Talk:Tim Solliday

Article tags
Notable yes This article is in progress. It already lists dozens of sources which will be cited as the article progresses. I have more then ten published exhibition catalogs in front of me with entires on this artist and a half dozen published magazine articles and I am an art historian who curates exhibitions so I think I understand who is notable and who is not. The article in question has been in dozens of exhibitions over a thirty year period. Who the hell is notable? Only Picasso and Vermeer? Sorry, I am not some 14 year old rock and roll fan writing a love letter to my favorite band who performed once at a club down the street and wikipedia is full of such content. Full of little stubs that have no where near the amount of work you are dismissing out of ignorance. I am working with three other mature, serious people who are all experienced art people not necessarily know it all wikipedia veterans. We want to do considerable work on the art section of wikipedia. The article is or will be explanatory, well written and is not at all effusive. Sorry, but wikipedia guidelines do not require writers write like Joe Friday speaks. A monotone drone of a dozen nouns and adjectives is not necessary. I have a library with 4,000 art books and there are many encyclopedias with well written descriptive entries. I am looking at some entries of pages in the Grove Art Dictionary and they are very much like this one. Of course, if I write on Picasso's wikipedia page I am free to quote many effusive things that have been written and published about him and there are hundreds of such quotes. Very nice description on the academic process here. And, there is nothing here other than facts about where the artist studied, how he learned to work, where he has exhibited and things like that. And the story of those relationships is the story of art history, past and present. What else is there in art, for every painter there is a gallery and collector. This is art and something I feel I can say I know a great deal about because I have been in in for four decades. Please spend some time looking at hundreds of poorly written pages that are full of errors, factual and grammatical. I work hard to write entires that are well written and properly researched and have a veteran wikipedia person coming to help me work on this and other articles next week, Why is wikipedia so full of uncooperative, hostile know it alls? Human nature I guess. Enough said.ArtnHistory (talk) 05:07, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's just discuss the article please. At the time I reviewed the article, I was unsure if it met the guideline in WP:ARTIST but the article has been advanced some since then so I agree it is reasonable to remove that one. If the magazine articles are unrelated to the artist then I am fine with the secondary sources tag coming off, too. I appreciate the desire to not create a dry list of dates, but it still resembles a fansite to me; more emphasis on his contributions to his field and less to the number of exhibitions he participated in and when he learned to ride horses would help. The wikify and cleanup tags should remain in my opinion until the article isn't so list-y. Thanks! Jminthorne (talk) 05:22, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability. Already a dozen listed and plenty more from published museum catalogs. Why is it when I see this nonsense it is always someone writing who has zero expertise in the area where' I have decades of it? I am on wikipedia specifically to work on the areas of California Impressionism, American Impressionism, American Western Painting, Plein-Air Painting and allied movements. These are very well established fields, hardly something like the cult like following this person linked to, the inference that no one cares about such a movement or subject. Just because it is not interesting to someone like you, isn't the criteria.ArtnHistory (talk) 05:12, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Please note the edit conflict between our comments. I actually find the subject fascinating and am certainly not "out to get" America's contribution to Impressionism. Thanks for your contributions. Jminthorne (talk) 05:25, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

The article isn't complete and thus will have more text to flesh out more areas. Now that I have wasted my time here, less time to meet your high standards and save the Wikipedia project bandwidth. Learned to ride horses? Everyone is a critic I guess, even of the most minute part of a larger article. Well, the horses are something mentioned several times in the references in front of me. Just perhaps something sort of important to an artist who makes his living painting horses? D'ya think? I didn't write "the artist learned to rides horses in the soft dewey meadows of the verdant Palos Verdes in the springtime, with the morning sun reflecting off the shimmering flanks of his muscular stallion "Wildfire" now did I? I stated that he learned to ride horses plain and simple.  Lists - unfortunately lists are a big part of the field of art, lists of exhibitions are part of every artist's CV, without them, you or someone else would argue he wasn't notable.  Articles on military men list their decorations, articles on ships list the campaigns they were in, articles on fighter pilots list their the planes they shot down.  With artists, their life revolves in getting into shows and exhibitions and once they are in them, with getting the work done, so sorry for the lists, but that is part of my field. 05:44, 5 June 2010 (UTC)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArtnHistory (talk • contribs)


