Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Visual arts

Translation of titles of artworks
It is often helpful to provide either an idiomatic or a literal translation of the title of an artwork, for the convenience of readers who do not know the original foreign language. Sometimes, the artist has provided their own "official" translation in the title they have assigned; on occasion these translations are technically inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so for artistic effect. For example, the French artist Marcel Duchamp reveled in cross-lingual puns and occasionally would deliberately tweak his translations for artistic or literary effect.

To ensure maximum clarity, I have used the following type of formatting to indicate editorial translations which were not originally assigned by the artist:

L'Ange Protecteur ("Guardian Angel")

The choice whether to use an idiomatic vs a literal translation (or to translate at all) should as usual be left to the discretion of the editors. In this example, the lack of italics and the addition of double-quote marks serve to explicitly indicate that the translation is not part of the original artist-assigned title.

This is in contrast to originally-assigned translations, which were part of the title as assigned by the artist:

Saint Sébastien (Portrait of My Lover / Portrait of My Beloved / Martyr nécessaire)

The above rather-lengthy title appears to have been originally assigned by the bilingual French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, so the entire string is italicized to indicate this. If in addition a translation of the last two words from French were desired, it would be appended, formatted in parentheses and double-quotes as in the first example.

Are there any Wikipedia style guides or guidelines regarding this or related issues? If not, should something be added to the "Manual of Style/Visual arts" (or elsewhere) to provide guidance? Apologies if this is "obvious" and already covered in the MOS or elsewhere; if so, please give me some pointers to any relevant existing policies. Reify-tech (talk) 20:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I think the key thing is to make clear to the reader where a non-standard translation is that of the artist - I'm not sure the conventions you've used above achieve this. At least in a note, or in text. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

So TITLES are italicized (in title and text) and NAMES are not, correct?
If I make an article about, say, a painting where the painter or owner gave it formal name (e.g. American Flag #3 or whatever), that gets italicized. If there's no known formal title but just a descriptive name people call it ("Winged demon devouring St Albans" say) -- this would mostly apply to works from a few centuries back or more, I guess -- then it does not get italicized in the title, correct? Also -- would title case be used for a title (New York with Shooting Stars say) and not for a name ("Cantaloupes being trampled by lions" say), correct? Is that part written down anywhere? (This would have to also apply to the the article text, to match, I assume, in which case quote marks (as used for individual songs etc) would have to be used when there's no formal title, I am assuming, to separate the name from the running text, altho this technically outside the scope of this page.) If I'm wrong, or maybe wrong, correction would be welcomed! Absent any objection, I propose to edit this page, to clarify difference between "title" and "name" just a bit more, and add a a bit about when title case is used. OK? Herostratus (talk) 23:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
 * If we mention a work of art in Wikipedia it must be notable, and it will have been written about. In the case of paintings or sculptures, a title used by reliable sources can generally be treated as the "official" title and should be italicized. Exceptions (certain types of art objects described in bullet point #1 at Manual_of_Style/Visual_arts) are not italicized. For these, the question whether to use title case might be settled by following the convention your sources use, but maybe this could be elaborated in the MOS. Ewulp (talk) 06:32, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * No, not correct! Standard "assumed" descriptive titles like Crucifixion of Christ are also italicized. "Portrait of Foo" titles tend not to be italicized. There are some edge cases, and cases like Dresden Venus and Rokeby Venus where what is really a name, that would have puzzled the artist, is often treated as a title. But yes, generally, titles are italicized but names are not. There is quite a lot on this at the WP:VAMOS section already; that is where this is covered. If, after looking at that, you think changes are needed, start a discussion on talk here.  Unfortunately RS often differ - the National Gallery has used I think at least 5 different titles for the Arnolfini Portrait in its own publications over the last 60 years.  I'm not sure we need to add that standard religious scenes have titles - one only has to look at how the great majority of articles handle them. But we could.  Johnbod (talk) 15:23, 10 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Titles of portrait paintings are usually italicized in Wikipedia; see Pope Paul III and His Grandsons and Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents for good models that also display some exceptions. Reliable sources nearly always italicize portrait titles at least on first mention and in image captions, e.g. (from Goya: Order & Disorder, 2014, Boston: MFA Publications, p. 197): "When first publicly exhibited in 1900, Juan Antonio Cuervo was celebrated ...'"; though in the next paragraph, with reference to the same painting: "If the portrait of Cuervo reflects the status of the accomplished architect ...". Ewulp (talk) 03:04, 11 January 2022 (UTC)

