Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Arts

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[edit] Let's get this party started

Ok, now that we've signed up, what can we do to start fostering a relationship between the all the arts on Wikipedia? What can we do to improve articles? Should we all introduce ourselves first? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 22:04, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

BTW, who is maintaining the portal? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 22:05, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I mostly work on art articles, and as Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts shows no signs of life I thought setting this up might be a good idea. I was also disappointed with the lack of support for some articles in COTW and AID which I thought might benefit from the attention of an arts project. As far as I can see, nobody's maintaining the portal regularly, other than Cyberjunkie occasionally changing the format. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 22:26, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Greetings! Well, I'm a theatre person and spend much of time working on articles relating to it. I also help maintain Portal:Theatre and I created WikiProject Theatre and WikiProject Elizabethan theatre. Well, I just got back from a walk and while walking I thought about some things this Project might work on. Here are some ideas:
  • First I think we need to redo the Project page. I jazzed up the page for WikiProject Theatre, just to make it more visually appealing; we're artists aren't we? In addition, we need to have a scope and mission statement as well as ways to help the project.
  • Since we encompass such a large area, I think trying to work on individual articles might be difficult. Perhaps the purpose could be to enhance co-operation between projects and portals, certainly maintenance of all arts related portals, and perhaps an arts article collaboration (only if there is enough interest in this Project).
  • One project this group might consider should be sorting out arts related catagories. Certainly working on a general arrangement of them and then working downwards. Being that they are so related, perhaps creating a model category for arts related fields and then working to bring other arts related categories in line with that.
Just some ideas in stream-of-conciousness order. On the re-design of the project page, I have very little time now, but I may be able to tackle it shortly and redesign it if you like. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 23:38, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
Two more thoughts. Perhaps we might send some spies over to WikiProject Science and find out what they're doing to create attention. We also might consider an arts related assessment of arts coverage as a whole. Taken it piece by piece and looking at how the arts of covered. Of course we need people in all the arts disciplines to really be able to do this well. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 23:42, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Yes, yes, absolutely yes to all of the above. I must confess that other than an arts COTW (a long way down the line from now, you're right) and looking after the portal I had only the haziest idea of how this project could actually improve individual articles, but your category suggestion sounds like a good place to start – an orderly list of categories on the portal à la Portal:Science will look impressive. In fact, the whole idea of this project as I envisaged it was of stealing all of the Science project's best ideas, so I'm glad you caught on to that!
The only new suggestion I have to add is that we perhaps formulate a sort of standard "Come and join the Arts Portal!" message and paste it on all of the related project/portal talk pages. Granted, some of them are a bit dead, but surely loads of people who joined and then forgot all about them still have those pages on their watchlists. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 16:59, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
So, how should categorization go? Has a categorization scheme already been invented by historians or sociologists to categorize the arts and artistic endeavor? I'm going to search for one, but if anyone knows of a book or web site that discusses such a scheme, let us know!
--Tony(blah blah blah)(look what I can do!) 15:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
As I see it, certain categories can be applied to every art category, such as "Theatre by country", "Dance by country", "Visual arts by country", "Literature by country" and so forth. The same could go for categorizing artistic movements, artists, etc. The purpose of the categorization would be to structure these in a consistant manner. In addition, there are some issues that might be best addressed here (i.e. an issue I have still yet to resolve in terms of theatre categories: should theatre be classified by country or by culture? This also affects the naming of the category ("Theatre in Italy" vs. "Italian theatre")). This is certainly a decision that would apply to all arts categories. Another issue arises with the use of British vs. English and then further what about Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish? What about artists, etc. under colonial rule? (i.e. Indians under British rule? classified as British, Indian or both?) Note, however, that I have noted and appreciated your sarcasm. :-) Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:39, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Tony, I had a bash at what you might call a "categorization scheme" on Portal:Arts/Categories. I put theatre, music etc. under "Performing arts" and architecture, painting etc. under "Visual arts" (no surpises there). Literature and poetry I decided to class as "Liberal arts", although the term is a bit problematic as in the classical sense it would mean grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy. And of course you could argue the case for poetry being one of the "performing arts". This scheme hasn't actually been applied to the categories yet – I'll wait for some feedback from the project as to whether everything's in the right place before I go ahead with the changes. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 18:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arts-related percentages

