Different artworks? Different pages?..

Hello editors,

I have a question about Follow my dreams page. It is about a hand-painted mural by the italian artist TVBoy in 2022 in the city of Barcelona. This mural was originally called "Super Alexia" where you could read in the background the phrase: "Follow your dreams" with the footballer Alexia Putellas stepped out painted in a Superwoman outfit with a cape clearly visible on her back. In 2023, due to the multitude of vandalism acts, the artist decided to redo the mural, but neither the phrase nor the drawing of the player were the same. You can see the clear differences with the 2022 painting: [1] and the 2023 updated painting: [2]

In the Talk:Follow my dreams I proposed to make different articles because the new painting of 2023 should be treated as a completely different one even if it is located in the same place and on top of the old painting. The painting and the message in the background is totally different as you can read in the article: [3]

Throughout history, many painters have painted over other paintings and they have never been treated as updates of these but yes as a different works. It is currently an active dispute with user Kingsif that recently moved the page (Super Alexia to Follow my dreams) and reverses the edits I made because he wants to fix the date of the old 2022 painting but the name "Follow my dreams" was created in the year 2023 not in 2022.

What do you think?

Good article reassessment for Edson Chagas

Edson Chagas has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 16:54, 11 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Arts coverage talk - Sourcing, structure, style, and Struggles

Hi all. First off, feel free to tell me I'm barking up the wrong tree or barking about something that's a non-issue. Don't want to just waste my/your time.

I've been editing on visual arts-related articles for a few years now, have tried my best to help improve articles and add authoritative sources. But I've noticed that there seems to be a much more developed culture and set of editing norms for other, more "popular" topics on Wikipedia that visual arts just don't seem to have. An example - there is a very specific set of criteria for editors creating or adding to articles on musical albums, and a very well-developed culture about how to structure/style such articles. I can't think of such a thing for even a basic type of visual arts article, e.g. structure recommendations for articles about works of art.

The way I've seen this play out in most cases is that visual arts-related articles, even those on similar/identical/analogous topics, have extremely divergent styles, tones, structures, etc., such that it can feel almost impossible to try and develop a new article as there's no "model" to start from. And if we pointed to the "average" arts article as a model, we'd just be mimicking the thousands of artist bios that are nothing but a list of exhibitions.

In other cases, because MOS/Visual Arts and this WP are really the only places to go for info about editing/style/sourcing, I've seen editors without arts editing experience basically butcher visual arts-related articles because they don't understand the shades of reliability/independence when it comes to arts sources.

Writing about art for this project is not easy, especially when dealing with contemporary art, living artists, and high-profile/controversial artists. I just wonder if there's any way we can make it a bit easier and help improve the quality of content and experience of editors.

To that end, instead of just complaining without a solution, I think a helpful step in the right direction might be some sort of informative content for editors looking to use visual arts sources in their edits. I really think some community norms for visual arts articles sources would be extremely helpful for newcomers and veteran arts editors alike. Specifically, I'm imagining either an essay or some sort of other information page that breaks down different types of sources often used in arts coverage and their various usabilities, including: art periodicals/magazines, academic art journals, museum catalogues/catalogue essays, commercial gallery catalogues/catalogue essays, museum websites, commercial gallery websites, general news sources, etc., as well as the different formats of these materials and their various usability - reviews vs. essays vs. news articles/profiles vs. peer-reviewed articles vs. interviews vs. press releases. The nuance here is that editors must analyze sources individually, with an eye toward the underlying publisher's reliability. Crucially, I think there needs to be community consensus on the use of arts sources that are connected to a subject but not written by that subject; museum catalogues for exhibitions jump to mind here. I've run into a few editors - and several administrators - who have implied that museums are not independent sources because they have a financial interest in the art (i.e., museums sell tickets), which a) feels like a bad faith interpretation of museum ethics and b) would disqualify the primary engines of art scholarship from ever being cited.

Honestly I think there's a much broader conversation to have there on GLAM, arts scholarship, and Wikipedia in general, but we can't solve every problem.

Does anyone have any thoughts? Is this a pointless thought/idea? Is this a good idea, and if so, what is the appropriate process to begin brainstorming, drafting, and getting community feedback on such a thing?