Verb tense for temporal works
Category:Performances uses both present and past verb tenses to describe decommissioned works. I would like to add clarification here to build on MOS:TENSE for an edit-warring IP. It makes sense that installation works can be re-installed elsewhere, so as to keep the present tense. But if the work is destroyed or is an event that cannot otherwise be repeated, would we not use the past tense? E.g., The Gates or Shoot (Burden) czar  20:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

Requesting guidance on formatting for exhibition titles
When exhibitions are mentioned in the body of an article, how are they formatted? Do they use italics, quotation marks, something else? I tried looking at the associated project page and couldn't find anything on the matter. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 09:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd say use italics, but quotation maks are ok. The main thing is to use something. Johnbod (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I've long thought that VAMOS could do with something on this. The Association of Art Editors Style Guide recommends italics, except for "some types of exhibitions ... such as expositions, world's fairs, or recurrent shows". I agree with this – that italics should be the general rule and that there are some exceptions. Our article documenta currently puts that exibition's name in italics and all in lowercase, although it's one of the recurrent exhibitions considered an exception by the AAE, and it probably shouldn't. Ham II (talk) 18:42, 11 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, Category:Visual arts exhibitions suggests this is the general way we do it, though the "italic title" template seems rather rarely used. Do you want to draft an addition? Johnbod (talk) 04:05, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

It's taken longer than I expected to boil this down, and I've had a few interruptions in real life, so sorry for the delay. This is my first draft; it would be a new first paragraph for the Exhibitions section. "Titles of art exhibitions are usually in italics and (if they are in English) in title case; examples include Four Abstract Classicists, Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974–1988 and Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape. For some exhibitions, however, the article title should not be in italics; these include recurrent exhibitions (Salon (Paris), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Documenta) and ones whose name is more a descriptive phrase than a title (e.g., 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition, Armory Show)." Ham II (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

The "if they are in English" qualification is because Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges, Magiciens de la terre and any others in French should presumably follow MOS:FRENCHCAPS (it seems that those ones don't at the moment), and there is ongoing discussion about reforming that guideline. Happily someone has came along and fixed the article title for Documenta since my last message, so I feel more confident including it as an example. Ham II (talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd weigh-in on no italicizations of exhibitions. An exhibition is a limited-time event, not a book, or a repeatable play (plays can be performed hundreds of years after they are written, so are not limited-time), or a work of art. I'm not an expert on past decisions on such topics, yet events such as exhibitions are designed to be finite and not a stand-alone work of art. One key article would be Exhibitions of artifacts from the tomb of Tutankhamun, which correctly or incorrectly italicizes the exhibition names. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:35, 28 January 2023 (UTC)

Aha! MOS:ITALICTITLE already covers exhibitions: it recommends italics for "[n]amed exhibitions (artistic, historical, scientific, educational, cultural, literary, etc. – generally hosted by, or part of, an existing institution such as a museum or gallery), but not large-scale exhibition events or individual exhibits". I agree with that up to the final link, which is to the same page's "Quotation marks" section; when are quotation marks ever used for "[e]xhibits (specific) within a larger exhibition"? I might ask at WT:MOSTITLE for that to be removed. Ham II (talk) 08:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Sounds good. Johnbod (talk) 14:50, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks, didn't know it was covered. Still personally disagree but good to know that the question has been resolved. One of the best historic exhibitions doesn't have a page, the first Impressionistic exhibition where the movement got its name from a reporter covering it. Proves that there remains much to do on Wikipedia, and falls within that hole at the top of the logo. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:30, 29 January 2023 (UTC)

Lists of exhibitions
In this edit of 11 April 2019, an editor added:


 * Long lists of exhibitions should be avoided. It will rarely be useful to mention more than five exhibitions.  For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability, but only the most important should be given.

(plus a second paragraph), with the edit summary "Exhibitions: expand (on nothing) as tag requested. Thoughts, anyone?"

Four years later, it's unchanged.