I just did a few calculations. Of Featured articles, arts-related articles comprise roughly 20%, while they comprise 19% of Good articles. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 01:23, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tag for WikiProjects

I just whipped this up! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject Arts
Announcing the creation of WikiProject Arts, an effort to create a collaboration between all arts projects and artistically-minded Wikipedians in order to improve arts coverage.

  • Such a pretty little tag, I'm considering rewording it as almost a sort of party invitation – I've never seen that done before. Perhaps with the header ==An Invitation to all members of this Project/Portal== ... but before I go ahead with that I wonder whether, for brevity's sake, this should be made a template, or whether that would fall foul of the Wikipedia:Templates for deletion squad. Having the message this template is being considered for deletion above the invitation won't reflect very well on the project. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 16:19, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Go ahead and re-word it as you wish. I didn't create this as a template as I don't see it being used very much. Certainly once the project gets off the ground we may consider making this a template, but as it stands I think just inserting the code will work just as well. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scope

Why are television-, film- and radio-related WikiProjects currently excluded from this list? They're no more or less "artistic" than sculpture, comics, or music. Also, what about other, non-theatrical performing arts, like dance and perhaps stage magic? -Silence 18:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion all of those should be included. I didn't even consider Magic, but it certainly does qualify. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:52, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah. They're all currently listed under "Arts" in Wikipedia:List of WikiProjects, anyway. -Silence 18:57, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Dance was duly added and I'll do Magic next. Film I'm willing to add, but I don't know about Buffy, Digimon or Star Wars: it seems to me that there are plenty of fans to keep these projects in the pink of health, and they neither need help like Theatre or Visual arts nor can they help us, as a big project like Music potentially could with related aspects of the arts. Perhaps I'm wrong, but do those pop culture topics really need what Project Arts is intended to offer as much as ones of the kind already on the list? HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 19:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
I don't see any need to add series-specific projects here. I was suggesting that we add WikiProject Film and WikiProject Television, not that we add WikiProject Star Wars or WikiProject Doctor Who or anything of the sort; why would we have to include those just to include "Film" and "Television", when we don't have to include "WikiProject Harry Potter" or "WikiProject Middle-earth" just to list "Novels" here, nor "WikiProject The Beatles" to list "Music" and "Musicians" here? That level of detail is unnecessary, as it should be covered on WikiProject Television, Music, Film, etc. instead, if anywhere. -Silence 19:40, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
Oh, that's perfectly fine by me, then! HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 19:56, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings from Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels

We have been increasing our activity from the end of last year and have recruited a number of new members. We are progressing through Wikipedias diet of article on Novel (of whatever level of elitism) and striving for increased quality and consistency. The consistency is more difficult to acheive as Novels come in all shapes and styles and articles that pre-exist are more difficult to bring to consistency. Anyway all the best. I have joined up as a contact between these projects. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:16, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Welcome! We're certainly glad to have a representative of WikiProject Novels! I just glanced at the project and I'm particularly impressed with the categorization project. This is something we may have to steal for this project. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 20:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New layout

