Wikipedia:Peer review/The Founding Ceremony of the Nation/archive1

The Founding Ceremony of the Nation

I've listed this article for peer review because… I'd like some feedback. Painting isn't my usual area

Thanks, Wehwalt (talk) 00:35, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comments by Johnbod
• Looks pretty good in general, but I would have reservations about FA - there don't appear to be many sources, & some of the analysis given seems frankly rather iffy.
• Presumably the pics show the current versions; you should actually say this.

The replica certainly is. Not certain on the other one, will check.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:05, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• "Dong carefully washed the figure of Mao from the canvas, and re-painted him,..." There are various ways of doing this - "washing" isn't one of them.

Changed to "removed".--Wehwalt (talk) 20:07, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• "Although Dong had been trained in Western oil painting, he chose a folk art style for The Founding of the Nation, using bright, contrasting colors in a manner similar to that in New Year's prints popular in China." Hmmm - the style can't really be called "folk art" - "popular commercial art" maybe. The comparison with film posters is more to the point, and black outlines and bright colours have all sorts of uses in these areas without needing to bring in "crudely-printed rural woodcuts". The actual style of the figure & architectural drawing, perspective etc is entirely that of Western academic art in a populist illustration mode. Political spin seems to have taken over here.

Andrews calls it "elements of Chinese folk art combined with Soviet realism". I've added the google books link--Wehwalt (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC) Hung describes the New Year's prints as folk art, and notes the influence.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:25, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• "Patterns on the carpet, columns, lanterns, and railing evoke cultural symbols". Rather clumsy & vague. Maybe "The patterns on the carpet are traditional motifs from Chinese ornament, which complement the Ming dynasty architecture of the gate structure. And something about the lanterns. They are standing on a 500 y/o structure, which might be said somewhere.

I'll add something but I fear that what you propose goes a little bit beyond what the source says, though you are certainly correct. I'm not sure it is a real carpet. I have a replica of a different painting of this scene and the carpet is a dusky, plain red.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:18, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

And as for the age of the gate, it's been rebuilt so many times ... reminds me of General Washington's knife, the original but for replacing the blade twice and the handle three times. I'll try to think of some language that works.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:28, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• "Dong took some liberties with the appearance of Tiananmen Gate, eliminating several pillars to grant Mao a more direct connection with his people" can't see this comparing with the photos - there are 5 columns on each side in both, with a larger gap at the centre. He may have shortened them, and removed the side-pieces at the top.

Hung says "eliminated a few pillars in front of Mao to open up the space before him". I will concentrate on the opening of the space.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• "Red is present throughout the painting, lending a joyful, festive air to it, as well as giving "cultural sublimity", appropriate for a work depicting the founding of a nation." It is also the traditional auspicious Chinese colour, but I suppose that must not be mentioned.

I felt that was implied, but I'll work it in.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:29, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• No mention of Socialist Realism, of which this is a version.

Mentioned early in background section.==Wehwalt (talk) 18:26, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• No photos of those removed?

All of the photographs of those removed have a very iffy PD status, none have US copyright tags. Life of the photographer plus seventy years doesn't give any room to play with.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:32, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Johnbod (talk) 17:37, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I'll work through these and look for more sources.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

• Comments by Iridescent – Note that I'm reviewing this on the assumption that you're planning on taking it to FAC, so am in full-on nitpick mode. I'm also taking it on trust that every source says what it's claimed to say, since I don't speak a word of Chinese.

