User:Lauteur02/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Vienna Secession

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article to evaluate the way in which Wikipedia can give an overview of an artistic movement. I chose an artistic movement (the Vienna Secession being one I am familiar with) to evaluate how Wikipedia introduces the reader to the network of artists, artworks and events involved in the progression of an artistic movement. It is interesting to me how this movement might relate to iconoclasm and image destruction, as it involves the destruction (and later reconstruction) of a building and some artworks under the Nazi Party.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

The Lead section provides a good overview of the most prominent artists within the movement, the reason for its formation as well as its split as major events of the movement. The Secession exhibitions hall is mentioned as the place in which their works were exhibited, as well as their published magazine. It makes sense to include these in the Lead as the movement's most prominent and collective works, and they are also mentioned elsewhere in the article.

The content of the article is relevant to the topic and balanced within sections discussing the history of the movement, its eventual split and disintegration, influence, and relevant works of different mediums. The article also includes under the heading "Later years" that the Secession building was destroyed under the regime of the Nazi Party, in which works from the Secession movement were seen as "degenerate art". I believe this information benefits the article and creates context for the later destruction of the building and its artworks, corresponding with the ideology of the Nazi Party. This is included without compromising the article's neutrality or diverging from the topic, although the link "degenerate art" is helpful for someone who would like to know more about what the Nazi regime considered "degenerate" or unacceptable artworks and artists.

The bibliography includes reputable articles and books that are relevant to the topic and provide more than enough information to construct an overview of the topic for the reader. The organization of the article is good overall, though I might group the influence of the movement before the history, and before the images of the works themselves. The talk page includes some disputes over names and the exact genealogy of the movement concerning certain figures such as Otto Wagner. Overall, there is not very much dispute over the article, however it is useful to see that copyrighted content had been previously removed from the article.

I think this article provides the reader with a good overview of the movement without including irrelevant or tangential information. If I would like to learn more about the context of the Vienna Secession, as a reader I can use the links to bring me to other concepts and people that are related to the movement, such as the Gustav Klimt page or the page on degenerate art. My research would be according to my question or my interest- this article does not impede upon my research question, nor does it lead me to any sort of conclusion, making for a good Wikipedia article.