I threw together a new layout for the mainpage. Now, it looks much better, methinks. Certainly not as sterile as it was. If anyone thinks the yellow is too bright, feel free to change the colours or let me know and I'll do it. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm damning with faint praise, but I can live with it. :) Steve block The wikipedian meme 21:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Better looking apart from the colours - please, please go for something more subtle. We do not want to put people off before they join. Also I suspect once underway fully the layout will need to change again to be more functinal. At present this is beginning to take on the sharacter of a Portal. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I think the redesign has flair! If it has to be changed – and I suppose Ganymead's (IMO marvellous) in-house style is something you either love or hate – let's at least keep it looking distinctive. Perhaps we should be taking our cue from some of the more aesthetically successful userpages. I see no reason why ours should look like every other WikiProject page. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 18:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree, as long as the design isn't too esoteric. We don't want to alienate people with an élitist design that's hard to use. But I definitely like what's going on now with the design. Good work, Ganymead! -- T.o.n.y 18:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the compliments. Feel free to tweak the design if y'all would like. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 18:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I don't think the current design looks bad: it has a lot of potential, at the least. But it would be hard to dispute descriptions like "garish" or "gaudy" at this point; the bright pastel colors are a bit off-putting. Also a serious issue is that the use of tables on pages like this does, in fact, scare off some users in practice, as it makes it significantly more troublesome to figure out where one has to edit in order to make changes occur on the page, such as the changes required to add oneself to the list of participants. I, for example, had to make 6 or 7 attempts in order to edit the right part of the page to tone down the glaring yellow color to a more reasonable and muted hue (though it was subsequently reverted for some reason..).
  • Remember that one of the key components of all fields of art is the ability to balance sound and silence, positive and negative: this page will look a lot healthier and more aesthetically pleasing when it's less cluttered and has a bit more subtlety and moderation in its presentation. There is a very thin line between a beautiful art gallery and a bloated mound of shinies; we should strongly resist the urge to bloat this page with shiny images, cutting off all room for the text to breathe. Rather than shoving a bunch of huge (albeit very well-chosen) images down our readers' throats, some tasteful, selective placements at carefully-chosen and well-balanced intervals along the page will ultimately be more effective, compelling, and inviting to new users. As examples, we don't really need a giant friggin' portrait of Beethoven to represent the musical aspect of the arts: a simple line of music notes would be more than enough, and would be easier to fit into the layout in a non-obtrusive way. We should also avoid redundancies: we have the image of the dancers both near the top of the page and near the bottom (it's also poorly-alligned near the bottom), when we probably only need it near the bottom, in our signature template, especially since there's already an image depicting "dance" very near the top of the page; nor are two illustrations of comics, and two illustrations of literature, really necessaary (if you're going to include an extra one left-hand column, why not balance things out better and take a load off the page by removing one from the right-hand column?). But, as I said, the layout has potential.
  • It will also probably look better when we don't have a cheesy Hallmark-esque quotation like "Art is the signature of civilizations." as our motto. :) Or lies like "Art means to dare — and to have been right." (Though I am, and long have been, fond of the "Art is useless" point. Wilde will be spared.) But I suppose beauty is in the eye of the beholder. :f -Silence 22:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Ahhh, the art critics have appeared! Thank you for your critique. It should be pointed out that I'm not really a designer, i'm a thespian who has taken a few design courses. Basically, this design is the design I've used for the two theatre wikiprojects I've created as well as my own userpage. It was my intent only to "jazz up" this page and give it a bit of flair. I'm completely open to any suggestions as to how to make this page more presentable. Of course, any project member is encouraged to make any changes they wish! So, go at it. I'll take a look at it tomorrow and see what can be removed to let the "text breathe". Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 08:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Greetings from Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera

Opera has also been an active area during the past few months. We have a long way to go before we can begin to rival the coverage of the main print resource (the New Grove Dictionary of Opera), however in the long term Wikipedia is better suited to developing an up-to-date performance history than a conventional encylopedia.

We have made some progress in developing an appropriate ‘project style’ based on Wikipedia policies, taking into account that we are using many terms and references in languages other than English. Categorization is disorganized and proliferated, perhaps it always will be on Wikipedia? It might be helpful if the Arts Project produced some guidelines. I see there is a Portal:Arts/Categories page and I may make some comments there.

