Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts/Archive 2

What do we think of Category:Fine arts?
I notice that Sparkit has held his vote on CfD back until the project formulates a proposal on what to do with this category (the consensus on CfD is overwhelmingly in favour of deleting). My personal opinion is that the term is a bit too antiquated, never mind subjective, to merit a category – I can't imagine certain artforms like installation art fitting in well with this conception of art. H AM  18:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I support deleting the category simply in that it is vaguely defined and that other better named categories can do the job better. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:06, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I understand the basic definition of the Fine Arts as art produced for its own sake or aesthetic (normally painting, sculpture and other visual arts), rather than for any particular (mundane) use. There is a Wikipedia article at Fine art which links the term to the French beaux arts. While Fine Arts is an important concept, I agree that it is not suitable for an NPOV category. We are better off using Visual Arts, Applied Arts, Crafts etc. IMO Kleinzach 19:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I voted delete over there too, and agree with Kleinzach above. Do we have agreement on a category structure here?  Hiding Talk 19:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Arts and crafts, etc.
I've been taking a tour through the various articles, stubs, categories etc. I've come across one small problem that I thought i'd bring to your attention. There are 5 articles covering the subject of arts and crafts. It seems to me, the most logical way to deal with these is to merge them all into Applied arts, which is really what they are. The articles are arts and crafts, craft, handicraft and useful arts. It has already been suggested that handicraft be merged into arts and crafts. Before I start adding merge tags, I though i'd see what this group thinks. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:14, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * One other note, Studio craft (which might also be redirected to applied arts) redirects to American craft. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:25, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * No real problem with that, but when you do you might want to make arts and crafts a disambig to applied arts and Arts and Crafts movement.  Hiding Talk 19:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * While in some ways the idea of using Applied Arts as a category is appealing, it stands in apposition to Fine Arts which we are all against using as a category. So what should Applied Arts cover? Traditional crafts? Graphic design, typography, advertising? Architecture? Photography? What do you think? Kleinzach 19:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I would define it as anything that is not created simply for aesthetic value. Certainly some arts could be both Fine and Applied (i.e. photography) but I would still count photography as being a fine art but the rest of the arts named above I would count as applied. I think in terms of categories, if we're doing away with Fine arts (which I support), applied arts might possibly go as well...certainly it could be a POV issue. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 20:13, 8 May 2006 (U
 * It might be difficult to get agreement on what belongs or doesn't belong in an Applied Arts category. As with Performing Arts, I am basically in favour of broad, shallow categorization rather than deep. In other words I think it might be better to list painting, drawing, architecture, photography, crafts, graphic design etc directly under Visual Arts rather than any intermediate subcategory. - Kleinzach 20:39, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree totally with Kleinzach, as what he's suggesting is what I've been doing on the blueprint Portal:Arts/Categories page. H AM [[File:Welsh-flag x44.png]] 21:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, AND things may be placed in more than one category to prevent controversy. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 21:26, 8 May 2006 (UTC) May we list Applied arts under Visual Arts on the Portal:Arts/Categories page? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 23:13, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The way forward here might be to develop the article Applied art which is currently very short, lacks references etc. and then, when we have something authoritative, work out where Applied Arts fits in to the structure. My own feeling is that Applied arts is probably better as a 'genre-type' category than as a direct sub-category of Visual Arts. Kleinzach 11:17, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Found objects
I'd like to draw your attention to the above, which needs to be seen in a wider arts context. Tyrenius 02:16, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Results Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 4
Cat Top 10 to Cat. Top 8 - no consensus Cat. Visual arts to Cat. Art - keep Cat. Fine arts - delete Cat. Galleries to Cat. Art museums and galleries - merge

Congratulations to Ham, Ganymead, Hiding et al. for organizing an effective and successful arts lobby. Should we put Category:Top 8 up for deletion? And Category:Top 10! - Kleinzach 09:23, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Fragmented discussions on categories
At the moment our discussions about categories have been fragmented between this page, Portal talk:Arts and Portal talk:Arts/Categories. Would it be better to have it all here?

