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It is often helpful to provide either an idiomatic or a literal translation of the title of an artwork, for the convenience of readers who do not know the original foreign language. Sometimes, the artist has provided their own "official" translation in the title they have assigned; on occasion these translations are technically inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so for artistic effect. For example, the French artist Marcel Duchamp reveled in cross-lingual puns and occasionally would deliberately tweak his translations for artistic or literary effect.
To ensure maximum clarity, I have used the following type of formatting to indicate editorial translations which were not originally assigned by the artist:
L'Ange Protecteur ("Guardian Angel")
The choice whether to use an idiomatic vs a literal translation (or to translate at all) should as usual be left to the discretion of the editors. In this example, the lack of italics and the addition of double-quote marks serve to explicitly indicate that the translation is not part of the original artist-assigned title.
This is in contrast to originally-assigned translations, which were part of the title as assigned by the artist:
Saint Sébastien (Portrait of My Lover / Portrait of My Beloved / Martyr nécessaire)
The above rather-lengthy title appears to have been originally assigned by the bilingual French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, so the entire string is italicized to indicate this. If in addition a translation of the last two words from French were desired, it would be appended, formatted in parentheses and double-quotes as in the first example.
Are there any Wikipedia style guides or guidelines regarding this or related issues? If not, should something be added to the "Manual of Style/Visual arts" (or elsewhere) to provide guidance? Apologies if this is "obvious" and already covered in the MOS or elsewhere; if so, please give me some pointers to any relevant existing policies. Reify-tech ( talk) 20:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
If I make an article about, say, a painting where the painter or owner gave it formal name (e.g. American Flag #3 or whatever), that gets italicized. If there's no known formal title but just a descriptive name people call it ("Winged demon devouring St Albans" say) -- this would mostly apply to works from a few centuries back or more, I guess -- then it does not get italicized in the title, correct?
Also -- would title case be used for a title (New York with Shooting Stars say) and not for a name ("Cantaloupes being trampled by lions" say), correct? Is that part written down anywhere?
(This would have to also apply to the the article text, to match, I assume, in which case quote marks (as used for individual songs etc) would have to be used when there's no formal title, I am assuming, to separate the name from the running text, altho this technically outside the scope of this page.)
If I'm wrong, or maybe wrong, correction would be welcomed!
Absent any objection, I propose to edit this page, to clarify difference between "title" and "name" just a bit more, and add a a bit about when title case is used. OK? Herostratus ( talk) 23:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Category:Performances uses both present and past verb tenses to describe decommissioned works. I would like to add clarification here to build on MOS:TENSE for an edit-warring IP. It makes sense that installation works can be re-installed elsewhere, so as to keep the present tense. But if the work is destroyed or is an event that cannot otherwise be repeated, would we not use the past tense? E.g., The Gates or Shoot (Burden) czar 20:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
When exhibitions are mentioned in the body of an article, how are they formatted? Do they use italics, quotation marks, something else? I tried looking at the associated project page and couldn't find anything on the matter. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 09:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
It's taken longer than I expected to boil this down, and I've had a few interruptions in real life, so sorry for the delay. This is my first draft; it would be a new first paragraph for the Exhibitions section. "Titles of art exhibitions are usually in italics and (if they are in English) in title case; examples include Four Abstract Classicists, Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974–1988 and Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape. For some exhibitions, however, the article title should not be in italics; these include recurrent exhibitions ( Salon (Paris), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Documenta) and ones whose name is more a descriptive phrase than a title (e.g., 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition, Armory Show)." Ham II ( talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
The "if they are in English" qualification is because Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges, Magiciens de la terre and any others in French should presumably follow MOS:FRENCHCAPS (it seems that those ones don't at the moment), and there is ongoing discussion about reforming that guideline. Happily someone has came along and fixed the article title for Documenta since my last message, so I feel more confident including it as an example. Ham II ( talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Aha! MOS:ITALICTITLE already covers exhibitions: it recommends italics for "[n]amed exhibitions (artistic, historical, scientific, educational, cultural, literary, etc. – generally hosted by, or part of, an existing institution such as a museum or gallery), but not large-scale exhibition events or individual exhibits". I agree with that up to the final link, which is to the same page's "Quotation marks" section; when are quotation marks ever used for "[e]xhibits (specific) within a larger exhibition"? I might ask at WT:MOSTITLE for that to be removed. Ham II ( talk) 08:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
In this edit of 11 April 2019, an editor ( Johnbod) added:
(plus a second paragraph), with the edit summary "Exhibitions: expand (on nothing) as tag requested. Thoughts, anyone?"
