Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samuel Rush Condon

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Thank you to seb26 for an unusually clear and exhaustively argued nomination. A Train^talk 16:12, 29 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Samuel Rush Condon

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Subject isn't notable enough. WP:ARTIST is the criteria most relevant here. I'll address its points specifically.

First it speaks to the need for artists (1) being widely regarded, generally being cited by peers, or contributing a technique, and so on. None of the reliable sources ([1], [2], [3] The Australian, view this with google cache, [4]) or one other I found ([5]) speak extensively at all about the artist, only ever in relation to the portrait they are mentioning. Two sites ([6], [7]) present more biographical info about the artist, the first is a blog interview based on quotes from the artist, and the second is a blog post by a fashion outlet, so these are not reliable. Discounting these, the reliable ones linked above are capable of confirming perhaps just the artist's birth year, place, education, and some of the competitions they have entered. There is not enough in them, however, to confirm details about their style, specialities or any other critical review about their practice.

Next the criteria speaks to an artist's work itself otherwise needing to (3) "be the subject of independent periodical articles or reviews" or (4c) "receiving significant critical attention". These sources ([8], [9]) do speak about specific paintings by Condon, but being bio page entries, the body of the text mostly is composed of quotes from the artist themselves, they are not accompanied by actual critical review. The Australian above does give a brief statement about the portrait, "tiny but fine". No further critical review appears and the article moves on to discuss other people. Since the works are always portraits, most of the articles are spent discussing the specific famous person that appears in the portrait and the quoted comments from Condon also don't speak about the work so much as the personality of that famous person themselves (for example, Australian prime minister in the Herald Sun piece).

Finally the criteria speaks to the need for artists to have their work (4a) be a significant monument, (4b) a substantial part of a significant exhibition, or (4d) be represented in several permanent collections. This artist's work has been a finalist of many competitions, but this is not significant enough because, well, the competitions themselves are really not significant enough themselves. The ones I researched do not actually exhibit works physically. The works that are actually discussed in the sources, have been finalists in the Archibald Prize and the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize. The Bayside prize is not covered on Wikipedia and in the year that Condon was entered, there were also 29 other finalists [10].

Archibald Prize, which is of course prominent in the arts scene in Australia, selects 40-50 finalists each year. There are suggestions that in general the work of finalists is not highly valued ([11], [12]). The finalists' works are never physically exhibited by the organisers of the prize. Looking at the years that Condon was in (2014, 2015), not many other non-winners are subjects of Wikipedia articles, and those that are, have notability for other reasons like permanent exhibition or other critical review (examples: 1, 2, 3). I found only one other notable competition entry for Condon, Salon des Refusés in 2016, which is an annual showcase of Archibald Prize rejects. This is the one of two times that Condon's work appears to have been exhibited physically in a gallery, temporarily, and there were 40 other artists also exhibited at this [13]. The other time was in 2011, a temporary exhibition “Space invaders” at the National Gallery of Australia. News/critical coverage of this exhibition was limited, with one press-like announcement ([14] and one critical discussion text [15] that fails to mention Condon’s piece.

In sum, this is generally the largest failure of the notability criteria: the lack of public/permanent exhibition of work, and the scarcity of sources that discuss the person or their works. seb26 (talk) 02:55, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Artists-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 04:00, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Australia-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 04:00, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Delete per nom. Fails simplest of WP standards for notability. Cllgbksr (talk) 04:30, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Main editor is an SPA. Aoziwe (talk) 13:05, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

~~Aoziwe please clarify 'SPA', and try to avoid obscure abbreviations. Verbcatcher (talk) 15:14, 21 July 2017 (UTC)~~[reply]

Delete per nomination. I have edited the article to clarify the awards and the Salon des Refusés. Condon's main notability appears to be two Archibald award shortlistings. I will leave it to Australian art specialists to assess the significance of this award, but the shortlists have about fifty artists which must limit the notability of being shortlisted. By contrast, recent Turner Prizes shortlists have three nominees, almost all of which have Wikipedia articles (see List of Turner Prize winners and nominees), although some of these might be vulnerable to a notability challenge. Verbcatcher (talk) 15:43, 21 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Comment to the blocked user with the account who has the same name as the subject. When you referred to the many public exhibitions of Condon's work, that is fantastic but it is not being challenged here. The notability criteria (which is a set of rules we need to have in order to preserve the quality of encyclopedia as a whole) speaks to the need for works to be in a permanent exhibition, whether public or private is less relevant. This is not suggesting that being temporarily exhibited is not important, not relevant or not indicative of hard work. Permanent recognition means that an established institution has thrown their weight behind the work and we ought to assist readers with biographical information about that person because of the relationship that exists between their work and the established institution. This is not unlike the requirements we have for reliable sources, we don't accept sources from any blog site rather we look to established publications to tell us what the facts are. So I'm sorry to hear that you may have taken this nomination personally, but please note no one here is commenting on you, but rather just trying to maintain the standards of the articles that we present to readers. seb26 (talk) 02:52, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

More evidence, in this contribution Samuelrushcondon (who is currently blocked) wrote:

I have artworks in numerous public collections including and not limited to the top art institutions in Australia: the national allergy of Australia, national library of australia, national library of Victoria, Ballarat regional gallery, etc

I have tried to follow this up, and found Honest 2010 on the National Gallery of Australia's website.[16] This appears to have been part of the Space Invaders show in 2011, but it was "Acquired with the support of Calypso Mary Efkarpidis", which I interpret as meaning that this work in now is in the permanent collection of the NGA. I failed to find anything on the the National Library of Australia's website. At the State Library of Victoria I found what appear to be books written and self-published by Condon.[17][18][19] If these are one-off or small limited editions artworks then they could count as "work in the permanent collection". At the Ballarat Regional Gallery I only found a listing of Condon as a finalist for the Rick Amor Drawing Prize 2016 (already in the article).[20]

A work in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Australia is significant when considering notability. It is unclear whether the books in the State Library of Victoria count under this clause. I have not found work in the collections of several institutions (per WP:ARTIST clause 4d), but these are only guidelines, and we need to exercise editorial judgement. Does this allow us to keep the article? Verbcatcher (talk) 04:44, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Verbcatcher, I found Honest in the NGA here. It is a zine as well as those other 3 in the State Library of Victoria. For the Ballarat Regional Gallery, I'm not sure, they do hold works in a permanent collection, [21] but no keywords for Condon came up (although the page suggests that the collection is not wholly available online yet). (But just like the other competitions I don't see it being likely that they would permanently hold finalists' work from a given year.) The NGA work is a good find and I'd cautiously support the other zines as being relevant to the criteria for permanent exhibition, but I have to admit my reservations about the way that this article could be written substantially with what appears to be such limited discussion in the sources relating to the subject themselves, aside from birthplace and his education. seb26 (talk) 12:35, 22 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.