Yes, I have a thought. I warmly disagree. If "long lists" were instead "exhaustive lists", I might agree with the first sentence. But what's the reasoning for the assertion that it's rarely useful to mention more than five? If, let's say, a South African artist verifiably had a smallish exhibition in Toronto as what an editor supposes was (chronologically) her first overseas but isn't among her five most important, and if the editor could find nothing about the exhibition beyond perfunctory but convincing evidence in an RS, then adding it to the list could inspire a later editor or reader to search harder for coverage of it (and of course coverage of it may increase, as more material previously only available in a handful of major libraries comes to be digitized).

Of course, an article on an artist must show evidence of notability as we understand it here. And as WP:PERSON tells us, "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. [...] The person's work (or works) has [...] been a substantial part of a significant exhibition". But I'm not aware of any policy or guideline that says that material about a person that does not directly contribute to establishing their notability does not belong in the article on that person. (An example: The article Albert Einstein tells us that "While lodging with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. Einstein's sister Maja later married Winteler's son Paul." I submit that if Winteler's daughter had instead been named Heide, had so repeatedly and tiresomely played practical jokes on him that he found her detestable, and had died a spinster, then the world's estimation of Einstein would be unchanged.)

Moreover, lists don't seem to contravene the de facto highest standards in en:WP: Among articles very recently promoted to FA, that on Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, for example, contains a list of (at a quick count) almost fifty broadcasts, not just the most important handful; I don't notice that anybody questioned this during either the article's FA candidacy or the peer review that it underwent shortly before the candidacy. The reader interested in Johnson but uninterested in his individual broadcasts can easily scroll past the entire list; and similarly the reader interested in an artist but uninterested in their exhibitions can do the same. -- Hoary (talk) 11:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I expect I was really thinking of long dead big names like Michelangelo or Leonardo, who probably have a few museum exhibitions of some sort every year. Would it help to add, as in italics: "It will rarely be useful to mention more than five exhibitions for artists active after WWII" (ok, a bit random)? Johnbod (talk) 12:48, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Johnbod, you've lost me. (1) Putting aside (dis)agreement, I understand. (2)  Again, putting aside (dis)agreement, I understand ... maybe. But how are (1) and (2) related? Does (2) perhaps present a sleepily garbled version of something akin to ? ¶ Although I'm still puzzled by the applicability of usefulness. We'd expect the draft of an MFA thesis, say, to make an argument, based on evidence. Its lists of facts (however well documented) irrelevant to the argument could reasonably be dismissed as not useful and ripe for deletion. However, when I'm constructing a bio article for en:WP, I should have no axe to grind: in addition to the body text, I provide what I hope are adequately referenced and helpfully arranged facts, and hope that some of the readers will find some of these useful for whatever these people's interests or purposes happen to be. ¶ The FA Osbert Lancaster contains a list of over twenty "Stage designs by Lancaster". They're all feebly sourced (to Who's Who), and one or two of them, e.g. "Napoli, Festival Ballet, 1954", are rather obscure; so if worthwhile, the list really ought to be improved. Even if it were, I as a reader of the article would simply ignore it; but as an editor, I'd defend its inclusion, as I'm aware that stage design does interest many people. -- Hoary (talk) 22:52, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Ah, sorry, I meant for artists active before WWIIbut for artists no longer active after WWII achieves a similar result! When I was involved with a useful project with the MMA in New York, saying what links to their online material were and were not useful, I had to discourage him from adding links to the many brief catalogues of little exhibitions they and other NY galleries had over a century ago. There is a limit to the amount of information that is useful.  Some big but old exhibitions - for example the first Royal Academy ones of Chinese and Indian art - really are important, especially when they have a crucial effect on critical and public opinion, but most no longer are.  For example, I've carefully made what I hope is a complete list of all the foreign outings of the Flaying of Marsyas (Titian) (and see the lead) because its real home is so far off the beaten track and it tends to effortlessly be the star of any exhibition (having said that, I was amazed to see it in the NG about ?10 years ago, unheralded - I expect they had it in for its MOT). Does that make things clearer? Johnbod (talk) 23:22, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