Anyway! This is already a wall of text so I'll stop. Thanks for any feedback/ideas. 19h00s (talk) 00:58, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Slight addition: One of the more tricky aspects in the case of sourcing is the categorization of sources as primary vs. secondary. Like, I just don't think there are good community norms on how these categories are defined in arts coverage. To take a specific example, imagine you wanted to cite an academically oriented essay from a museum exhibition catalogue, in an article about a living artist who is the subject of the catalogue. Depending on the editor, you could interpret the source in wildly divergent ways. I, personally, would consider that a secondary source - an art historian or curator writing about the style or history of the artist, published by a museum and/or university press that is well-regarded for its scholarship. But others might call that a primary source, saying that the artist participated in the exhibition and might have had some hand in the making of the catalogue, so the essay shouldn't be cited in the artist's article. Obviously, as with all sources, we can't make hard-line blanket statements about usability or primary vs. secondary status. But I think clearer guidelines or norms that speak in general terms about these kinds of sources would be helpful to establish a baseline wherein editors don't try to malign sources because they originate in the museum world with a link to the subject (e.g., "Academically oriented catalogue essays written by art historians, curators, or critics and published by well-regarded nonprofit museums, arts institutions, and/or university presses can generally be considered independent, secondary sources, provided that the content is not simply an interview with the subject and that the information cited is not about the publisher.")
I don't know if I'm even being clear with what I'm looking for/having trouble with. I just think some community guidelines for arts sourcing - and eventually structure/style, beyond what's already in the MOS - would be really helpful for folks who want to expand visual arts coverage in good faith. 19h00s (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
++ There are some additional, truly basic norms that would be really helpful for arts coverage in general. When establishing information about contemporary artists, what is the "authoritative source"? For example, when establishing that an artist staged an exhibition and it was notable generally and in the context of their career, what is the most appropriate citation? Is a review of the exhibition in a reliable source sufficient? Would several, high-profile reviews be better to establish the show was actually notable? Can you just cite the catalogue, which proves the show happened (I don't do this, to be clear)? Or does the exhibition need to be detailed in an academic biography of the subject, of which there are fewer and fewer because arts scholarship is genuinely struggling? There are not enough committed editors woking on contemporary art subjects to have developed these kinds of norms (at least that's my impression), so the attitude varies in the extreme among even featured/good visual arts articles (I literally once found a featured article that, to establish that an exhibition happened, just cited the Google Books page for the catalogue of the show.)
Can anyone relate to this or does anyone have thoughts? And again, tell me to just walk away if this is a non-issue/not worth the time.
(Promise this is my last addition) 19h00s (talk) 20:34, 15 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Realizing I put quite a lot in these walls of text, most of which can't really be addressed all at once. Here's where I'd love a reply:
To sum up the first action item I've been thinking about, what do folks in this WP think about creating a page for Visual Arts articles similar to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources? Listing and breaking down key visual arts periodicals, explaining the considerations when using museum and gallery sources, noting the rules on citing professional CVs (i.e., don't), etc.
I would love to get started building out some ideas, but I don't want to put effort in if more experienced editors don't see a use or if no one would participate in the feedback/review process. Could other folks see value in a dedicated visual arts sources information page, similar to what exists for albums? 19h00s (talk) 15:49, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The difficulty with creating a source guide for visual arts is that the visual arts aren't really written about in the same way as music. With music, there are a lot of publications that are constantly covering and reviewing new releases, and also occasionally covering old notable releases. You don't really have a lot of media like this for the visual arts, at least not anymore. There used to be a lot of magazines and journals that regularly published articles about art, both new and old, but there aren't nearly as many of those anymore. Creating a list of reliable magazines and journals could be useful, especially if it lists which ones are still in publication and includes links to online archives of older ones that aren't. Most new information published about new notable artworks are going to be published by the museums themselves. Like you said in one of your comments, these can be argued to be primary sources in some cases, and they aren't going to be completely independent of the subject if the publishing museum owns the artwork. From what I've found, catalogs from larger museums tend to be very reliable and well researched, and some of them publish their catalogs online, so creating a list of these could be helpful. Most new information published about old notable artworks is going to be published in books. And of course, there are also hundreds of years old books as well. You can't really write a source guide about books in the same way you can about regular publications because there are just way too many books to list every reliable book. Since you can't possibly list every single book, creating a list of reliable publishers might be a good idea too.
