Talk:Ulay

Article's tone

A lot of the article's new content contains artistic jargon or descriptions from professional artist reviews (i.e.:"His act of comprehending the world is the very practice of reality and this cannot be dissociated in terms of its relationship to the self or to the body, nor can it be extricated from the context in or against which it has chosen to take a stance.", "In other works from the same Renais sense series, the hybrid identity and transgender visual rhetoric is replaced by the representation of the androgynous.", "In these happenings, he shows that photography consists of a set of practices that are meant to technically stage the apparition of an image, but that the image only seems to correspond to reality, and is ultimately nothing but an illusion." among many others). That content is entirely unsourced, possibly written by a COI contributor, reads in large part like a personal essay, and it is so riddled with jargon, that the statements are almost incomprehensible for non-artists. Wikipedia is a general knowledge encyclopedia, not an artistic journal. Also WP:COI may be of interest. GermanJoe (talk) 07:37, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Agree with the above. This isn't a biographical article in any sense of the term, it's mere hagiography, that is a sort advertisement for the artist rather than a record of life and works. It should be mostly deleted, or re-worked so that it would make at least some sense to the average intelligent reader. As it is, it's kind of trashy. Theonemacduff (talk) 06:50, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

These seem like fair comments to a certain extent and I appreciate, having read Ulay's entry, that it lacks references, context and factual information - either biographical in a personal sense or in relation to his career as an artist, major works, exhibitions etc. - but I'm not quite as troubled or put off by a bit of material discussing and trying to explain his work, its priorities and meanings as well as why it might have been radical or revolutionary in terms of art of the time - even, perhaps, art from then to the present. Contemporary art, especially something like performance art, and very much with regard to Ulay as an artist in particular, is often illuminated by broader discussion of its meanings, methods and modes of expression. And, of course, the stylistic approach to contemporary art is often more self-aware and subjective than was the case in even only slightly older generations of art critics or historians - something about which I don't really make a judgement one way or the other since it is above all a fact of how people think, write and talk about 20th/21st century art. I've only just made a Wikipedia account so please go easily on me if I inadvertently offend any sensibilities or blunder into any gestures of bad etiquette. I don't think it would be too difficult to expand on the biographical info concerning Ulay and connect his artistic developments as well as the written insights into his work with precise examples of what he produced, when, where, and how - as well as when/where/how it was showed (if it was showed at all). His performance piece, There Is A Criminal Element To Art, for example, is very well documented and rather widely discussed as well as the fact that in the 70s when he did it there was a considerable media controversy and real consequences for Ulay's life and material wellbeing. There is also, I believe, a text about the performance written by him and to which you could link a reference in the article - but I'd have to check to make sure of that. The section on his work with Marina seems rather small considering the massive status and influence those works have attained in the years since. I know that much of the current attention is directed at Marina but there's no argument at all over the fact that those works made by them both were made with them as equally important contributing partners. Moreover, the drama of their separation - at the end of their Great Wall of China piece, which had taken years to plan and prepare for consummation - is definitely worth referring to in the article - as is, perhaps, the fact that he appears quite a bit in the recent doc about Marina, The Artist Is Present - talking about their work and also reuniting with Marina is some very powerful scenes that generated plenty of attention.

I don't write this as a close friend or acquaintance of Ulay although I do know him slightly in my capacity as an artist and sometime writer about art - especially performance art. So I write this mainly because the Wiki article doesn't seem to provide the information or insight it should into the artist and I am asking/gearing myself up to see if I can make any improvements - but first would like to know what others think, if there are any others here to do any thinking on the subject!

-- One last thing - despite the criticisms I had of the article including of its sometimes woolly and definitely inadequately referenced or evidenced assertions about Ulay's work - it makes the cardinal sin of expressing confidently what was going inside the mind of someone else instead of using documentation, the subject's own words or those of others with some authority or meaningful insight, as evidence for assertions made about the life/work of the artist-subject rather than assumptions based on imaginary projections into his mind or his creative spirit --- despite that, as I say, I don't think it is excessively hagiographic or some kind of advertisement for the subject's artistic abilities. Maybe I am incorrect but the purpose of a Wiki article is to present factual info about its subject, to use references and legitimate citations to provide evidence for the things that are said, but also - and perhaps above all in the case of artists or other creative figures - offer some useful insights into the nature of the subject's work, their themes and how they tend to approach them, the influence they've had or the way they did something different from those around them. This could all be viewed, if you looked at it a certain way, as excessively laudatory and hagiographic but I don't understand these articles as being made to place their subject under withering scrutiny or lay into them, either. Exploring and putting into words the meaning, power and resonance of an art work - especially works by someone like Ulay who is such a key figure in the context of performance/body art's development and a pioneer figure at the intersection of performance, photography and documentation somewhat ahead of his time - can risk sounding like it is indulging in excessive praise while not doing much more than translating visual meaning into the very different world of words. Which is not, I hasten to add, an argument to write endless guff interpreting to death this or that artist, or taking their Wiki page as a platform to show off your own ability to be lyrical, but instead that there should be a place for more interpretive passages if they remain focused on the work or the artist, just as there should of course also be space for those observations you know you can back up with a list of references or academic citations. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tempestteacup (talk • contribs) 03:53, 11 March 2019 (UTC)