Talk:Louise Nevelson

GA Reassessment

Louise Nevelson

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: A general consensus to keep has developed over three weeks. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:27, 22 April 2023 (UTC)

This article on a prominent 20th-century American female sculptor, which was reviewed and listed as GA on 10 October 2011:

• is poorly organized ("Early personal life", in itself a very long section, is immediately followed by "Artistic career" which is separate from "Style and works") with often confusing chronological progression ("1930s" followed by "First exhibitions and the 1940s" followed by "Mid-career") MOS:LAYOUT
• uses convoluted prose and might be difficult to navigate even for a reader familiar with the history of 20th-century Western art WP:TECHNICAL
• relies too heavily on direct quotes (her papers, a primary document, are cited 18 times throughout the article, the second-most used source), which raises WP:OR concerns
• has an inconsistent citation style and references section MOS:NOTES
• does not include enough images to properly illustrate the artist's career (prior to today, when I included 4 additional images of sculptures, there were only 5 images total and only 2 of those showed her works) MOS:IMAGES
• regarding secondary literature, this article relies excessively on a single source: Rapaport, Brooke Kamin. The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson: Constructing a Legend. New York: Jewish Museum of New York (2007). ISBN 0-300-12172-5
• there are plenty of other sources, as evidenced even by the Further reading section with more WP:RS that could help ensure correct WP:OOS as well as WP:SUMMARY
• finally, the article was originally reviewed by a user who has since been blocked by ArbCom for abusing multiple accounts (this is only secondary to reasons provided above, as the user's contributions were overall significant, though it should be mentioned given they are no longer part of the community for repeated rules violations)

I believe this article in its current form meets B-level at most and needs to be reassessed. Ppt91^talk 18:55, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I wanted to add that this article obviously has merit and greatly contributes to WP:VISUALARTS male-centered bias, which makes improving such articles even more pressing and important. Ppt91^talk 19:07, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Keep Organisation is perfectly fine, and is reminiscent of other FA or GA biographies of people in the arts (Edward Elgar, Vincent van Gogh etc.) I really cannot see how the chronology is confusing; there's a section on the 1930s, then on the 1940s, then between the 1950s and 1969, and from 1969 until her death. Seems perfectly logical. I do not see any complicated prose, and citation styles/headings not to your liking are not a sufficient reason to delist, alongside any lack of images.

Regarding sources: citing personal papers is not in any way WP:OR. If you feel that any of said citations violate WP:ABOUTSELF, please feel free to note which ones. Similarly, if you feel that some of the sources in further reading contain information not already included, please specify which ones—we cannot delist an article because other books may contain extra information. As to the review by Eric Corbett, although he was long before my time, I know he was renowned for his content expertise, and I'm fairly certain he was blocked for conduct, not content, issues. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:39, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

• support* User:AirshipJungleman29's commnents. I am the original author of the GA article, so I am a bit bias. I actually based the layout on some of the most prominent quality artist articles on WP.

Also unable to have many images - she has no public domain work and all but the photograph released by her niece and a pre-1923 photo qualify, so that is irrelevant.

And correct on Eric, he was not blocked for his quality work. I would not worry about that. We'd have to get rid of content if blocked users was an issue all the time (saying this as an admin).

And anyone who knows what it was like going through GA reviews back then....what a freaking ringer that was. A total nightmare. Missvain (talk) 00:54, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29 I appreciate your response, though it does seem to come off more like a rebuttal from an AfD discussion than an attempt to constructively address or fix the issues I raised. I have not once argued that this GA should be immediately delisted and my intention was to provide clear reasoning behind reassessment with the hopes of starting a dialogue and improving the article (per :::::The priority should be to improve articles and retain them as GAs rather than to delist them, wherever reasonably possible.) There is a great deal of value in this article, but I am also quite certain that if it were to be nominated for GA now, it would have to undergo heavy editing to pass.

The example of van Gogh you gave is a good one to illustrate my point about organization. It includes the artist's biography entirely under "Life" with separate subsections to describe his artistic and personal development (I like "Life and work" better, but it's just a matter of preference). In the case of Nevelson, however, there is a long separate section on "Early life" (without dating) which precedes "Artistic career". Similarly, I think that if the first two subsections of "Artistic career" have date ranges ("1930s" and "First exhibitions and the 1940s") then the following two should also have date ranges to make it easier to navigate ("Mid-career" and "Later career and life"). And images, while not crucial, are still very important and there were only 2 reproductions of works in the entire article when I first read it; perhaps there was a dearth of images years ago, but now many images are available on Wikimedia Commons (I added a few works to the article myself). This kind of stuff is why reassessing is important.