Four years later, it's unchanged.
Yes, I have a thought. I warmly disagree. If "long lists" were instead "exhaustive lists", I might agree with the first sentence. But what's the reasoning for the assertion that it's rarely useful to mention more than five? If, let's say, a South African artist verifiably had a smallish exhibition in Toronto as what an editor supposes was (chronologically) her first overseas but isn't among her five most important, and if the editor could find nothing about the exhibition beyond perfunctory but convincing evidence in an RS, then adding it to the list could inspire a later editor or reader to search harder for coverage of it (and of course coverage of it may increase, as more material previously only available in a handful of major libraries comes to be digitized).
Of course, an article on an artist must show evidence of notability as we understand it here. And as WP:PERSON tells us, "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. [...] The person's work (or works) has [...] been a substantial part of a significant exhibition". But I'm not aware of any policy or guideline that says that material about a person that does not directly contribute to establishing their notability does not belong in the article on that person. (An example: The article Albert Einstein tells us that "While lodging with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. Einstein's sister Maja later married Winteler's son Paul." I submit that if Winteler's daughter had instead been named Heide, had so repeatedly and tiresomely played practical jokes on him that he found her detestable, and had died a spinster, then the world's estimation of Einstein would be unchanged.)
Moreover, lists don't seem to contravene the de facto highest standards in en:WP: Among articles very recently promoted to FA, that on Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, for example, contains a list of (at a quick count) almost fifty broadcasts, not just the most important handful; I don't notice that anybody questioned this during either the article's FA candidacy or the peer review that it underwent shortly before the candidacy. The reader interested in Johnson but uninterested in his individual broadcasts can easily scroll past the entire list; and similarly the reader interested in an artist but uninterested in their exhibitions can do the same. -- Hoary ( talk) 11:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
A little – but not so much, as it requires an understanding (and appreciation) of the concept of usefulness [to something left unexpressed]. In order to remain significant, a past exhibition doesn’t need to have spawned a sizable catalogue, but this would help. There are now so many substantial, scholarly catalogues of Rembrandt that they don’t all need to be listed in a general article about him (though they might within List of works about Rembrandt). But Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian are freaks among noteworthy pre-20th-century artists, who also include Cuyp (one or the other), Saenredam (ditto), Steen, and so on. If some kind editor were redoing the article Aelbert Cuyp – which currently has a long list of “further reading”, ending with Crowe, Joseph Archer (1911). "Cuyp s.v. Albert Cuyp" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 677–678. – and discovered that he’d had eight exhibitions that had brought about worthwhile catalogues, intelligent commentary or both, I’d hope that they’d include all eight; if only three of these had led to catalogues in English, the other five wouldn’t be useful to me, but they could be useful to interested readers of Dutch. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:26, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
How about this:
Johnbod, anybody?
It was meant as a replacement (although only a few minutes after posting it I realized that it was inadequate). ¶ Looking at the current version: For better or worse, I've replaced "long" with "exhaustive". ¶ If I take "useful" to mean "beneficial" (to the reader, not necessarily the artist or their PR flack), then, as I've written above, (i) I question the claim that "It will rarely be [beneficial] to mention more than five exhibitions", and (ii) a rather long list can easily be skipped by the uninterested reader. ¶ Taking "notability" to be as defined by/for Wikipedia, the claim that "For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability" is, I think, true only if "can be important" means "isn't always unimportant". What's important is "coverage". (See WP:PERSON: People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject. [...] People who meet the basic criteria may be considered notable without meeting the additional criteria below. [...] People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included. And it's these "additional criteria" or "following standards" that mention exhibitions.) I'd avoid all mention of notability, for which this MoS page can and should simply refer the reader to WP:PERSON. ¶ Yes, "minor commercial exhibitions" is indeed better than "minor exhibitions in commercial galleries". ¶ I think that this should say something about group exhibitions. I know what I want to express about inclusion in group shows, but haven't yet worked out how to say this in a way that both (i) seems helpful and reasonable and (ii) is at all succinct. Later. -- Hoary ( talk) 06:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
MOS:ART currently says "Per MOS:SAINTS, sources should be followed as to whether to use "Saint", "St" or "St." in titles ..." But that isn't an accurate reflection of what MOS:SAINTS says; instead that guideline recommends "Saint" over the abbreviated forms (when referring to saints themselves; there are exceptions for their namesakes). I think we should change the guidance here to be in the same spirit, recommending "Saint" spelled out in full (and the plural form "Saints") for any depictions of saints.
