User:Ninereeds9/Choose an Article

Article Selection
Please list articles that you're considering for your Wikipedia assignment below. Begin to critique these articles and find relevant sources.

First Choice of Article
Arte Povera

This would be my first choice as an article to improve. I'm fairly knowledgeable about the group already, and they are certainly relevant and well researched. The article currently is fairly well organized, but could use clarification in places and several new sources and photographs. I believe I may be in a uniquely privileged situation to address some of these needs, as there is a local institution dedicated to the curation, study, and preservation of Arte Povera artworks, namely Magazzino in Cold Spring NY. Depending on their photograph policies, I may be able to take relevant photographs that are useful to the article that may be licensed through Creative Commons. (Not sure on how OK that is, the article talk page mentions that Italians may be able to help with photos of the artwork, I presume because they would be well situated to photograph the works themselves. If that is a bad assumption, let me know.) Furthermore, Magazzino has a wide library dedicated virtually exclusively to works about Arte Povera, the artists, and Italian Conceptual art in general.

Lead Section
The lead section is useful and well written, covering most of the essentials of the movement. I would be interested in elaborating on the connection the art movement had to worker's movements in the north of Italy, postwar anti-American sentiment, and the rise in popularity of Marxism in Italy. Connections could also be made to other notable parts of Italian culture at the time, particularly film. Some parts of the lead section could use elaboration and a bit of copy editing to clarify sentences and ease the reading experience.

Content
The content is good as a start. The section 'Trends and Concepts' is a nice idea, but poorly formatted, and not cited. Rather than a list, this should be reformatted into a prose section that describes in greater depth each of those concepts, and their relevance to the art, artists, theory, and culture of the time. The 'Artists' section could be expanded to cover more of the notable artists. There should be consideration of adding another section dedicated to the lasting effects of the movement: what movements were influenced by it, and how it was critically remembered and received, and it's lasting influence on Italian art in general.

Tone and Balance
I have no complaints here, although this is possibly because the article does avoid a lot of the controversy surrounding the initial movement.

Sources and References
The sources that are used are good, but there clearly need to be more.

Images and Media
As I stated above, this article could use more images. That is something I would like and hope to help with.

Talk Page Discussion
The talk page is essentially empty, with only automated bot posts.

Overall Impressions
The article has been rated as 'Start' class, and I agree with that assessment. It has some good info, but could use a lot of help. I think this makes it a better candidate for editing than the article I evaluated last week. I think my position both academically and geographically could help me make this article really improve



Option 2
Neo-conceptual art

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I am largely interested in Neo-Conceptual art because I find it important to my personal artistic study. Looking at the network of interlinked articles on Neo-conceptual art, postmodern art, and their associated movements made me realize that the articles are frequently overlapping or redundant, or fail to adequately clarify the content.

Lead Section
The introductory sentence does describe the movement, but the rest of the paragraph quickly dives into specific subgroups of the movement rather than explaining any of the significance of the movement, or how it differentiates itself from earlier conceptual art. Adding more about the general status of the movement before listing notable members and events might help clear up some of the discussion in the talk page advocating that the article be merged with the article for Conceptual art.It might be worth mentioning examples of Neoconceptual artists who are still active currently, for those who are looking up the term to clarify something about contemporary art. The lead section does not adequately explain the history of the movement that is attempted to be covered in the History section.

Content
The content is uniformly relevant, but usually lacking in detail on relevant areas, while focusing too much on some specific narratives, IE those relating specifically to place, (the headings being cities) which ignores the role of other parts of the world. The organization of content by location is fine, as geography did inform the movement, but it needs more locations to make it feel balanced and not overly specific. Because of the focus on a few specific areas of the art world, the article does notably gloss over the role of women and non-white artists in Neoconceptual art, which is a large part of the movement. Good reference could be made to the fact that contemporary critics often specifically singled out the works of women as spearheading the movement in the 80s. The content could stand to be updated with some recent events. For Example, Maurizio Cattelan, a notable Italian neoconceptualist artist was recently the subject of global attention after the sale of his controversial piece Comedian (artwork).

Tone and Balance
I found the tone and balance of the article fine, but I feel this was largely because it was not long enough to have radical inconsistencies.

Sources and References
Most of the article is fairly well sourced. The history section is woefully under sourced, and could use more notes on the origins of the movement from actual critics. I'm basing that assessment off of the premise that usually it is art critics who mainly attempt to define the history and origin of any specific movement. The history section references important critics, but does little to describe what they actually wrote on the Neoconceptual artists.

Organization and Writing Quality
The article is concise and easy to read, but the organization is strange. It does make sense to lead off with the history of the movement, but it feels strange to have cities have entire headings and sections dedicated to themselves. It might make more sense if the movement in each location was documented as a sub-heading of the history tab. The notable events tab is a good organizational idea, but it includes no notable publishing dates of important critiques or gallery shows, which tend to best define the borders of art historical movements. 'Controversy in the UK' might best be served by changing the 'London' heading to the UK in general, and adding a sub-heading specifically for the controversy. As I mentioned before, there should be more geographical locations to emphasize the extent of the movement.

Images and Media
The article is fairly light on images, which is not a problem given it's current length. The images are appropriately captioned, and are of good quality and relevant to the article. Again, as more content is added, it might be useful to have a broader array of images that help illustrate a wider spread of actual Neoconceptual art.

Talk Page Discussion
There is fairly minimal talk page discussion, and it's fairly old, but it does seem to accurately assess the state of the article. As I mentioned above, there was discussion of merging the article with 'Conceptual Art,' but I don't believe this is an entirely appropriate course of action. The article is currently C-class, and rated as Low Importance.

Overall Impressions
I think the article is on a good start, but the assessment of the article in the talk page as lacking significant content is accurate. The article is fairly incomplete, and where it is developed well it is developed unevenly, which leaves a lot of room for improvement. In general, the article needs better structure and more detail on artists and critics. I've addressed most of the improvements I would make in the above sections.


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Option 3

 * Post-conceptual art

Lead Section
The lead section of this article is overall good, although it does rely a little heavily on the one piece of info about John Baldessari. I would find it helpful to better define Post-Conceptual art in relation to other terms of late 20th century art.

Content
As an artist, I really like the content. I think it's accurate, concise, and has the perfect amount of depth. I feel that organizationally, the article is laid out in a way that is somewhat obtuse if you were not expecting it or already involved in the topic. Although the organization is good, in that it serves the topic well, it could use a more general, less specified section that gives better and simpler concrete examples for those who are not used to reading about contemporary art as much.

Tone and Balance
The tone and balance are good, but there is not a lot of contention to address here. It might be worthwhile to address the reactionary movement of Stuckism in the context of Post-Conceptual art.

Images and Media
Could definitely use more pictures. That would be a big help in making the article more accessible to people outside of the field.

Talk Page Discussion
The talk page is very active, and I believe that that is part of the reason that the quality of the work that is there is good. There is a lot of active discussion from early this year. Also, there is a notable and relevant part of the talk page that addresses the difference between post-conceptual and Neo-conceptual art, which I feel could use clarification in the article if it were possible to source a good article that discusses that.

Overall Impressions
This article is working at a very high standard of quality right now, but it is a bit confusing if you're not used to the subject. In the spirit of Wikipedia being an accessible resource, I feel that the article could benefit from some clarification and more images for easier comprehension.


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Option 4

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Option 5

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