I do think starting some kind of source guideline for visual arts is a good idea is a good idea, and would be willing to help with it. GranCavallo (talk) 19:54, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with creating a guideline for visual artworks is that artworks can become notable for wildly different reasons, and the structure of the article is going to have to reflect this. Because of that, a guideline for structure might be a good idea. For example, an article about an artist's first notable artwork might need to include a little bit of background context about how the artist first got started in their field before explaining the context of the artwork itself. An article about an artwork that is notable because it is considered an artist's greatest work will need to explain why it is considered that artist's greatest work in the article. An article about an artwork that is notable because numerous critics have interpreted it in different ways will need to summarize these different interpretations. An artwork that that is notable because of it's historic circumstances (such as it being lost or stolen and then recovered) will probably need to have more coverage of this history than just discussing it's composition. GranCavallo (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely, I get all of what you're saying here -- I'm very glad someone else sees what I'm seeing in terms of needs, so thank you! It feels like every time I think of something that needs clarification, it opens up a whole Pandora's Box of new considerations. The difference between different artwork articles for example, as you pointed out - I hadn't even thought of the fact that different reasons for notability would necessitate wildly different article structures even when the topics are analogous (i.e., both articles are about specific works of art).
I do think it might still be useful to name a few specific periodical sources in visual arts, even if just to give a lay of the land. I think folks without arts editing experience or without a deep background in contemporary/visual arts might not know that, for example, you shouldn't use the magazine frieze to source most kinds of information related to the Frieze Art Fair, or even that the Big Three art publications in the U.S. are all now owned by the same company (Art in America, ARTnews, and Artforum all being under Penske's roof now). Some general pointers and descriptions of the landscape would be useful to get the message across that a) none of these periodicals exist in a vacuum with a view from nowhere, they all have histories/biases, and b) each source needs to be analyzed in the context of its use, its publisher, its content, etc.
I also would gently push back on the idea that museums are or should be the ultimate arbiters of notability. For historical art (which at this point I think would include early Modernism), you're definitely right, there just aren't non-academic sources writing about that art. But there is still definitely a contemporary art press corps, so to speak; even though visual arts media is nowhere as extensive as it once was, I think there's still enough of an infrastructure left that we have an obligation to incorporate the views and coverage of these publications into the notability equation. It's obviously very complicated and changes over time - a work that's dismissed in 2025 could be the work that defines this decade in the eyes of a future curator/critic in the year 2100 - but I do think we should still at least try to look to reviews and critical opinions in periodicals until there's more academic analysis that responds to or even incorporates that first round of critical feedback.
All that said, I think a great start would be what you outlined above: a general sourcing guideline that explains different types of arts sources, lists examples of reliable publishers/museums, and breaks down the nuances of primary vs. secondary and independent vs. non-independent sources in the museum/gallery worlds. I already started gathering some details in my Sandbox on perennial periodical sources I've consistently used in past edits. But I really have no idea what the process is for drafting and building out something like this - obviously collaboration is key, so I'm grateful someone else is interested in helping flesh out these ideas :) If you have any insights as to what kind of process we'd need to follow, that would be awesome too! 19h00s (talk) 21:38, 20 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Flagging for anyone interested in this discussion (incl. @GranCavallo): I queried the editors over at WikiProject Albums to get a sense of the processes they followed in developing the WP:Albums/Sources guidelines page, got some great info from long-time participants in that project. I'm going to be mostly MIA for the next week or so, but I'll be thinking on the advice and examples they shared over there. In the meantime, anyone is welcome to jump into my Sandbox to start helping build out a structure/ideas for the process for development of a Visual Arts sourcing guidelines page. Or feel free to just copy what I've got so far and start a formal draft. Thanks all! 19h00s (talk) 00:43, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