By the way, Clubmarx has made a 'Merge & rename to Visual arts proposal on Portal talk:Arts/Categories. - Kleinzach 09:21, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Lists v categories
This is a point of discussion on Articles_for_deletion/List_of_video_artists. Tyrenius 17:54, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

Salvatore Fiume
Can anyone check what I wrote on Salvatore Fiume (spelling, grammar, vocabulary, ...) please? Thank you! -- Daĉjo почта 11:58, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Charles Billich
Hi, I spotted this article while patrolling new pages earlier today, and tagged it as unreferenced and the wrong tone for an encylopaedia. The newbie editor then blanked it and started rebuilding it, including a link to the artist's website... which is ok. I'm glad he took it the right way. He's started uploading images Image:HumanyUnited.jpg, Image:Greendragonbmz1.jpg now... which have been given broken tags, suggesting that the artist himself is writing the article. Would anyone more familiar with artists like to jump in and steer it in the right direction. Thanks. - Motor (talk) 13:10, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Category:The arts on CfD
I proposed merging Category:The arts into Category:Arts. on CfD. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Project stats, or how do i measure the expansion of coverage?
This is a tech question. I'm not sure where to ask it, but perhaps I can start here? I would like to find out the number of articles in my project (opera) - now, and in the future (and ideally in the past). Is there a non-manual way of doing this? Does anybody have any ideas? - Kleinzach 08:38, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The village pump is the best place to ask it. I think the answer to how many exist now would be for a count on how many articles exist in Category:Opera and sub-cats, but that might not work based on the way the categories are set up.  I don't know ho you do it for the past, and you'd probably need that to make predictions on article growth for the future, which is what I assume you want? Hiding Talk 19:20, 29 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I believe most of the opera articles are in the opera-umbrella cat, so I could do a manual count. Anyway I will try the Village Pump. - Kleinzach 22:15, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Featured content on Portal:Arts
With the end of the month approaching fast, I've started voting processes for Featured article of the month and Featured picture of the month on Portal:Arts. Please vote or make your own nominations on the relevant pages. If there are no votes I will promote Igor Stravinsky and Image:Pantheon wider centered.jpg by default – both are proper Wikipedia featured content. One point we need to raise is whether we only allow proper featured articles and pictures (as with Portal:Geography), or whether we relax the requirements for showcasing (as with most other portals, which have Selected articles etc.). Featured articles are not a problem, but arts-related featured pictures are rather thin on the ground, and when you don't count the art or architecture ones they're non-existent. H AM  16:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Key articles for Wikipedia 1.0
Hello! We at the Work via WikiProjects team for Wikipedia 1.0 would like you to identify the "key articles" from your project that should be included in a small CD release due to their importance, regardless of quality. We will use that information to assess which articles should be nominated for Version 0.5 and later versions. Hopefully it will help you identify which articles are the most important for the project to work on. As well, please add to your Arts WikiProject article table any articles of quality articles|high quality]]. If you are interested in developing a worklist such as this one for your WikiProject, or having a bot generate a worklist automatically for you, please contact us. Please feel free to post your suggestions right here. Thanks! Walkerma 06:37, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for an Art Gallery
Wikipedia contains a lot of photos of fine arts. Wouldn't the Arts project be the right place to access them as a big art gallery, ordered by Artist, time or whatsoever? The goal should be to have a photo of each painting at least visible in a museum. The gallery could display empty frames for missing pictures (and encourage readers to take and submit the photo). Famous painting might have more than one picture taken, so a voting mechanism could be in place. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.178.56.185 (talk • contribs).

Naming conventions?
I have a specific question about the naming of articles for famous sculptures, but I imagine that this issue applies to all art forms. What is the specific policy for the naming of articles for pieces of art with foreign names? I see a fair amount of inconsistency here, as I find many articles with english titles (and the foreign name given in parentheses), and a fair amount with articles with native language titles (and the english title given in parentheses). For example: Is there a pre-existing policy for artwork that we can follow? Can we agree on some consistent naming standard for artwork? --DDG 21:39, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Native name: Garçon à la pipe, L’Absinthe, Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon
 * English name: Apollo and Daphne (Bernini), Triton Fountain, Ecstasy of St Theresa, Impression, Sunrise, Luncheon of the Boating Party


 * There doesn't seem to be a general policy - there was a discussion at the Visual arts project recently Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Visual_arts. That might be the place to continue. Johnbod 13:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikiversity School of Art and Design
I cordially invite the participants of this project to the newly founded wikiversity school of Art and Design. We are still working out the policies, but any help is appreciated. --Rayc 00:31, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory
Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory,
 * User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
 * User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
 * User:Badbilltucker/Science directory

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 20:58, 23 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:43, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Transition Gallery
Please take a look at this so we can get an informed debate. Thanks. Tyrenius 01:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Experts required
Hey folks. Just want to make sure you're aware of this page: Category:Pages needing expert attention from Arts experts. Cool? Cool. :)

Naming conventions for artworks: The definitive article
Another naming issue to consider, in addition to the question of foreign-language titles raised by DDG above. A good deal of works of art are popularly named after their location/patron/a famous owner, e.g.


