Talk:The arts

Semi-protected edit request on 9 January 2022

Change "Film is sometimes called the "eighth" ". "Cinema" is mentioned as the seventh art, that should cover "Film". I couldn't find supporting evidence for that claim. Thanks Jvalansi (talk) 00:59, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

 Not done: Page 37 of currently cited source 18 does support this. Cannolis (talk) 01:48, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

Arts to be added

This article is Vital-1 on Wikipedia. That means it is in the top ten articles on Wikipedia that have been identified as critical to the structure of Wikipedia, and is therefore one of the main articles being targeted for improvement. The purpose of the improvement is to get these articles up to Featured Article status, which is quite difficult. Even getting them to Good Article status requires a lot of effort. I'm making a list here of arts/sections that probably need to be added. Feel free to add these to the article, or to add more arts to this list.

Under Visual Arts...

Computer art/Graphic design

Film/Cinematography

Glass art e.g. Glassblowing, Stained glass

Lacquerware (Applied to both woodcarving and pottery, but I'm not sure if pottery includes ceramics)

Paper art including Printmaking, Origami, Calligraphy

Textile arts (See also Dyeing)

Under Culinary arts (which also needs to be added as a section)...

Food preparation and Cooking techniques, including Ethanol fermentation, Baking, etc.

Brewing

Cake decorating

Candy making

Winemaking (See also Wine and food pairing)

Discussion:

LightProof1995 (talk) 06:24, 28 August 2022 (UTC)

• No, too much stuff. The last thing GA, let alone FA wants is an endless bitty list. We do not want a section on Ethanol fermentation. Ceramics includes pottery btw, as you'd know if you'd looked at the articles. They have a section already. Lacquerware is generally applied to neither woodcarving nor pottery. Most of this stuff should be grouped as decorative arts. Johnbod (talk) 04:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

  Hello, thanks for your reply. I stated this list is a list of arts/sections, so it is free enough these arts can be added to the article without making it more bitty. For example, Drawing could be mentioned within a beautifully-written section titled "Paper arts" that also mentions Printmaking, Origami, Calligraphy, Comics, etc. You misread my statement on pottery -- I said I am not sure if pottery includes ceramics, not vice-versa. My confusion is entirely justified. A quick Google search of "ceramics vs pottery" yields this sentence as the top result: "Pottery and ceramics are one and the same. The word ceramic derives from Greek which translates as "of pottery" or "for pottery". Both pottery and ceramic are general terms that describe objects which have been formed with clay, hardened by firing and decorated or glazed."; this as the second result: "Pottery is a type of ceramic, specifically containers made out of clay"; this as the third result: "The distinction is mainly that pottery is a subset of a wider group of materials called ceramics and that ceramics have broader practical and artistic ..."; and this as the fourth result: "Pottery is a type of ceramic, but not all ceramics are pottery.". All of those results are so inconsistent for all we know (unless you are a pottery/ceramics arts expert, which you could be) the truth is "ceramics" is used more in Britain and "pottery" is used more in America (I don't think that's true, just an example of how my statement was Socratic). I definitely didn't think Ethanol fermentation should be its own section, I was thinking the sentence "Food preparation and Cooking techniques, including Ethanol fermentation, Baking, etc." would more or less be a single, well-written paragraph that goes into how cool it is ethanol fermentation is used both in baking bread (yeast) but also brewing alcohol. Lacquer is a resin that can be applied to bamboo, metal, silk, wood,, basketry, and pottery, which you'd know if you'd looked at the article... LightProof1995 (talk) 05:56, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

The google hits 2-4 are all saying the same correct thing; #1 is not very helpful, though true most of the time. "I said I am not sure if pottery includes ceramics, not vice-versa" - yes, exactly. And I put you right. Your US/UK speculation is also the wrong way round - the US uses ceramics much more (especially as ceramist etc). The vast majority of lacquer is applied to wood, with metal runner-up. That's what your references actually say - both put wood first. You have a pretty misplaced faith in random google results. Johnbod (talk) 13:55, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

• LightProof, I think you are missing the point. What this article needs is certainly not more information on individual arts, which will get far too specific far too quickly in this broad overview, but more information on "the arts" as a whole, i.e., expansion of the "History and classifications" section, as well as additional sections, perhaps on the philosophy of the arts, or the impact/uses of arts in regards to society. Please note that this article is not an outline article. Aza24 (talk) 06:25, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