References for descriptions?

Art critics and historians seldom describe the appearance of the works they write about in much detail. However, a description of a work of art can be very welcome to someone whose sight is less than perfect. Is there any policy or guidance about including description of a work in a Wikipedia article where that description relies on what a sighted editor can plainly see rather than on a published source? If there is no such policy or guidance, would it be worthwhile providing some? -- Frans Fowler (talk) 01:47, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This would be such a useful guideline to develop, for both the access reasons you describe, and also for broader questions of when a single work of art needs to be described in prose for clarity of the article but has only been written about in less physical terms (e.g, critical metaphors, broad stylistic/thematic terms). Sometimes it is genuinely necessary to source descriptions from historians/critics, as there are things that could easily be misinterpreted, but there are so many cases where an object/artwork can be so straightforwardly described that no authoritative, notable, or reliable source has ever bothered to do it in depth, but it needs to be described in an article. I would think any guideline would need to be clear that there's a fine line between describing the physical/visual nature of an artwork and becoming an impromptu critic who is writing a creative review of the work of art (similar to but distinct from the guidelines for describing the plots of movies and television shows). For other folks watching this WP talk page, this is exactly the kind of style/structure conundrum I was referencing generally in my above discussion about sources/etc. Thanks for flagging this, Frans Fowler! 19h00s (talk) 01:55, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@7 pm. Precisely! Thank you.
Could you please indicate where to find the guidelines for describing the plots of movies and television shows that you suggest might offer a starting-point or model?
Actually, I was rather hoping there wasn't a policy or guideline for descriptions of works of visual art, and that the Community's answer to whether it would be worthwhile to provide one would be "no, leave it to common sense". But of course I don't want to fall foul of any consensus. -
Frans Fowler (talk) 04:46, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Frans Fowler I believe this is the relevant page for plot summaries, with more guidelines in the MOS. And yeah, I think common sense would apply in most cases - it’s not always necessary to provide visual descriptions and a sourced description is preferred, but unsourced descriptions could be allowable for access reasons or where the information/attributes are so obvious to anyone able to see the object that it would be trivial to cite. In the long term it might be useful to think about developing something firmer, but right now common sense seems a good route! 19h00s (talk) 04:58, 24 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Technically, on Wikipedia you don't have to cite things that are generally considered common knowledge. (WP:NOTCITE). When I write descriptions of artworks, I generally don't cite very obvious general descriptions (e.g. "the painting depicts a tree in a field") as I consider that to be common knowledge that anyone can learn from simply looking at the artwork. I always cite for details that are not extremely obvious, such as specific details about the subject (e.g. "the tree depicted is a yellow pine) or composition (e.g. "the scene in painting is arranged according to the rule of thirds"). GranCavallo (talk) 16:06, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Stuff like where the description relies on what a sighted editor can plainly see sounds like WP:BLUE stuff. A picture of a cat that most everyone sighted would describe as a picture of a cat verifies itself. Ifly6 (talk) 21:14, 25 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you all for offering your helpful perspectives. I find this from WP:NOTCITE particularly apposite: "If the subject of the article is [an...] artistic work, it is unnecessary to cite a source in describing events or other details. It should be obvious to potential readers that the subject of the article is the source of the information." I should hope any more specific guideline would at least allow enough latitude to distinguish, say, the particular "Portrait of an Unknown Man", "Susanna and the Elders", or Rembrandt self-portrait one is writing about (including uncontroversial merits) from all the other unknown men, bathing Susannas, or self-portraits by Rembrandt out there—especially if the usual reliable sources from less access-conscious times give little succour. ---Frans Fowler (talk) 14:46, 29 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Thanasis Deligiannis declined (Venice Biennale artist)

