Talk:Henry Moore

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Henry Moore article. This is not a forum for general discussion about the article's subject.
Please sign and date your posts by typing four tildes (~~~~). Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Ask questions, get answers.	Be polite Assume good faith No personal attacks Be welcoming	Article policies No original research Neutral point of view Verifiability

	Henry Moore is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do.
	This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on August 1, 2005.
Article Milestones Date Process Result August 17, 2004 Peer review Reviewed September 20, 2004 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject England, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to articles on England on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project member page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
FA	This article has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale.
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

This article has been selected for Version 0.5 and the next release version of Wikipedia. This Arts article has been rated FA-Class on the assessment scale.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
FA	This article has been rated as FA-Class on the Project's quality scale. [FAQ] See comments
	This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group.

An appropriate infobox may need to be added to this article, or the current infobox may need to be updated. Please refer to the list of biography infoboxes for further information.

This quote makes no sense whatsoever:

"All art should have a certain mystery and should make demands on the spectator. Giving a sculpture or a drawing too simple a title takes away part of that mystery so that the spectator moves on to the next object, making no effort to ponder the meaning of what he has just seen. Everyone thinks that he or she look but they really, you know."

- the niece was asking why the sculptures had simple titles, and here there seems to be the incoherent beginnings of an explaination of why they should not be simple. And the last part is gibberish. Someone please clarify. Palefire 04:11, Dec 15, 2004 (UTC)

You are right; it would make more sense if the quote were '... Giving a sculpture or a drawing too descriptive a title takes away part of that mystery...'. And the last line should probably be 'Everyone thinks that he or she looks, but they really don't, you know.' It comes from the article by Moore's niece, Ann Garrould, in the Dulwich Picture Gallery catalogue - I'll try and check it if I get the chance. -- Solipsist 08:50, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Yes, please do.Palefire 12:04, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've had a chance to check now, and it shows my memory is better than my typing. The corrected quote is '... Giving a sculpture or a drawing too explicit a title takes away part of that mystery...' and 'Everyone thinks that he or she looks but they don't really, you know.' - Solipsist 19:52, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm just curious how one's tax could be 97% of one's income. - Sour pickle 04:02, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree, this implausible fact needs a source. Another funny thing is the jump over two sentences from him disagreeing with his RCA professor to him getting a job there.Notjim 19:09, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I removed the reference to Henry Moore paying 97% of his income in tax, after performing a couple of quick google searches:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=%22henry+moore%22+97+tax&btnG=Search

Most of the high hits that match this search seem to be just copies of this wikipedia article.

Furthermore, the following search finds no reference to anything about 'tax' on the Henry Moore foundation website:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=tax+site%3Awww.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk&btnG=Search

I didn't change the report of paying about 1 million pounds in tax, even though I could find no source for it, because it is not an obviously implausible statement. Please feel free to revert my changes if you can find some source to back this claim Mister Farkas 21:48, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree 97% seems high, but I believe the top tax bracket in the UK was high in the 70's - I recall some controversy in the 80's when the Conservatives reduced the top tax bracket (to 50%?) arguing that it would actually increase tax revenue, since the previous high tax rate just forced most people who would pay it to leave the country.

I suspect the figure came from one of the books referenced - I'll check when I get a chance. In the meantime, the 97% tax figure is quoted in more detail in this essay and printed in The Japan Times

By 1977, Moore was paying a million pounds a year tax, representing 97 percent of his artistic income (the only higher taxpayers in Britain at the time were The Beatles). So to divert the money to a better cause he set up the Raymond Spencer Selling Co. as a business to sell his sculpture, and became an "employee" drawing a modest salary.

although that is qualified as 97% of 'artistic income' - did tax rates vary for different sources of income? I've known of the opposite; I think Éire offered a tax break of 0% on income from royalties until recently.

It still does, artists in the Republic of Ireland can apply for a tax exemption.