 * Again, I care to discuss the article and not you. The tags are to draw attention to the article for collaborative improvement; they are not an attack. Regarding exhibition lists, this article should not resemble the artist's CV. Regards! Jminthorne (talk) 05:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Of course its an attack. When you lower yourself to mention "learned to ride horses" it is nitpicking of the most ludicrous kind. This is an article not a CV. I have seen a thousand of them in my days in the art world and they are often all art professionals see, no narrative at all. That is why I am working here, to create narratives on notable artists that are more readable than what is often found on museum or gallery web sites. An article is an article and narrative and thus opposite from a CV. My point is that every type of biographical entry for those who are interested has lists. Lets look at the Rolling Stones? Notable? Check. List of releases? Yes, of course same information that would be found on old Mick's CV. Debbie Reynolds. Notable? List of films? Check. That also appears on Debby's CV and her Wikipedia entry but somehow I can manage to tell the two apart. So, yes I find the link to "Fancruft" wrong and highly offensive. Again, I am not a 12 year old with a jones for some indie band with a bunch of tramp stamps, or someone who drools over Thomas Kinkaid prints. I have began to write a serious entry on an artist who has painted for thirty years that I have a stack of published reference for. so yes, I find the determination to piss on this with your fancruft link ludicrous. 06:27, 5 June 2010 (UTC)~


 * I agree that the term "Fancruft" is a little too pejorative for the template; in my opinion it should link to something more neutral like WP:FAN. Please look at the description of the term (to quote: "The use of the term implies that an editor does not regard the material in question as encyclopedic, either because the entire topic is unknown outside fan circles, or because too much detail is present that will bore, distract or confuse a non-fan, when its exclusion would not significantly harm the factual coverage as a whole.)" rather than being distracted by one word that I did not actually use. In this case, the second portion of the said definition applies. The example you gave of the stones appears to be much less listy than this article and certainly does not read like Mick Jagger's CV (I assume). Again, thanks for your contributions. Jminthorne (talk) 07:32, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I have written hundreds of biographies on artists, both living and dead over the years, but you are the expert at what is germane to the topic. What matters in any artistic biography are where a visual artist was born and grew up, what or who influenced their interest in art, where and how they studied (especially important when it the artists under discussion are academic painters or those who were trained in that way) and who they studies with, then their how there career developed, what and where they have shown their work and who they have shown it with. Dealers and galleries are ther biggest part of this equation and the patrons they cultivate (Without Leo Castelli there would be a very different story in any entry on Jasper Johns or Robert Rauschenberg for example). Then, the mediums, materials, technique, the artist uses, the things that characterize their works are important, then of course formal recognition through publications or museums. As far as lists, specific paintings should and must be mentioned the way albums or songs are for a musician, otherwise why bother? Its the work that makes someone notable or not. Finally, a short entry on their personal life, marriages, children ect. That is what I wrote as I have again began a biography that I seem have to prove to your satisfaction is important enough to meet your personal standards, not Wikipedias. I have not written anything that is trivial. The story of exhibtions and works are what an artist's life and career consists of. As far as Wikipedia's standards, the topic in general is not "unknown outside fan circles" nor is there "too much detail" present that will bore or distract the non-fan. Now since you mentioned the Stones, lets take a look at what is actually one of the most popular areas of Wikipedia, the entries on bands and I have read and enjoyed hundreds of them, but vast numbers of them, even the best of them, are full of information that will "bore, distract or confuse a non-fan." I suggest you take your keen powers of observation and read the entry on the Rolling Stones (that you seem to think is fine - why not do a close reading of that and get back to me) forthwith and begin using your red pen on it and ignite the hornet's next of condemnation that will insue? Lets see, does it really matter that old Marty Scorcese "filmed The Rolling Stones performing at New York City's Beacon Theatre, in front of an audience that included Bill and Hillary Clinton?" Please dear censor, that is just trivia and this entry and hundreds of music entries that are full of it. Or lets look at this about their first streaming video that... "was broadcast on November 18, 1994 using the Mbone at 10 frames per second. The broadcast, engineered by Thinking Pictures and financed by Sun Microsystems." Sorry, but this is trivia that would only appeal to the video nerd. The fact that they did the first e-concert could be considered important to some, but please take a look Mr. Fan Police at the rest, it has no reason to be in an encyclopaedia! Please, nothing I have or ever will write will approach the amount of slavish fannishness that is on display on thousands of entries on bands, film stars and pop culture figures where every trivial incident, every drunken utterance, every hyped up and pumped up nontroversy is breathlessly reported within minutes! Minutes! Is that proper for en encyclopaedia or is it what makes Wikipedia unique and different from a book on my shelf? But look at the pop entries for Mick's sake! Can you tell me they are Wiki proper? Of course not, but the petite mandarins of wikicorrectness like yourself don't want to fight those battles with the rabid fans do they? Please tell me that all that slavish fanishness is alright but the fact that a western artist learned to ride a horse is not? Please, your beloved and high highfalutin Wikipedia is full of second-by-second entries on someone being arrested for driving drunk, a car park incident with pappanazis, the first rumor of a release of a new single or a new film. That is proper? One has to be monumentally stupid not to see