 * Arnolfini portrait, Baronci altarpiece, Borghese Gladiator, Elgin Marbles, Ghent Altarpiece, Harbaville Tryptych, Mond Crucifixion, Portland Vase

Does anyone think these titles would be improved by the addition of the definite article, e.g. The Arnolfini Portrait etc.? In the body of each article the works are rarely referred to without it: The Portland Vase is believed to have been made in Alexandria some time between 20 BC and the year 100. But the only instances I could find of this being done in article titles are The Rokeby Venus and The Wilton Diptych. Personally, I think the use of the definite article would clarify the titles listed above; if you did not know about art, would it be clear from the title Arnolfini portrait whether the page was about a specific painting, or, to judge from the odd decapitalised second word, might you think that an "Arnolfini portrait" was the term for a certain type or style of portrait? The Arnolfini Portrait leaves no room for such ambiguity.

As the unwritten rule of not including the definite article appears to be entrenched, I may not garner much support for this proposal. (In which event, should The Rokeby Venus and The Wilton Diptych be changed?) But at the very least Arnolfini portrait and Baronci altarpiece should be changed to the more fortuitous Arnolfini Portrait and Baronci Altarpiece, following the "Capitalised adjective–Capitalised noun" convention. My intention in posting is not to split hairs but rather to generate some discussion that may help formulate the contents of a future Art Manual of Style, an idea of which I'm still enamoured. [talk to the] H AM 18:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia
Beginning cross-post.
 * See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★ MESSED  ROCKER ★  23:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

''End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.''

Pierre Pinoncelli
I have just stubbed the article on Pierre Pinoncelli and was hoping someone else with knowledge of the subject might help to expand it. All the best, Cyde Weys  22:50, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afriad) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 15:55, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day
It's being suggested that for Wikipedia Day, Jan 15th, we try and do the following:
 * Each Wikiproject will try to clear its to-do list;
 * Each Wikiproject will pick an article within its scope and form a collaboration to improve it to GA/FA status;
 * Each Wikiproject member will attempt to make as much useful and constructive edits as possible to articles within the Project's scope;

It's all being discussed at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week. Hiding Talk 10:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Notabilty (artists)
Please see here for my argument that such a policy is needed (particulary for painters).--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 22:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Arts AfDs
Please post to and watchlist: Tyrenius 01:35, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
 * WikiProject Deletion sorting/Visual arts
 * WikiProject Deletion sorting/Arts

Biographical infoboxes, Biography Project banners and bots
A large number of potted biography infoboxes have recently appeared on articles. These have been designed for pop singers, celebrities etc. (see Template:Infobox musical artist), but have been applied to composers, e.g. Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Liszt. It's clear they will soon be appearing on all other people-related articles.

At the same time a bot called Kingbotk has been used to put prominent Biography Project banners on all pages involving people, while marking up pages for the infobox treatment. These banners can be nested (i.e. hidden to reduce clutter) but it's a laborious business keeping up with a bot (that has now done 215,000 edits) while all the category tags obviously remain.

What do other projects think of biographical infoboxes, and bot-deposited banners?

These issue has been discussed by the Composers Project at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Composers, the Opera Project at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera and directly with the bot operator at the Biography Project Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography see Request re inboxes, WikiProject_banners, and ''Relationship_between_WPBio,_WPOpera_. and WPComposers''

Perhaps you have also had discussions about these issues? I'd be grateful for responses! - Kleinzach 00:05, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Bot-deposited banners are OK. Biographical infoboxes need great care, and should be removed if they are badly done. Redesigning them is also possible, but difficult. Carcharoth 12:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately the bots are not simply depositing banners, which would be harmless if cluttering. The problem with the infoboxes is not just that they are inappropriate. They are also full of errors (names, dates, mis-application of genres, absence of foreign accents) and anachronisms (national flags for medieval composers etc). The people who have been putting them up haven't bothered to read the articles, let alone use sources. (I note there has now been a vote on Talk:Frédéric Chopin for removing the one from that article.) - Kleinzach 22:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Artnet subscription
Does anyone here have a subscription to Artnet? We are trying to find some more information about an artist/photographer named Martin Vos, who took Image:Tagore-einstein2.jpg in order to determine its copyright status. See discussion at. Thanks.  howcheng  {chat} 21:15, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Lost art
The article lost art is currently a redirect to lost artworks, that is, individual works of art which are no longer extant. I do not know if an article exists under another name to describe arts (i.e. processes, skills, actions, activities) which are no longer extant, but I imagine people will agree with me that there should be. This would cover craft/artisan skills such as the production of Damascus steel, dances, music, rituals, etc which may still exist in records, or in their products (e.g. swords made of damascus steel) but which no longer exist as an active tradition, the knowledge of how these arts were truly performed in their respective times having been lost. If anyone would like to get started on an article on this, I'm just making a suggestion. Cheers. LordAmeth 15:44, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Template standardisation
Those visually inclined might like to check out the above and its talk page. Tyrenius 07:07, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Peer Review requested