  Ohhh wow I you're totally right, I didn't realize outline articles are a thing, thanks for that, I was essentially making an Outline of the arts mini-list... this article currently reads 70% like a detailed outline article of the Visual arts, honestly, so I guess that's why I started with listing more... One of the criteria for Featured article status is that the article is comprehensive. So while you both are correct these arts shouldn't each have their own individual sections, I still feel as we write out new sections like "Philosophy of the arts" and add more to "History and classifications", we try to at least mention all of the arts we possibly can. LightProof1995 (talk) 08:27, 6 September 2022 (UTC)

I have added the arts I listed to the Outline of the visual arts outline, but the culinary ones I listed don't fit -- We may need to create an Outline of the culinary arts page. LightProof1995 (talk) 09:57, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

References

Video games

@SnowFire—you reverted my revision of the "video games" section, to which I'd like to explain my rationale for the change. Looking at the rest of the article, it describes different arts, saying what they are. How are video games any different from this? The section on photography, for example, talks about photography as a whole, not whether people consider it to be an art form. Classificatory disputes about art should be mentioned, but making it "strictly" about those disputes is a failure of giving an adequate overview of the arts. This is the article about "the arts", not "definitions of art" or "classifications of art". DecafPotato (talk) 20:28, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I've made an attempt at a compromise, placing equal weight for both video games as a whole and whether or not they are an art. DecafPotato (talk) 21:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I like the revised version—I think it sets up a good scheme for the "other arts" to give an overview and explanation on its status as an "art". Hopefully the section will eventually include physical sports, culinary arts and perhaps even sciences (re the seven liberal arts). It would also be nice to see the sources formatted like the rest of the article (and have a page number for Donovan 2010), but alas. Aza24 (talk) 21:33, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I think mentioning that they showed up around 1950 is important, IMO other arts just don't say that because many of them can't really be traced back to a specific date, but yeah, I'll trim the rest. DecafPotato (talk) 21:40, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Hey DecafPotato, I actually deleted part of my comment because I reached the same conclusion. I would say any more about history wouldn't make sense, but what's there is okay. You or SnowFire might consider looking at the Kennicott article in the further reading section. Aza24 (talk) 21:41, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't agree with even the revised version, I'm afraid - for all that I'm certainly not defending the old section as perfect! The problem is that "Video games" are simply not associated as being part of the topic "The arts" all that often in my view. Something like "the arts" is such a broad topic that talking extensively about anything that intersects with "Artistic endeavor" would lead to an article five times as long. Let me come up with one clear example: film and "art". Nobody contests that movies can be art and there are books published on movies, yet film is currently briefly mentioned along with comics, and then again in "Multidisciplinary artistic works". This is arguably an area for expansion, but what certainly isn't needed is an explanation of the history of movies or comics, as that is too off-topic. In order to keep this article readable, it needs to be laser-focused on the arts in general and only that. The video games history I presume is copy-pasted from another article (note: if you do this, mention which article in the edit summary to preserve attribution for cc-by-sa compliance) and most importantly is citing a ton of video game sources on video game history. This is just too off-topic; editing an overview article like this requires iron discipline to stay on-topic. If you want to adjust the video-games-as-art section, I think you need to at the very least be citing sources talking about video games as art, and even better citing overviews of all the arts that thought it was relevant to discuss video games to prove that they really are part of the topic. Without that, I'd be inclined to remove mention down to, say, a sentence, that merely acknowledges the "Video games as art" article. SnowFire (talk) 22:54, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

For the record: none of the stuff is copied from another article—it's all written by me and for this. As for the rest, video games are something that IMO are too different to be explained in a different section. And for the history, the history as a whole is literally just have a history that dates back to when the first video games were created as early as 1950. By the 1960s, arcade video games had emerged—in the following decades, everything else is describing the systems, types, and definitions of a "video game", and the rest is video games as art. I think when video games were invented is something vital to even a very quick overview—like I said above, it's only not there for other arts because people don't know when they first showed up. But I'll work on revising the revised version, largely using sources that discuss video games in the context of "the arts" specifically. DecafPotato (talk) 02:34, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

If you're working on it, great, just... as stated before, I would suggest that the section be kept short and to the point. A general overview of video games is available at the video game article; interested readers in the basics can click on that to find out. While I can thinly understand the overviews on stuff like painting (which are considered a core part of "the arts"), my strong suggestion is to keep "ancillary" parts of the arts short. Otherwise one of two things will happen: the article will balloon to huge size, or else there will be an unintentional bias in focus if video games get a bunch of text but artistry in movies or art in every other XYZ related topic isn't discussed in similar detail. I would also suggest that video games more cleanly falls under the "multidisciplinary" set, the same as movies, in combining theatre screenplays, music, interactivity, and other stuff. SnowFire (talk) 18:27, 10 December 2022 (UTC)