Talk:Peter Hayes (sculptor)

Proposed deletion of Peter Hayes article

I have removed the notice of proposed deletion for the following reason: notability appears to be established by numerous references in monographs on ceramics, numerous international exhibitions and representation in major public art galleries (eg Scottish National Gallery). See [1]. I will add some references. Hugh Mason (talk) 06:53, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Well, that's precisely I meant by self-published sources. As the first section at the page notes, it's directly from Hayes himself. The focus should be on "reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". The art galleries exhibiting his work can be have reliability concerns (having an interest in displaying and/or selling his work), so if there's possible independent critical reviews, that would be much better. I've remove the proposed deletion notice as a minimal threshold issue. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 07:16, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the additional reference. I fully support the ideals you express here in terms of independence and verifiability. I guess my practical observation would be that most practising artists don't work in an academic context and many that I've worked with professionally are totally uninterested in documenting themselves, preferring their work to speak for itself. It's not as if their work is peer-reviewed in the way that (for example) a practising scientist would often be, so there isn't some kind of citation index or similar that one can look up to judge notability. There is an argument that an artist's true notability can't really be assessed until their work is complete and society has had a chance to see their entire lifetime's contribution in perspective (ie usually when they are dead). In the meantime, I agree that a commercial gallery may well have an interest in selling an artist's work but I would have thought that major commissions visible in prominent public locations, and inclusion of work in a national museum's collection, is about as firm an indication of notability as most artists are going to get while they are still with us. Significance in the aesthetic arts ultimately has to be about opinion so I'm unsure how it is possible to find truly independent critical reviews: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Hugh Mason (talk) 14:46, 23 June 2010 (UTC)