In article titles, "Saint" has a practical advantage over the alternatives because it means that the correct alphabetical sorting in categories happens automatically. Currently the article titles beginning "St." or "St" need to have "Saint" in their default sort key to override this, but St. Jerome in the Wilderness (Dürer), for example, currently doesn't have that and is therefore incorrectly sorted between A Sparrowhawk and Still Life with Lobster, Drinking Horn and Glasses at Category: Paintings in the National Gallery, London, rather than with the other Saint Foo–style titles.
There are other good reasons to standardise to a single style. We currently have the article titles Saint Matthew and the Angel for a painting by Caravaggio and St. Matthew and the Angel for one by Rembrandt. There's no good reason for the discrepancy; both those links should have the same target. Similarly, we've got the article titles St. Sebastian (Raphael), Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Raphael) and St Margaret and the Dragon (Raphael). List of paintings by Raphael, a page that links to all three, reproduces these titles exactly, but it shouldn't because the different forms have arisen by accident and there's no distinction to be made between them. The easiest way to have internal consistency on that page would be if the articles were consistently titled to begin with. Also, as "St." is considered to be American English and "St" is considered to be British, I think there's an MOS:COMMONALITY argument for "Saint".
I would like to suggest changing that bullet point in MOS:ART to something like the following: For artworks representing saints, use the form "Saint" (or "Saints" in the plural) spelled out in full, rather than abbreviated forms such as "St." or "St". What do we think? Ham II ( talk) 11:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Manual of Style/Visual arts page. |
|
Archives: 1Auto-archiving period: 183 days |
This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is often helpful to provide either an idiomatic or a literal translation of the title of an artwork, for the convenience of readers who do not know the original foreign language. Sometimes, the artist has provided their own "official" translation in the title they have assigned; on occasion these translations are technically inaccurate, sometimes deliberately so for artistic effect. For example, the French artist Marcel Duchamp reveled in cross-lingual puns and occasionally would deliberately tweak his translations for artistic or literary effect.
To ensure maximum clarity, I have used the following type of formatting to indicate editorial translations which were not originally assigned by the artist:
L'Ange Protecteur ("Guardian Angel")
The choice whether to use an idiomatic vs a literal translation (or to translate at all) should as usual be left to the discretion of the editors. In this example, the lack of italics and the addition of double-quote marks serve to explicitly indicate that the translation is not part of the original artist-assigned title.
This is in contrast to originally-assigned translations, which were part of the title as assigned by the artist:
Saint Sébastien (Portrait of My Lover / Portrait of My Beloved / Martyr nécessaire)
The above rather-lengthy title appears to have been originally assigned by the bilingual French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle, so the entire string is italicized to indicate this. If in addition a translation of the last two words from French were desired, it would be appended, formatted in parentheses and double-quotes as in the first example.
Are there any Wikipedia style guides or guidelines regarding this or related issues? If not, should something be added to the "Manual of Style/Visual arts" (or elsewhere) to provide guidance? Apologies if this is "obvious" and already covered in the MOS or elsewhere; if so, please give me some pointers to any relevant existing policies. Reify-tech ( talk) 20:59, 5 January 2022 (UTC)
If I make an article about, say, a painting where the painter or owner gave it formal name (e.g. American Flag #3 or whatever), that gets italicized. If there's no known formal title but just a descriptive name people call it ("Winged demon devouring St Albans" say) -- this would mostly apply to works from a few centuries back or more, I guess -- then it does not get italicized in the title, correct?
Also -- would title case be used for a title (New York with Shooting Stars say) and not for a name ("Cantaloupes being trampled by lions" say), correct? Is that part written down anywhere?
(This would have to also apply to the the article text, to match, I assume, in which case quote marks (as used for individual songs etc) would have to be used when there's no formal title, I am assuming, to separate the name from the running text, altho this technically outside the scope of this page.)
If I'm wrong, or maybe wrong, correction would be welcomed!