• I'm aware there are precedents for multiple infoboxes when multiple versions of a work exist—Work (painting), for instance—but you're not going to convince me that it doesn't (a) look ridiculous, (b) confuse the readers who don't understand without reading the article why you're showing what at first glance appears to be the same image twice, and (c) means a wide space between the two images so it's hard to compare-and-contrast the two. If you want a double lead image, I'd suggest the approach used here, with very brief one-line captions below the images, and the full descriptions in a text-based footer to the pair. Yes, not using a formal infobox template will prevent the article emitting metadata for Google to harvest, but our articles should be written with human readers in mind, not the convenience of multinationals. Given the level of detail, I'd quite strongly suggest forcing the image width as wide as you think you can get away with, as this is a case where it's essential readers can actually see the individual faces. (Remember, most readers don't realize that clicking an image allows them to enlarge it, and those readers who aren't logged in—the overwhelming majority—will get the confusing MediaViewer popup if they do try to click on an image.)
• Dong Xiwen should probably be linked, even though it will create a redlink in the lead—if this is really one of the most famous artworks in China, than its creator is by definition notable.
• The technique of using oil paintings to memorialize events and make a political statement was not new seems fairly redundant. Aside from formal portraits and depictions of scenes from fiction, almost every artwork memorializes an event of some kind, right back to cavemen painting their hunts. (I'm no expert on China, but would this series not have been intended more as a secular version of devotional images, rather than a straightforward history lesson? Certainly in most countries with a personality cult around the government, paintings of the Great Leader serve much the same function as a Madonna might serve in a western Catholic household.)
• (Yes, I know I'm directly contradicting Johnbod directly above.) Is Red, an auspicious color in Chinese culture, is present throughout the painting, lending a joyful, festive air to it explicitly sourced to something reliable, as to me it reeks of synthesis? There's a very obvious reason why Communist art—be it Soviet, Chinese, East German, Cuban, or the publicity of communist agitators in Western countries—is almost always dominated by the colour red, and it has nothing to do with whether the color is auspicious in Chinese culture. (Quite aside from the obvious connections to red being the color of communism and every communist country, including the PRC, having a primarily red flag, the de facto anthem of Mao's personality cult was "The East is Red".)

I've withdrawn that statement (which I intended to source) pending finding something specific on this.

• Dong rented a small room in western Beijing above a grocery store selling soy sauce; surely every grocery store in China sells soy sauce? Was it actually a soy sauce wholesaler, rather than a grocery store?

I will ask my collaborator who wrote the Chinese version if he can review this as it is from a Chinese-language source, here. Pinging 如沐西风

• If you can rustle them up, it would probably be worthwhile shoving an {{imagestack}} in here with a timeline of the different versions of the painting, to allow readers to see for themselves how it changed over time as people were purged and rehabilitated, since to the 99.9% of readers who don't care about 1950 realism, that will be the most interesting aspect of the story. Since the changes are all discussed in detail in the text, I'd see no problem claiming fair use for each version.

I will look to see if I can find them. According to an image in one of the sources, at least three of the versions were reproduced as posters, and may be out there on the web. I suppose the ones in public places would have to have been, er, politically correct. Safer for the home, too ...

• To me, the chancy time of the Cultural Revolution is an inappropriate tone. The Cultural Revolution was a brutal campaign which caused the deaths of up to ten million people and a level of cultural destruction and economic disruption comparable to ISIS in the Middle East today—we wouldn't talk in Wikipedia's voice of Jews having "a chancy time during the Holocaust".
• The sources may not exist for this, but to me this is an article that cries out for a "legacy" section. If this painting is really so well known, then there have almost certainly been other works inspired by it, hostile parodies by anti-Mao campaigners and so on. Given that this was so well-received, did other Chinese (and Vietnamese, North Korean etc) artists try to imitate its style in their own work? How was it received in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore & Macao, which are culturally Chinese but not part of the PRC? (I imagine Taiwan suppressed it, but in places like Hong Kong did it enjoy any popularity?)

Hopefully once GMU restores my access (I'm hoping for soon) I'll be able to bring more resources to bear on this question. Not sure it would have been what political refugees trying to get across the Hong Kong border would be likely to pack ...

Thank you for those very sage comments, a number of which really strike at things that I saw as the weaker points of the article. I will work on them. I am still awaiting my renewal of my database access from GMU (I would have jumped ship already if their library wasn't six miles from my house) and we will look for further sources on some of these points. I agree with you on the infoboxes, I just borrowed the format from the Chinese Wikipedia version, where I think it works better.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:35, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

• Comments by Ceoil.

• Still reading through, but The technique of using oil paintings to memorialize events and make a political statement was not new - not really a technique, maybe "The use of...", also no need to specify "oil" as this was predominant.
• creating paintings depicting workers Your a better writer than I am, but this seems awkward. More later Ceoil (talk) 14:28, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

• I wouldn't say that. You underrate yourself and overrate me. But in any event, I've done those things. Thank you for reviewing--Wehwalt (talk) 23:23, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I know your writing well enough by now to appreciate. The article is fascinating; Im well aware of how the visual arts were so vibrant in Russia in the 1910s, and then suppressed, not so much as to what happened under Mao. Some more few short comments;

• creating paintings - still not fond of this
• the oil painter Ai Zhongxin, and other artists, came to visit - too much punctuation
• carefully removed - carefully not necessary; and re-painted him would phrase this differently also.
• Am surprised Dong Xiwen isn't linked in the lead, should be at least a stub, also would provide his Chinese name after the transliteration; people will use differing spelling when googling. Ceoil (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2017 (UTC)