Lastly I hope members here respect the work done by the individual projects and do not try to impose solutions on them. Advice will be much appreciated, but not peremptory editing! Best regards to all. - Kleinzach 18:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Welcome! We're glad to have your input here. One of the things I'd like to see this porject accomplish is a cleanup of arts-related categories. See below. Again, welcome! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 08:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization project

As I have stated above, I think that one of the major goals of this WikiProject should be a top-down organization of arts related categories. Once this has been completed, there will still need to be reguilar maintenance of categories as articles are added. The goals of this should be:

  1. To better organize all arts related categories. Not only to aid those working on the categories but to make these categories easier for users of Wikipedia.
  2. To properly label art-related articles, this includes not only categorizing them correctly but given them proper stub tags, cleanup tags (a cleanup section for arts articles should probably be located here), no referecnes tags, or even deleting them if they're not found to be encyclopedic. Certainly this will also help to locate articles needing to be merged and renamed as well.
  3. To search out articles that need to be categorized and "corral" them in the proper categories.

Once categories begin to be more organized, we can better get an idea of what is missing and what areas need work.

[edit] Accomplishing this

WikiProject Novels has an ingenious chart detailing the categories, including those that have yet to be created. This could be helpful, certainly for the upper eschelons of the arts categories.

One of the first things that really needs attention is the fact that we have three major category headings for this area. They are: Category:The arts, Category:Arts and Category:Art. There was a discussion towards the end of 2004 here about naming. I think having three categories completely confuses the issue. My suggestion would be to combine these under and get rid of the other categories. Anyway, I digress...

This is all just a suggestion. Should interest exist, I'll whip up a project subpage to work on this. As for me, it's 4:30 AM and I need sleep. Cheers! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 08:33, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I think there should be one top level category. Steve block The wikipedian meme 22:17, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the three major category headings, Category:Arts can clearly go because this talk page is the only page on it. As for Category:Art, it's not Category:The arts that would make it redundant, but rather Category:Visual arts (although we need to move irrelevances like Anarchism and the arts from C:Art before we arrive at that hurdle).
I've been working on Portal:Arts/Categories (which I've based on its corresponding page on Portal:Science rather than the Novels project's chart) as a possible blueprint for the eventual arrangement of the categories, and probably the first thing you notice is how "Performing arts" is followed by "by country"; but "Visual arts" has "by region" and "Literature" "by nationality" – very confusing.
I would argue that the neatest way of resolving this would be for every subdivision of the arts to have a "by region" category, as with Category:Art by region, which has subcategories for African, Asian and Western art. This doesn't exactly solve the thorny question of nationality over culture over geographical location, but at least it circumvents it until you're well into the sub-subcategories. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png
Ok, I would argue keeping Category:Arts and merging everything there. As I see it, the name of Category:The arts is simply wrong. Naming conventions only allow articles like "the" to be used if the name of the category is a specific title. Certainly, both "arts" and "the arts" refers to the same exact thing, the article doesn't add anything in this context. As for Category:Art, while "art" is the commonly used term for visual arts, for our purposes being specific is the most useful thing. Of course, if we were to do away with that category, it would mean the renaming of a number of categories. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 16:22, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I see your point about the unnecessary definite article, Ganymead – I was thinking only in terms of expediency, but you're right, "Arts" is preferable to "The arts". I also want to call everyone's attention to Wikipedia:Categories for deletion, as suggestions have been made on that page in the past few days to:

  1. Delete Category:Arts (Currently most votes are in favour of deleting! Don't let them do this!)
  2. Merge Category:Visual arts with Category:Art
  3. Delete Category:Fine arts

We've made categorisation our main priority for this project, so I felt the need to draw your attention to these proposals. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 21:30, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