As for citing personal papers is not in any way WP:OR, in general, sure, but primary materials should also not be used so heavily as to constitute the second most cited source. Regarding other books may contain extra information, I am not quite what you mean because I was referring to the article's scope and encyclopedic quality, rather than adding extraneous stuff. For a major American artist like Nevelson, where a lot of secondary literature is available, balancing the bibliography to reflect important art historical research will improve its scope (Harriet F. Senie, for example, who wrote extensively on Nevelson's public art, is not mentioned once; given that public sculpture was crucial to Nevelson's career writ large, that's far from extra information). And while there are some excellent sources in this article, including journal articles, there are also some that hardly meet WP:RS (theartstory.org, artcyclopedia.com, artnet.com, philart.net) and the citation style is inconsistent. Moreover, prose could definitely be improved for language precision and clarity.

I've begun editing the article earlier today, but the extent of edits felt like it warranted others to join in and help through GAR. (I even created Louise Nevelson Plaza from scratch so as not to sit idly.) Fortunately or not, this happens to be my field, so perhaps I am more receptive to certain issues, but I think that a lot of 20th-century art coverage on WP:VISUALARTS needs serious work and that can only be achieved by working together. The fact that MoMA now uses en-wiki articles for numerous artists descriptions (Nevelson has her own museum entry on the website, but that's not the norm) goes to show how important this content is.

Of course, you are welcome to disagree with my reservations, as long as you think that benefits the quality of the article. I would love to do some good teamwork here, but I am not really looking to win an argument. Ppt91^talk 03:12, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

"I have not once argued that this GA should be immediately delisted" yes you did, you nominated it here, with numerous points addressing the GA criteria. Per WP:GAR: Good article reassessment is not a peer review process; for that use peer review. Content disputes on GAs should be resolved through normal dispute resolution processes. Good article reassessment only assesses whether the article meets the six good article criteria. If you wish to change the section headings to include date ranges, there is nothing stopping you from doing so: I have just done so myself, and the article's organisation remains the same. Do you feel that the lack of sources such as Senie significantly compromises the article's broadness (criterion 3 of WP:GACR): Broad in its coverage; addresses the main aspects of the topic (significantly weaker than the "comprehensiveness" required of featured articles, allowing for shorter articles, articles that do not cover every major fact or detail, and overviews of large topics.) ?

As you have done some work on it, this GAR will be kept open for two weeks from your (or anyone else's) last improvement to the article, or your last post here; I'm not a subject expert, so I cannot contribute beyond superficial issues. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:23, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry about the delay. And no, I had no intentions of delisting it immediately. Frankly, I am often loath to use these "official" channels for improving articles because they can easily lead to charged exchanges and miscommunication. It feels like there is no in-between route for productive teamwork improvement; if I post at peer review or start a talk page thread, it might go unnoticed for weeks if it's picked up at all; if I go through the reassessment route, then it can easily turn into an extended back-and-forth regarding the article's merit (which I have not questioned once).

In any case, thank you for taking the time to edit the section titles. I do think Senie's scholarship is central here and will try to include it in the near future. Another author who has done a tremendous amount of work on Nevelson recently is Julia Bryan-Wilson. In addition to articles ("Keeping House with Louise Nevelson", Oxford Art Journal, 2017), she has just released a multi-volume book reassessing the artist's oeuvre https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300236705/louise-nevelsons-sculpture/. As soon as I can get my hands on a copy, I'll also add it.

My RL schedule is unfortunately pretty packed in the coming weeks, so I am not sure when I will have the time to put in all the work. If anyone else would like to jump in the meantime, especially with the Oxford Art Journal content or Senie's scholarship (which I rely on extensively in the Louise Nevelson Plaza article), that would be great. Thanks again and I am glad to see the article improve already. That has been my goal all along. Ppt91^talk 17:09, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll ping you again at the start of May, if you haven't been able to improve the article at all by then. Thanks ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:35, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

• Keep - this is a well-organized, well-written, and properly-cited article. Having a biography article centred on a 'Life and career' chapter seems perfectly fine, specially when supplemented by a detailed 'Style and works' chapter. I've formatted Rapaport 2007 and linked it, certainly an improvement, but not mandatory for GA status. I don't see the usage of Rapaport as excessive: there are many other good sources in use in the article, and it's a reasonable choice as a foundation. The images issue has been fixed. The use of primary materials seems entirely apposite, and does not present any sort of 'original research' issue: that would occur only if an editor drew personal conclusions from quotations. The reference section easily meets the GA criteria. As others have commented already, the prose seems absolutely fine, I don't find anything "convoluted" about it. I've added Bryan-Wilson 2023; it seems it's actually yet to appear on the shelves. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:20, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.