm open to reasoned arguments for the removal of the template. -- Hoary (talk) 23:08, 18 August 2017 (UTC)