The Henry Moore Trust was set up in 1972, and the Henry Moore Foundation in 1976, so by 1977 his tax position was probably not straightforward. -- Solipsist 01:44, 2 August 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Deficiencies of this article 2 Photo 3 Photo additions; disrespectful substitutions for the artists' actual work 4 Adding photo of artist to article 5 Dead link, live site

[edit] Deficiencies of this article

This article has a worrying amount of short paragraphs (two of them only one sentence long) and no footnotes – even if the external links in the body of the text were converted to the preferred citation format we'd still only have four. I'd hate to see one of only three featured articles on artists lose its status, but I don't think this article meets the current FA criteria at the moment. HAM 18:56, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Be bold. You'll find citations for most dated events mentioned in the 'Biography from the Henry Moore foundation', but I'm unlikely to spend the time modernising the citations myself. I've got a much bigger backlog of things to do, such as improving the Barbara Hepworth article - including uploading a dozen photos of her sculptures. -- Solipsist 21:27, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photo

I wonder if it would be possible to obtain a photo of the man himself, it would be a good addition to the article. So far, there are only his sculptures. --Tone 23:25, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

It would be nice, but there almost certainly aren't any any copyright expired images and it could be a long shot to find any copyright free or GFDL licensed sources. If someone was feeling rather keen, it might be possible to approach the Henry Moore Foundation to see whether they own an image that could be licensed under GFDL (possibly at a reduced size) - AFIK, their primary remit is for encouraging arts education, so it is perhaps not outside the realms of possiblilty. There must be some other possibilities. -- Solipsist 21:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Photo additions; disrespectful substitutions for the artists' actual work

Please do not insert your photograph of the article's subject at the top of the page, as was done on 23 November with Henry Moore and René Magritte, without discussing it here on the Talk page. Even if the photograph did show us clearly what the artist looked like, and these do not, such an addition should be discussed here first. The photo caption credit to wikilinked Lothar Wolleh is also troubling, as the Lothar Wolleh article has two lines about the photographer, then approximately 100 wikilinked (most of them red) artists' names, and one external link – to Wolleh's web site.

Beyond the simple addition of such photographs, on 16 November an image of arguably the most famous work of each of these artists was replaced by the same photographs. Please cease this harmful behavior. --CliffC 04:01, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Also I have some concerns over the licensing of these Lothar Wolleh photographs. I still haven't managed to track down the permissions that are said to have been emailed to Wikipedia. -- Solipsist 09:00, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Solipsist, you might want to look at the recent comments by one of the three (at least) posters involved in this, at Talk:René Magritte. --CliffC 15:55, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

On the whole, I think including the portraits would be a very good thing - at least on the Henry Moore article. And in general I would argue that the portrait should be the lead image on most biographical articles. I just wanted to be sure that the photographs were correctly GFDL licensed. I've been in discussion with the user who uploaded the Lothar Wolleh images over at Commons:User talk:Zita and the licensing issues look legit to me now. Once we get a confirmation on the email, I'll reinsert the portrait on this page.

I suspect the replacement of the previous lead images in each article was just a simple mistake by a new editor - its not completely trivial to get the hang of reflowing the images in an article, so its far simpler to replace an image that's already there. -- Solipsist 17:35, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I would certainly prefer to believe the Wolleh photos were substituted (and later, simply added) in good faith, perhaps as you say in frustration at not getting the revised page to flow correctly. But when I first spotted the substitution of a Wolleh photo for the image of Magrittes's "The Treachery of Images", my spam detector went off. A little forensic work yields diffs for 9 November - Magritte and 9 November - Moore, then 16 November - Moore again where, for whatever reason, a Wolleh photo was substituted for an image of one of the artists's most famous works. I believe this user has a commercial interest in getting Wolleh's works into Wikipedia, and when I read the expansion of template {{spam1}} it tells me such photos should not be used. Perhaps if I had used the template instead of referring the user to notes posted in the Talk pages the problem would have gone away and we wouldn't need this discussion.

I think reader interest in seeing a photo of an artist like Moore or Magritte takes second place to an interest in knowing what his art looks like (Dali excepted, of course!). When an editor thinks an artist photo will be helpful to an article, I hope he will place it in a respectful size and position to the art images, and use a photo that would help us recognize the artist should we ever see him on the street. --CliffC 22:50, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding photo of artist to article

Dear all, in the discussion board on René Magritte I explained that the replacement of a picture through the uploading of L Wolleh´s portrait of the artist was not intended. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I suggest to insert both photos in the respective articles. They both work nicely in the current structure of the text adding a new element that gives the reader a different perspective on the artist.

Regarding GFDL everything is fine. Take care --149.225.52.251 13:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dead link, live site

Could someone in the know repair or replace the external link

• selection of late sculptures at the Henry Moore Foundation.

near the bottom? Thanks. --CliffC 15:11, 9 January 2007 (UTC)