A little – but not so much, as it requires an understanding (and appreciation) of the concept of usefulness [to something left unexpressed]. In order to remain significant, a past exhibition doesn’t need to have spawned a sizable catalogue, but this would help. There are now so many substantial, scholarly catalogues of Rembrandt that they don’t all need to be listed in a general article about him (though they might within List of works about Rembrandt). But Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian are freaks among noteworthy pre-20th-century artists, who also include Cuyp (one or the other), Saenredam (ditto), Steen, and so on. If some kind editor were redoing the article Aelbert Cuyp – which currently has a long list of “further reading”, ending with – and discovered that he’d had eight exhibitions that had brought about worthwhile catalogues, intelligent commentary or both, I’d hope that they’d include all eight; if only three of these had led to catalogues in English, the other five wouldn’t be useful to me, but they could be useful to interested readers of Dutch. -- Hoary (talk) 00:26, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * The sentence is talking about lists of exhibitions in the article, not exhibition catalogues as books. It isn't in the policy, but I'm generally against too many foreign language sources in "Further reading" - 5 would be more than enough in most cases. Think about Durer. I don't think we should aim at providing a general bibliography - we can leave that to the Germans. Johnbod (talk) 02:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry, sleepy/sloppy writing was to blame. Try this: Dürer is so famous that I can be sure he's got a good article in de:WP without even looking; but when we get to less celebrated figures from elsewhere, the analogous expectation needn't hold. (Example: the article Teikō Shiotani is, I think, better than its Japanese-language counterpart, and might be of interest to some native readers of Japanese.) -- Hoary (talk) 04:12, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

How about this:

, anybody?
 * Is this meant to replace the current wording, or be additional? We now have:
 * I'm essentially ok with it, but it's a tad wordy, & I think "For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability" should be kept. Maybe "minor commercial exhibitions" might be better than "minor exhibitions in commercial galleries" as lots of borderline/non-notable artists seem to have sales exhibitions in places that aren't exactly "commercial galleries", like hotels, cultural centres, and concert halls. Johnbod (talk) 02:19, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm essentially ok with it, but it's a tad wordy, & I think "For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability" should be kept. Maybe "minor commercial exhibitions" might be better than "minor exhibitions in commercial galleries" as lots of borderline/non-notable artists seem to have sales exhibitions in places that aren't exactly "commercial galleries", like hotels, cultural centres, and concert halls. Johnbod (talk) 02:19, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

It was meant as a replacement (although only a few minutes after posting it I realized that it was inadequate). ¶ Looking at the current version: For better or worse, I've replaced "long" with "exhaustive". ¶ If I take "useful" to mean "beneficial" (to the reader, not necessarily the artist or their PR flack), then, as I've written above, (i) I question the claim that "It will rarely be [beneficial] to mention more than five exhibitions", and (ii) a rather long list can easily be skipped by the uninterested reader. ¶ Taking "notability" to be as defined by/for Wikipedia, the claim that "For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability" is, I think, true only if "can be important" means "isn't always unimportant". What's important is "coverage". (See WP:PERSON: And it's these "additional criteria" or "following standards" that mention exhibitions.) I'd avoid all mention of notability, for which this MoS page can and should simply refer the reader to WP:PERSON. ¶ Yes, "minor commercial exhibitions" is indeed better than "minor exhibitions in commercial galleries". ¶ I think that this should say something about group exhibitions. I know what I want to express about inclusion in group shows, but haven't yet worked out how to say this in a way that both (i) seems helpful and reasonable and (ii) is at all succinct. Later. -- Hoary (talk) 06:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Given that exhibitions can be significant evidence for notability, I think we should mention this, as we don't want people removing such evidence. I'll await the group bit. Johnbod (talk) 02:54, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * A first draft, which probably could be improved:   Within which, the number might be five or six, I suggest. What do you think? -- Hoary (talk) 03:57, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
 * -- Hoary (talk) 23:32, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Saints
MOS:ART currently says "Per MOS:SAINTS, sources should be followed as to whether to use "Saint", "St" or "St." in titles ..." But that isn't an accurate reflection of what MOS:SAINTS says; instead that guideline recommends "Saint" over the abbreviated forms (when referring to saints themselves; there are exceptions for their namesakes). I think we should change the guidance here to be in the same spirit, recommending "Saint" spelled out in full (and the plural form "Saints") for any depictions of saints.

In article titles, "Saint" has a practical advantage over the alternatives because it means that the correct alphabetical sorting in categories happens automatically. Currently the article titles beginning "St." or "St" need to have "Saint" in their default sort key to override this, but St. Jerome in the Wilderness (Dürer), for example, currently doesn't have that and is therefore incorrectly sorted between A Sparrowhawk and Still Life with Lobster, Drinking Horn and Glasses at Category: Paintings in the National Gallery, London, rather than with the other Saint Foo–style titles.