Absent any objection, I propose to edit this page, to clarify difference between "title" and "name" just a bit more, and add a a bit about when title case is used. OK? Herostratus ( talk) 23:46, 9 January 2022 (UTC)
Category:Performances uses both present and past verb tenses to describe decommissioned works. I would like to add clarification here to build on MOS:TENSE for an edit-warring IP. It makes sense that installation works can be re-installed elsewhere, so as to keep the present tense. But if the work is destroyed or is an event that cannot otherwise be repeated, would we not use the past tense? E.g., The Gates or Shoot (Burden) czar 20:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
When exhibitions are mentioned in the body of an article, how are they formatted? Do they use italics, quotation marks, something else? I tried looking at the associated project page and couldn't find anything on the matter. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 09:07, 9 January 2023 (UTC)
It's taken longer than I expected to boil this down, and I've had a few interruptions in real life, so sorry for the delay. This is my first draft; it would be a new first paragraph for the Exhibitions section. "Titles of art exhibitions are usually in italics and (if they are in English) in title case; examples include Four Abstract Classicists, Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974–1988 and Joan Miró: The Ladder of Escape. For some exhibitions, however, the article title should not be in italics; these include recurrent exhibitions ( Salon (Paris), Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, Documenta) and ones whose name is more a descriptive phrase than a title (e.g., 1895 Copenhagen Women's Exhibition, Armory Show)." Ham II ( talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
The "if they are in English" qualification is because Exposition des primitifs flamands à Bruges, Magiciens de la terre and any others in French should presumably follow MOS:FRENCHCAPS (it seems that those ones don't at the moment), and there is ongoing discussion about reforming that guideline. Happily someone has came along and fixed the article title for Documenta since my last message, so I feel more confident including it as an example. Ham II ( talk) 11:01, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
Aha! MOS:ITALICTITLE already covers exhibitions: it recommends italics for "[n]amed exhibitions (artistic, historical, scientific, educational, cultural, literary, etc. – generally hosted by, or part of, an existing institution such as a museum or gallery), but not large-scale exhibition events or individual exhibits". I agree with that up to the final link, which is to the same page's "Quotation marks" section; when are quotation marks ever used for "[e]xhibits (specific) within a larger exhibition"? I might ask at WT:MOSTITLE for that to be removed. Ham II ( talk) 08:40, 29 January 2023 (UTC)
In this edit of 11 April 2019, an editor ( Johnbod) added:
(plus a second paragraph), with the edit summary "Exhibitions: expand (on nothing) as tag requested. Thoughts, anyone?"
Four years later, it's unchanged.
Yes, I have a thought. I warmly disagree. If "long lists" were instead "exhaustive lists", I might agree with the first sentence. But what's the reasoning for the assertion that it's rarely useful to mention more than five? If, let's say, a South African artist verifiably had a smallish exhibition in Toronto as what an editor supposes was (chronologically) her first overseas but isn't among her five most important, and if the editor could find nothing about the exhibition beyond perfunctory but convincing evidence in an RS, then adding it to the list could inspire a later editor or reader to search harder for coverage of it (and of course coverage of it may increase, as more material previously only available in a handful of major libraries comes to be digitized).
Of course, an article on an artist must show evidence of notability as we understand it here. And as WP:PERSON tells us, "People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. [...] The person's work (or works) has [...] been a substantial part of a significant exhibition". But I'm not aware of any policy or guideline that says that material about a person that does not directly contribute to establishing their notability does not belong in the article on that person. (An example: The article Albert Einstein tells us that "While lodging with the family of Jost Winteler, he fell in love with Winteler's daughter, Marie. Einstein's sister Maja later married Winteler's son Paul." I submit that if Winteler's daughter had instead been named Heide, had so repeatedly and tiresomely played practical jokes on him that he found her detestable, and had died a spinster, then the world's estimation of Einstein would be unchanged.)