how un-encyclopedic so much of the pop culture entries are on Wikipedia and, I see precious little of such abuse in the area of the fine arts, which actually needs great attention. The fine arts are full of stubs, the briefest entries written by people with only cursory knowledge. I would submit that my area of expertise actually suffers from the opposite problem that most pop culture areas do, a tremendous lack of attention, a lack of depth, not bandwidth wasting entries full of zealous and breathless information that is exactly what you so fear, that will "only interest the fan and bore the general reader". Oh, the shame, someone may have to be forced to read something that doesn't fascinate them about a visual artist. And, besides being a critic of the most trivial kind, what have you actually written and contributed to the world of scholarship, or are you only a nitpicker? This is what I have noticed thus far on Wikipedia, the serious people make good, constructive suggestions because they are busy building something like I endeavor to do, the trivial critics can only throw their rotten tomatoes. I have spent a lifetime in the arts, since I was a child. I know that because people did not record and write things down we have thousands of artists whose works no one knows about and now, through the power of the net we can stop that from happening again, that is good and meaningful and idealistic, something that is to be the point of Wikipedia, to elucidate, inform, educate. Where are the dozens entries you have written in your time on Wikipedia so they can be given the fine toothed going over or do you only traffic in criticism? If you are not capable of contributing something positive, please stay out of the way of those of us who are actually working together to make an effort to do something worthwhile even if you don't care. That is not the point! 14:51, 5 June 2010 (UTC) ArtnHistory (talk) 16:17, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Jminthorne, so I make this more understandable to you, let us focus on an area perhaps closer to your heart, that of Military History, something we may both know something about. Is Edward Heffron ("Babe") of Band of Brothers notable enough for inclusion or is the small article on him just a fan site? Yes, minor military figures have fans just like rock n' rollers. He was a brave but tiny, tiny, tiny cog in a large machine and the only reason we have heard of him was because he became a minor pop culture figure because of the HBO series. Every allied fighter ace seems to have a page. Aren't they just little fan sites? There were thousands of them and few of them even rose to higher than a Captain or Major. They had a tiny tactical role not a strategic one like Nimitz or Raymond Spruance. There is a page for Ensign George Gay, the Torpedo Bomber pilot who rode out the Battle of Midway in the water. He is a tiny footnote even in books that are just on Midway, but is his site just a fan site? Should it be deleted? I am working on a benefit this fall for Medal of Honor winners, so I have great respect for these men. But, for most of these guys, winning the medal was the only notable thing they did in their lives. Should each of them have a Wikipedia entry? Or should they just all have small entries on a larger page dedicated to the WWII MOH? I guess I would give them a benefit of a doubt. I curate a collection of historic firearms. Does each model of firearm need its own page. We could go on and on in each different area of Wikipedia the same way. I have a very limited interest in Paleontology, but I would be loathe to tell a friend who works on that area that his entires on Invertebrate Paleontology should be deleted because they may receive the tiniest fraction of a fraction of page views that an entry on Madonna does. Are these entries just for fans because so few people care? Science is a building block so its clearly vital, but 99.9% of the entries in the sciences receive few hits compared to pop culture. Should every porn star have an entry? Will you fight that battle? Do they have any significance at all beyond masturbatory "culture? Any? And you wanted to delete the page of an artist with a thirty year record. What a warped set of Wiki Values! Porn stars are deserving of bandwidth but visual artists in an area that you may not know well should be dumped?   Engineering would be the same.  I would never be so presumptuous to tell an authority that his entry on a mechanical engineer should be regarded as a fan site or subject to deletion, because it is not my area of expertise. HERE IS THE OVERARCHING LESSON.  AS A FEMALE FRIEND OF MINE SAYS...WE ARE ALL A GEEK ABOUT SOMETHING 99% OF THE WORLD COULD CARE LESS ABOUT. So, every time a new entry comes in, there can be a person like you, one of those 99% that wants to delete or nitpick the article for reasons of their own. I say if the subject has been cited, written about in published work and the entry is serious, then make some constructive suggestions or get out of the way or get to work listed what really matters, the filmography of porn stars as we know that is worth much more bandwidth than the serious field I have spent my life on. Lets tear down the museums and build more porn studios as that matters to more of the 99 percenters right? I simply could not know who was significant and what part of his training or career or projects would be notable enough. I just don't know and I am honest enough to say so. I would leave that judgment to someone who knows the field. Lets look an an engineer I am familiar with, William Mulholland. Is the fact that he traded his services for land at Sespe Creek germane to his story? Or is it a trivial detail that doesn't matter? I don't care, its just part of his story and I am not worried about trying to pick apart an article someone wrote about Mullholland with serious intent. ''That is the bottom line in Wikipedia to me. Is the article a serious attempt to cover a topic, is it diligent and does it depend on published sources''. In my book as someone who does research at Library of Congress, the Smithsonian and other places, I know that if someone has paid money on paper