 * I've done some work on the article about the Obie Award-winning play, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, and recently put it up for Peer Review, here: Peer review/A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant/archive1.  Any input, suggestions or advice on how to improve the article further as it moves towards a Featured Article Candidate and hopefully to being a Featured Article would be greatly appreciated.  If you think it is ready to go to WP:FAC in its present state, I'd like to hear that too.  Thanks.  Curt Wilhelm VonSavage 09:13, 24 October 2007 (UTC).

WikiProject Literature proposal
There is a proposal up for a project focusing on general, basic literature articles here. Please add your name if you are interested. Thanks, Wrad 20:49, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Notice of List articles
Page(s) related to this project have been created and/or added to one of the Contents subpages (not by me). This note is to let you know, so that experts in the field can expand them and check them for accuracy, and so that they can be added to any watchlists/tasklists, and have any appropriate project banners added, etc. Thanks. --Quiddity 18:45, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
 * List of basic art topics

Billy Name
Quite aside from the inanity of some of the "quotations" appended to it, the article on the photographer Billy Name is a mess. I have little knowledge of or interest in Warholiana; can somebody better qualified take a look? -- Hoary 23:35, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

Milovan Destil Marković
has recently created the article Milovan Destil Marković. I've had a discussion with him/her about the lead section of the article, at User talk:B.stegmayer and User talk:Aecis. The lead section of the article contains a number of terms that may be difficult to understand for readers who are not well versed in art terminology. An example: "In his recent work Marković investigates the possibilities and challenges as well as the limits of visual representation in general, but is primarily concerned with the role of the close-up. Marković draws attention to the politics of representation involved in the production of visibility and invisibility of the human face (propaganda or commercial advertisement versus the making invisible and removal from public awareness). Both of these productions are socially conditioned and socially performed. Moreover, as often as not, they are produced in/by public space, where the “ideal face” may be used for fulfilling ideological, propaganda or market purposes." (italics added for emphasis) This reads like a museum brochure. I'm not very well versed in these terms, so I would like to ask the members of this WikiProject to assist in making this article accessible to lay readers. Note: this is not a dispute. A ecis Brievenbus 13:02, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * It is wonderfully full of critical jargon, and the apparatus sections are ridiculously long. The visual arts project is more active & relevant than here; you might find someone interested in taking it on there. Johnbod (talk) 13:08, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I've moved it there. A  ecis Brievenbus 21:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Art WikiMarathon
I'm helping to organize a group of artists and art historians to contribute contemporary art additions and entries to wikipedia on Jan 26th. We're all setting aside a day to add as much as information as possible and calling it Art WikiMarathon. So far the people involved are all very net savvy and experienced with wikipedia. We'll be doing our best to create quality content that is referenced, links up other pages, etc. and we'll be editing each others work to improve it. If anyone has any suggestions or would like to participate, please let me know. Dronthego (talk) 20:32, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Dagon James
This article has been listed for deletion at Articles for deletion/Dagon James. Pairadox (talk) 02:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox Artist
Comments requested at the above. I propose changing the wording on Infobox Artist from "Famous works" to "Key works" (or something similar). I changed it, but it's been reverted and another editor has asked for wider input. It is also a chance to discuss other fields and whether any should be removed or whether more should be added, such as "web site", "major shows", "gallery" etc. Please put a new heading to discuss each proposal separately. Tyrenius (talk) 07:13, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Moribund projects
There are two inactive art projects. I propose formally marking them as historical, so efforts can be focused at WikiProject Visual arts. Comment at: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Painting and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Contemporary Art. Tyrenius (talk) 13:44, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I've been reluctant to comment, since I'm not signed in to those two projects however they do seem redundant. This project is working very well, and I agree perhaps those two projects should be retired. Modernist (talk) 14:41, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Please post (or copy posts) on project talk pages so there is a record there (that is - the projects facing closure). Thanks. Tyrenius (talk) 15:59, 6 February 2008 (UTC)