Moreover, lists don't seem to contravene the de facto highest standards in en:WP: Among articles very recently promoted to FA, that on Ken "Snakehips" Johnson, for example, contains a list of (at a quick count) almost fifty broadcasts, not just the most important handful; I don't notice that anybody questioned this during either the article's FA candidacy or the peer review that it underwent shortly before the candidacy. The reader interested in Johnson but uninterested in his individual broadcasts can easily scroll past the entire list; and similarly the reader interested in an artist but uninterested in their exhibitions can do the same. -- Hoary ( talk) 11:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
A little – but not so much, as it requires an understanding (and appreciation) of the concept of usefulness [to something left unexpressed]. In order to remain significant, a past exhibition doesn’t need to have spawned a sizable catalogue, but this would help. There are now so many substantial, scholarly catalogues of Rembrandt that they don’t all need to be listed in a general article about him (though they might within List of works about Rembrandt). But Rembrandt, Michelangelo, Leonardo and Titian are freaks among noteworthy pre-20th-century artists, who also include Cuyp (one or the other), Saenredam (ditto), Steen, and so on. If some kind editor were redoing the article Aelbert Cuyp – which currently has a long list of “further reading”, ending with Crowe, Joseph Archer (1911). "Cuyp s.v. Albert Cuyp" . In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 677–678. – and discovered that he’d had eight exhibitions that had brought about worthwhile catalogues, intelligent commentary or both, I’d hope that they’d include all eight; if only three of these had led to catalogues in English, the other five wouldn’t be useful to me, but they could be useful to interested readers of Dutch. -- Hoary ( talk) 00:26, 18 May 2023 (UTC)
How about this:
Johnbod, anybody?
It was meant as a replacement (although only a few minutes after posting it I realized that it was inadequate). ¶ Looking at the current version: For better or worse, I've replaced "long" with "exhaustive". ¶ If I take "useful" to mean "beneficial" (to the reader, not necessarily the artist or their PR flack), then, as I've written above, (i) I question the claim that "It will rarely be [beneficial] to mention more than five exhibitions", and (ii) a rather long list can easily be skipped by the uninterested reader. ¶ Taking "notability" to be as defined by/for Wikipedia, the claim that "For contemporary and modern artists the venue of exhibitions can be important evidence of notability" is, I think, true only if "can be important" means "isn't always unimportant". What's important is "coverage". (See WP:PERSON: People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject. [...] People who meet the basic criteria may be considered notable without meeting the additional criteria below. [...] People are likely to be notable if they meet any of the following standards. Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included. And it's these "additional criteria" or "following standards" that mention exhibitions.) I'd avoid all mention of notability, for which this MoS page can and should simply refer the reader to WP:PERSON. ¶ Yes, "minor commercial exhibitions" is indeed better than "minor exhibitions in commercial galleries". ¶ I think that this should say something about group exhibitions. I know what I want to express about inclusion in group shows, but haven't yet worked out how to say this in a way that both (i) seems helpful and reasonable and (ii) is at all succinct. Later. -- Hoary ( talk) 06:00, 26 May 2023 (UTC)
MOS:ART currently says "Per MOS:SAINTS, sources should be followed as to whether to use "Saint", "St" or "St." in titles ..." But that isn't an accurate reflection of what MOS:SAINTS says; instead that guideline recommends "Saint" over the abbreviated forms (when referring to saints themselves; there are exceptions for their namesakes). I think we should change the guidance here to be in the same spirit, recommending "Saint" spelled out in full (and the plural form "Saints") for any depictions of saints.
In article titles, "Saint" has a practical advantage over the alternatives because it means that the correct alphabetical sorting in categories happens automatically. Currently the article titles beginning "St." or "St" need to have "Saint" in their default sort key to override this, but St. Jerome in the Wilderness (Dürer), for example, currently doesn't have that and is therefore incorrectly sorted between A Sparrowhawk and Still Life with Lobster, Drinking Horn and Glasses at Category: Paintings in the National Gallery, London, rather than with the other Saint Foo–style titles.
There are other good reasons to standardise to a single style. We currently have the article titles Saint Matthew and the Angel for a painting by Caravaggio and St. Matthew and the Angel for one by Rembrandt. There's no good reason for the discrepancy; both those links should have the same target. Similarly, we've got the article titles St. Sebastian (Raphael), Saint Catherine of Alexandria (Raphael) and St Margaret and the Dragon (Raphael). List of paintings by Raphael, a page that links to all three, reproduces these titles exactly, but it shouldn't because the different forms have arisen by accident and there's no distinction to be made between them. The easiest way to have internal consistency on that page would be if the articles were consistently titled to begin with. Also, as "St." is considered to be American English and "St" is considered to be British, I think there's an MOS:COMMONALITY argument for "Saint".
I would like to suggest changing that bullet point in MOS:ART to something like the following: For artworks representing saints, use the form "Saint" (or "Saints" in the plural) spelled out in full, rather than abbreviated forms such as "St." or "St". What do we think? Ham II ( talk) 11:55, 11 February 2024 (UTC)