Talk:Blick Art Materials/Archives/2016/August

Latest comment: 17 years ago by Metzenberg in topic Outrageous advertising

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Dick Blick is one of the primary suppliers of mail order art supplies in the United States, and as such is a notable corporation. This article is factual in nature, and apart from the link to the web site, has no advertising related content.

-dialectric may 15, 2006


My friend, Crazy Russian. I am not the person that created the article in the first place. I only corrected information in the article. I am one of the principals in the company, but that is a coincidence, and I have not otherwise contributed to the article. Also, the company has existed since 1911, which is a a very long time in the United States, where very few companies are that old. I could contribute some pictures of historic catalogs (from the 1910s, 20s, and 30s) that would be of interest to artists in general. I do think that the source of art materials is important, since art is a unique cultural part of our civilization and society, and the company is the largest distributor through retail and Internet of fine art materials (as opposed to school crayons, craft supplies, etc.) in the world. --Metzenberg 07:01, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I recused myself from the vote on the deletion, since I am one of the principal shareholders of Dick Blick and I am the founder of the website. I notice you have added a sentence about Pearl Paint. In fact, this company is not a significant mail order source of art supplies. It stopped mailing a catalog more than 5 years ago. I would suggest deletion of the sentence on Pearl Paint, which currently has an Alexa rank of only 109,180. Dick Blick's Alexa rank varies seasonally from about 7,500 in the height of the winter season to 12,500 in the middle of summer, when schools are out of session. I'll let someone else delete the sentence, since I have an obvious financial stake in the company. --Metzenberg 10:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Outrageous advertising

I'm a professional artist and a customer of many art supply companies, including Dick Blick. I have nothing against the company but I consider this entire article to be an outrage, nothing but thinly (very thinly) veiled advertising. The self-serving statements of the previous postings on this Discussion page are obvious. I don't know where the discussion of possible deletion is (I'm not very knowledgeable about Wikipedia, actually) but I think that promotional pieces like this degrade Wikipedia.

Also, the self-serving statement advocating deleting the reference to Pearl Paints because it's 'less important' than Dick Blick just reinforces what crap this whole article is. Pearl Paint is just as famous (maybe more so) and important to many artists as its competitors. What difference does it make whether it has a mail-order catalog or not? This isn't an article about the mail-order business.

And furthermore, Wikipedia doesn't even have an article at all for the subject "Art Supplies", and doesn't have an article for "Ralph Mayer" (traditionally the most well-known and in-depth -- and impartial -- writer on the subject of art supplies), but it has an article for this company? Bah!

This whole article should be deleted.


I didn't write the article. The only thing I have ever done to it is to correct a factual error. I recused myself from involvement. I also did not participate in the debate about whether the article should be here. I am a Wikipedia contributor who happens also to be the person who founded the Dick Blick website. When I deleted material in the talk section (which you can still see, by the way) it was because it was a vindictive message directed to me that had no place being here. Have a look and see if you agree. Since I didn't write this article and have never contributed to it, I don't think the Talk section is the appropriate place to send me messages. Why don't you sign your real name, or at least use a consistent and recognizable handle, the way I do? --Metzenberg 04:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I would suggest you write an article about Ralph Mayer's book. He has been dead for many years, and the book is quite dated now, especially given the development of acrylic painting. --Metzenberg 04:44, 25 June 2006 (UTC)