  • I have voted on the Category:Arts and Category:Fine arts to suspend the voting until this project can make a proposal. Merging Category:Visual arts with Category:Art, IMO, is ummmmmmm uninformed. >>sparkit|TALK<< 23:51, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, there are some ideas for Visual arts categorization at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Visual_arts/Art_categories if anyone wants to use them. >>sparkit|TALK<< 00:01, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello Sparkit, and welcome. Thankyou for diving into this issue and bringing out attention to the CfD page. I've been away performing so I haven't been keeping up. It appears, so far, that consensus here is to move everything to Category:Arts and delete Category:Fine arts. Shall we conduct a straw poll? *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 15:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Agree with proposal. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 15:16, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Agree. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 22:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the Portal

This morning (May the 1st) Portal:Arts didn't have a featured article or picture ready to feature! I knocked together Portal:Arts/Featured article/May, 2006 (the Abbey Theatre in Dublin) and Portal:Arts/Featured picture/May, 2006 (a Henry Moore sculpture) a few minutes ago but clearly there needs to be a voting process in place to decide which FAs/FPs appear on the Portal page. Another huge problem is that Portal:Art, linked to on hundreds of pages, still misleadingly redirects to Portal:Arts – amending all those links might be a job for a bot. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 11:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Major change being proposed on CfD

Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Log/2006 May 4

There's a proposal to remove the Arts from the Top 10! Can anyone think of an argument for the Arts being more than a subdivision of Culture? Again, something I really must call the whole project's attention to – this would change the whole architecture of Wikipedia, and I don't think in our favour. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 21:53, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I have opposed it. Judging by the page, culture is not a well defined category. It's a mixture of social science items, arts and arts institutions, sport, philosophy, religion etc. even housing, humor and travel! It would be better to exclude the arts (which are reasonably well-defined) and stick to a proper anthropological/social science definition of culture, in my opinion. But then another of the top 10 is people! It's really not very impressive. - Kleinzach 22:22, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Further point. I would argue for the Arts as one of the three basic (traditional) categories alongside the Humanities (including history, geography, philosophy, languages etc.) and the Sciences (including technology). - Kleinzach 12:51, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
  • Invalid argument, as the Humanities is not at the top level either. I will continue to support removing "Art" (and "Philosophy") from the Top 10, as its clearly an aspect of culture. If we include "Art" at the top level, we'll also have to include every other major sub-category of culture, like religion, fashion and ethnicity. -Silence 22:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
The Sciences are not there either, but that's not really the point. The Arts are fundamental because they represent creative aspirations. If you reduce them to a sub-category of culture, you treat them as an aspect of human behaviour. Perhaps that is what you mean when you say that Art is "clearly an aspect of culture"? Kleinzach 22:40, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
  • I must say that I think proposals like the one to remove Arts and Philosophy from this category seem bent on imposing an impossibly rigid structure on Wikipedia, with no hope for flexibility. Arts and Philosophy deserve to be there simply because they are activities of the human mind (just like Mathematics and Science) that would otherwise be totally unrepresented in this category – not exactly a point that can be made for "ethnicity". (I would also approve of Economics and Religion being added for the same reason.) As we embark on our own categorisation saga, I hope we don't fall into the same trap of pedantry. Cheers to everyone for their spirited opposition so far. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 23:02, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] See also Talk:Main Page#Proposed change to the top of the page subject list ("Culture" to replace "Arts")

It's been suggested at the above section that the link to Arts at the top of the main page be removed also. Steve block Talk 23:24, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Names of movements