There are other good reasons to standardise to a single style. We currently have the article titles Saint Matthew and the Angel for a painting by Caravaggio and St. Matthew and the Angel for one by Rembrandt. There's no good reason for the discrepancy; both those links should have the same target. Similarly, we've got the article titles St. Sebastian (Raphael), Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Raphael) and St Margaret and the Dragon (Raphael). List of paintings by Raphael, a page that links to all three, reproduces these titles exactly, but it shouldn't because the different forms have arisen by accident and there's no distinction to be made between them. The easiest way to have internal consistency on that page would be if the articles were consistently titled to begin with. Also, as "St." is considered to be American English and "St" is considered to be British, I think there's an MOS:COMMONALITY argument for "Saint".

I would like to suggest changing that bullet point in MOS:ART to something like the following: For artworks representing saints, use the form "Saint" (or "Saints" in the plural) spelled out in full, rather than abbreviated forms such as "St." or "St". What do we think? Ham II (talk) 11:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, good points all. Would add something like "defer to 'St.' when used by the painter or sculptor as the artworks title". Randy Kryn (talk) 12:07, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks. The artist's preferred form of the word "Saint" would be a difficult thing to prove, though, and I'm struggling to think of any occasion when that could be applied; non–English-speaking artists would be ruled out for a start. I can see the thinking behind having exceptions, and that they would start to kick in for later periods of art history (which is also when religious subject matter becomes less prevalent, so there are fewer examples). But are there are any cases which are clear-cut enough for it to be worth the trouble of codifying the exceptions?
 * We've got The Temptation of St. Anthony (Dalí). Did Dalí ever write that title in English? Is there any point in finding out, or is the form of the word "Saint" in the title determined by publications' house styles? Is The Temptation of Saint Anthony (Ernst), for an almost exactly contemporary painting, any worse as an article title? Did Ernst write that title in English? Etc., etc. Whereas the policy WP:CONSISTENT and its explanatory essay WP:TITLECON would suggest that every work (with an article, at least) listed at Temptation of Saint Anthony in visual arts should follow a similar style, which I think is far more sensible. Ham II (talk) 11:34, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the Dali painting is probably one of few that could stay shortened (if the title can be shown to be Dali's choice of abbreviation). In almost all cases the 'Saint' spelling seems sensible, I'm just a stickler for titles being left solely to the artist. Thanks for pointing this out, I've just gone through the Dali paintings' article and changed some usages of 'St.' to 'Saint'. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * @, any thoughts on this, as you added the bullet point in 2017? Ham II (talk) 18:22, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I suppose we should move to this - an awful lot of work for very little gain though. I don't like going against the museum without particular sources though, & many RS use abbreviations, as they do especially for churches. The above is all about works of art; should we except churches, chapels etc? Can you draft something? Johnbod (talk) 04:00, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm happy to do the work – obviously over a fairly long period of time; I would guess that all the affected article titles could be done in a year at most. I'd be making overall copyedits at the same time as those changes, so it would mean more attention being paid to other issues with articles.
 * "For artworks representing saints" is designed to exclude depictions of buildings or places with "Saint"/"St."/"St" in their names, because we favour abbreviated forms for those more than we do for saints themselves, something which MOS:PARTSAINT codifies more or less accurately. The qualification made in that section is worth dwelling on: "if overwhelming sources indicate this as WP:COMMONNAME other than instances merely replicating printing press text minimalism". OK, that prose could do with some work, but that seems to me like the approach we should take to deciding on exceptions – basing them on demonstrable common usage in sources. That could include, but not be limited to, the usage of the museums and (harder to prove) the artists themselves; it would also be rooted in policy (namely WP:COMMONNAME). I'll draft an addition to the sentence I originally proposed. Ham II (talk) 10:31, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * OK, how does this look? "For artworks representing saints, use the form "Saint" (or "Saints" in the plural) spelled out in full, rather than abbreviated forms such as "St." or "St". However, "St." or "St" can be considered if a significant majority of sources use the abbreviation in question for the title of a particular work, or if it can be proved that the artist did so for that work's title." Ham II (talk) 08:47, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Wunderbar. Thank you for choosing to address these pages and for following up. Randy Kryn (talk) 09:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Ok, thanks. Johnbod (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, both. I've replaced the text now. Ham II (talk) 07:27, 6 March 2024 (UTC)