Hi everyone, can someone help me improve this article? It has been declined with the comment "The sources are too trivial to establish notabiliity." I am a bit stuck of how to improve the sources. The artist was featured in Venice Biennale (Greek pavilion, national participation) and I've added a citation from their official website and e-flux. I have a feeling the reviewer is not familiar with the fine arts and/or music world. Any help would be more than welcome. I am working on my next article, but this has somehow demotivated me. Kamien Case (talk) 15:13, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think my first note would be about sources. A lot of the sources you've used in that article are not independent - for example, you should not cite an artist's personal website or their commercial gallery's website in the artist's biography article (and just because you can find examples of artist bios where those kinds of sources have been cited, doesn't mean it's right). You also should not use an organization's website to confirm details about that organization - for example, you cannot use the Atlas Ensemble's website as the source of the details of this artist's work with that group. You need to find independent coverage of the artist in reliable publications. Independent is key here; if the artist has a sustained professional relationship with a source, that source probably doesn't belong in the artist bio. We're in a difficult moment for arts scholarship and writing generally, as there are simply not as many reliable publications still publishing detailed information about artists, but we do still have to find and use those sources instead of relying on information published by the artist or their colleagues. Happy to take a deeper dive if you'd like. 19h00s (talk) 15:26, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your reply @19h00s. Yes, I'd be more than happy to have some help with this. Maybe the article should be simplified and information that can't be properly cited to be deleted. The tricky part is that the artist is not a solid visual artist, he seems to work with sound and space. I find a lot of references on sound/music compositions, but they kind of stop around corona time. After that I read interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary artist etc. I already include in the article citations about his participation as an artist in a couple of museums. I just finished another thorough google search on his name. Here's a few things I've found:
Mentions on the music magazine The Wire.[4] But we can only read the full mentions with a subscription (I don't have one).
A (quite old) mention on the site Hellenic Music Archive.[5]
Mention in the Athens Epidaurus Festival of 2021 as a tutor in a workshop at the Little theatre of ancient Epidaurus.[6]
A review for the CD Not A Single Road by the American Recorder organisation.[7]
An interview at VPRO about the work Alice (mentioned as an experimental performative installation) in Dutch.[8]
An article on Alice by the Dutch newspaper nrc (needs subscription, I have downloaded the page because I have one).[9]
A mention about Alice and Deligiannis on the Dutch festival November Music.[10]
An interview on the platform Re-Fuse at the Opera Forward Festival.[11]
A mention in an article at the site Issue Project Room about the New York Foundation for the Arts residency Deligiannis took part in.[12]
An article about the Venice Biennale work at the Thessaloniki International Documentary Festival.[13]
There's many mentions online about Venice Biennale and Deligiannis, I already have included in the article the official site of La Biennale and the critique by e-flux.
Another reviewer (Aza24) I've asked for help wrote me this: "Also, he is mentioned in this book which seems like a high-quality reference worth using [14]."
There are two youtube channels appearing as video-score channels: Score Follower and Incipitsify, where some Deligiannis' works show up. I've clicked on their link and I got a website that looks like an app. Here's what I see when typing Deligiannis in search:[15]
His participation (music) in a work listed at the Greek government site for culture.[16]
I hope I'm not spamming here with info that is not useful. But I think some of the above could be of use. Kamien Case (talk) 19:43, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Happy to take a look at a few of these sources, though I don't have time to dive into all of them. Right off the bat though, I would very much agree that you should simplify and delete information that doesn't have a reliable, independent citation. I totally agree that this artist deserves an article - the Venice Biennale is arguably the only international art event where participating as an artist almost automatically makes that artist notable enough for a Wikipedia article - but a lot of the information you've included just needs to be cut until you can find a reliable, independent source that directly supports that point. Will take a look through some of these sources in a few. 19h00s (talk) 22:30, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, after taking a look at a few of these sources, this may be a bit out of my wheelhouse. I know there are super established norms and rules around sourcing information for musical artists (the Albums WikiProject maintains a list of both reliable and deprecated music publications, of which there are quite a lot). But I'm not super familiar with those guidelines or publications. For example, I really don't know if the Hellenic Music Archive can be considered reliable (this is not me mistrusting the source, I just don't know music sources super well). I would suggest if you haven't already maybe asking folks in the Albums or Music WikiProjects for assistance, as they would most likely be able to offer more detailed insights. But as it stands, I do think this artist deserves a bio article; I'm just not sure how detailed it can be yet. Sorry I can't be of more detailed help.
A broader note, though: Interviews are generally considered primary sources and should be cited with extreme caution. The content of an interview is essentially just a subject's own material (the things they said), so you should use interviews very cautiously. My rule of thumb is that I only cite interviews when they are directly quoted in a separate, reliable, independent publication. With visual artists, often that manifests with one curator publishing an interview with an artist and several years later another curator or art historian will quote that interview in an essay or article about the artist, meaning a separate reliable secondary source have themselves cited and analyzed the primary source quote. 19h00s (talk) 22:44, 20 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@19h00s thanks a lot for spending time on this. So I'll keep the Venice Biennale info in the article as a core for its notability and will ask in the music and composers projects for more help on sources related to these topics. If I think of questions you could maybe help with I might get back here bothering you. Kamien Case (talk) 13:29, 21 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
REally you need reviews (perhaps quoting them) not "mentions" - have you read WP:ARTIST? 00:20, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Rembrandt

Rembrandt has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 00:24, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Black Lives Matter street mural (Springfield, Massachusetts) at AfD

Black Lives Matter street mural (Springfield, Massachusetts) has been nominated for deletion, if any project members are interested in weighing in or making improvements. ---Another Believer (Talk) 23:38, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Visual_arts
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