I've seen this discussed somewhere, but now I can't find it again. The case in point is Abstract expressionism. It is a title so it should be Abstract Expressionism, which is how it's usually put, as far as I can see. There needs to be a standardisation of capitalisation. I propose the article should be moved to Abstract Expressionism (which I've just discovered is a redirect) and the article text changed likewise. There are a lot of pages linked to it. Is there an easy way to change all these links to a new page? Tyrenius 09:18, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't know where all capitalization of art movements is discussed, but I've found no consistency amongst resources such as dictionaries and encyclopedias. Some research is here, User:Sparkit/capitalization. >>sparkit|TALK<< 14:38, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
The general rule for naming here is to only capitalize if it is a proper name. Of course, are these proper names, ah, there's the rub. I would go with only capitalizing the first name. Though certainly with one word terms like Expressionism, Impressionism, Dadism, etc., the term should be capitalized to follow naming conventions. This is a good subject to bring up...certainly once we reach a decision we should consider submitting a policy proposal. *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 15:24, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Looking through the naming conventions, I think there's a case to be made for capitalisation of all words bar those that are not conjunctions. Album titles do so and Opera has its own rules, and the page itself directs Do not capitalize second and subsequent words unless the title is a proper noun (such as a name) or is otherwise almost always capitalized (for example: John Wayne and Art Nouveau (my emphasis). A proposal just needs to be written up on the naming conventions talk page, I can't see a problem with adopting it. We might also tackle the issue of disambiguation terms we'd prefer to use, for example artist or painter, work of art, painting or artwork, that sort of thing, for when titles clash, as in Guernica, Richard Wilson and David Wilkie. I've found this page Wikipedia:WikiProject Visual arts/Art Manual of Style, which seems to offer guidance, or at least a starting point for discussion. I found this guidance "Capitalize the first letter of places (America, the West), nationalities (Native Americans, Europeans) and art movements (Cubism) except when used as an adjective (The painting is cubist in style)." from Art History Writing Guidelines, Colorado State University, a pdf converted to html by google in this link. Steve block Talk 16:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I would be in favour of art movements being capitalised, because in lower case terms like romantic, mannerism etc. might not immediately be recognisable as art terms. I found the Art Bulletin style guide rather contradictory: "sharply delimited period titles are capitalized", but they put "quattrocento", as sharply delineated a period as you can get, in lower case. The Art Manual of Style page asks, "Which dictionary [to emulate]? What to do when dictionaries do not agree with one another?" I would say the Oxford Dictionary of Art, because it's the most consistent of the ones on Sparkit's list with its almost universal capitalisation.
One thing that struck me about that list is the rather arbitrary use of hyphens: the Oxford Dictionary of Art has Neoclassicism and Postimpressionism (the latter is a redirect to a redirect on Wikipedia, eventually ending up at Post-Impressionism) but also Neo-Plasticism, Neo-Impressionism etc. That's another thing we'll have to come to a consensus about for this policy proposal of ours. Neo-Plasticism and Neo-Impressionism are considerably less familiar or important developments for the other two, so are hyphens dropped for periods in the art historical mainstream? Neoclassicism with a hyphen would look very strange to me, although Postimpressionism without one looks rather odd as well. As the latter term was invented by Roger Fry, I would suggest that the standard be whichever form he used, if anyone has access to anything written by him on the subject. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 21:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC) P.S.– I'd love to read this John Wayne and Art Nouveau article!

[edit] 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. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.png 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? Steve block Talk 19:35, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)
  • 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. HAM Image:Icons-flag-wales.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)

[edit] Wikipedia: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)

[edit] Results Wikipedia: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, Steve 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Lists v categories

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

[edit] Salvatore Fiume

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

[edit] 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 {{pd-self}} 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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? Steve block 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)

[edit] 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. HAM 16:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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) .

[edit] 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)


[edit] 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)

[edit] 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 Wikipedia: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)

[edit] Knowledgable editors needed at Richard Mosse

An artist has just created an article about himself at Richard Mosse. He understands now that self-written articles aren't encouraged. Never-the-less, some of his assertions about his work make him sound worthy of an article to a non-expert like me. Could someone with knowledge of the current British and/or Irish (Irish by birth, but seems London trained) art scenes take a look and see if the assertions are important enough to warrant an article? Also (if he warrants an article) any help identifying sources for some of the claims would be appreciated. I'm happy to do the leg work, but I'm not up on where some of this stuff might be documented or where to look for other reviews (since current stuff is all provided by the artist). Thanks --Siobhan Hansa 15:56, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia: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)

[edit] 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. :)

[edit] 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] HAM 18:04, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 23:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

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

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