and ink and paid a writer to write an article on a subject a number of times, that subject was at least notable at one time. They have been duly cited. I know that in art, music, film, most people never have anything written on them, nothing. In the Western Art field, artists may have one or two features written on them in the major magazines in a thirty year career because there are only forty or so features a year, so anyone who has been featured several times is notable within that field, even if not in popular culture. If all that matters is Brittany Spears or Madonna fame to be notable, then we might as well just call everything on Wikipedia except for music, film, television, sports, crime and politics trivial and just shut it down as being too obscure. Sorry, out with botany, mathematics and engineering cause no one cares about them compared to pop culture. Came across a great Belgian guy who has done thousands of entries on biology. However, only specialists will probably read or understand most of them. While my hat is off to the gentleman, by your criteria, we should hit the delete button as each one is a fanzine to an obscure species or phylum! Notable to me because I understand these things truly matter but by your measure, all of his entries would be UNKNOWN OUTSIDE FAN CIRCLES. What can be more specialized than so many areas of biology. Yet, they are all in our printed encyclopedias and should be on Wikipedia too! Even though most people are looking up the Civil War or Winston Churchill. If the subject is in dictionaries of people in that field, the same thing goes. I have not and will not write about people who are not of relevant interest in their field and that is completely along Wikipedia's guiding principles. If they have been cited frequently, if they are well known within their field not compared to Mick Jagger or Madonna's Tattoo Artist, then they deserve inclusion. I, above all know that there is little overlap between pop culture and significance and so I would not be hasty to critique areas, to delete articles outside my area of expertise because I have the cojones to dismiss them as "fan sites' ArtnHistory (talk) 16:45, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * No need to shout. Please stick to discussing the article in the article talk page. Jminthorne (talk) 18:10, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I am discussing the article and the principle. If porn stars are to be honored and deemed "notable" because they have won "AVN awards" or gained notoriety through their status in their genre, than the same has to go in every other field. A biologist with a long list of publications and citations should be worthy even if Jminthorne or I hasn't heard of him or her. An award-winning native American artist who has been extensively covered in the publications in his field, the newspapers in New Mexico or Colorado that have written about him is notable. It doesn't require that someone in the New York Times has heard of the person. If the criteria becomes that Jminthorne hasn't heard of the person and wants to nitpick the entry, than Wikipedia is meaningless. Take it off the grill, its done. I am not expert in the field of wildlife art, other than knowing some of the turn of the century painters, but it is a large field with lots of interest, especially in the northern half of our country. I would never be so presumptuous to say that that field is too obscure for its leaders to be included in Wikipedia. Again, the criteria has nothing to do with mass culture or pass culture, it is and must be notability within a given field. Most of the people who do this, who make any sizable contribution, let alone work with others to get a project going, are not industry flacks, twelve year old fans or anyone else out to diminish the Wikipedia project and thus should be given the latitude to work. I have addressed your specific complaints about "reading like a fan page" and notability, more than adequately by comparing and contrasting it to the absolutely trivial drooling fan nonsense that is to be found in so many areas, so I must conclude that where your edict is concerned, logic need not apply. 18:40, 5 June 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArtnHistory (talk • contribs) Noticed that the fellow who wanted to delete this article due to notability and wants to brand it a fan page seems to create nothing, only to criticize what others have written and attempt to delete articles. Again, what is important is that people are serious about what they do on Wikipedia, that they are attempting to spread knowledge, to edify, to educate, something I have spent most of my life doing. If someone creates on Wikipedia, does serious work, then please folks, give them the benefit of recognizing that. Allow them some latitude even if they don't write the same way you would. If someone has created a single article, then yes, be suspicious it may be for commercial purposes or a sweet attempt at fan worship, but if they have a history of article creation, of good work, of edits, then help them with their grammar, punctuation, clean-up, but don't waste your time trying to nitpick or henpeck what they have written to death. Its about being a constructive presence here and more than anything we need contributors who can write with knowledge of their subject without an excess of "inside baseball" type of jargon. Another thing, lets not worry too much about being too arcane, published encyclopedias are full of highly specialized knowledge on botany, biology or astronomy that would be of little interest when compared to articles on pop culture, but this type of knowledge is a building block. Sorry for another rant, but please don't just criticize, contribute, DO! —Preceding unsigned comment added by ArtnHistory (talk • contribs) 03:25, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Update on article issues
The article was filled with inadequately sourced content, and promotional references to people and galleries that don't belong in an encyclopedic article. I've attempted to pare it to an acceptable version. JNW (talk) 22:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC)