Talk:Valentine Penrose

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Citation needed?

User:Amortias has added the Citation needed tag to this sentence:

She also knew the surrealist poet André Breton^{[citation needed]}, and surrealist artists including Max Ernst and Joan Miró.

I feel that there is adequate citation in the reference at the end of the sentence.[1] This says of Roland Penrose:

There he met his first wife, the French poet Valentine Boué in 1924 and married her the following year. It was partly through her that he met the Surrealist poets André Breton and Paul Éluard who in turn introduced him to Max Ernst, Joan Miró and other members of the movement.

I assumed that if Roland Penrose met André Breton partly through Valentine Penrose, then Valentine Penrose must have known André Breton. If this reasoning is faulty then her knowing Max Ernst and Joan Miró also needs citation. Verbcatcher (talk) 15:44, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On re-reading this quote, I realise that it says that it was Breton and Éluard that introduced Roland Penrose to Ernst and Miró. This does not mean that Valentine Penrose knew Ernst and Miró (although this seems probable). I will remove the reference to Ernst and Miró, but leave Breton and Éluard. I will leave the citation needed tag for now, pending a response here. Verbcatcher (talk) 15:49, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Potentially including the citation reference by Breton may provide additional clarity - this should in turn allow the removal of the citation needed tag Amortias (T)(C) 16:22, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand. I have cited the reference quoted above (http://www.rolandpenrose.co.uk/about.aspx?cat=1900). Are you suggesting citing something else? Please clarify. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:35, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Description of style

It would be valuable to quote a description of her poetic style. I found a good quote, but I don't want to include it without a reliable attribution:

Her sensuality and often daring eroticism, her celebration of feminism, her musical rhythm and surprising images make her poems all the more exquisite.

One website attributes this to Jean-Michel Place: [2], but I am doubtful. I think the quote come from from an article by Georgina Colville in a book edited by Jean-Michel Place. This article is referenced in the French Wikipedia article:

Geogiana Colvile Scandaleusement d'elles. Trente quatre femmes surréalistes, Jean-Michel Place, Paris 1999, pages 234 à 243, avec une photographie de l'artiste par Lee Miller et quatre collages réalisés pour le recueil Don des féminines.

We should not include a quotation without reliably crediting its author. Can anyone clarify this? Verbcatcher (talk) 22:40, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Additional unsourced material

The French Wikipedia article makes the following unsourced claims. It would be good to include these here with reliable references.

Her father was a colonel
She was influenced by a Spanish guru: Count Galarza de Santa Clara
In 1944 she joined the French army and served in Algeria
Additional publications

Verbcatcher (talk) 23:36, 10 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have found a reliable reference for most of this. I will extend the article accordingly. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:21, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Military service

My most dependable reference (Dictionnaire littéraire des femmes de langue française) says:

De retour en Europe en 1940, Valentine Penrose sert quelque temps dans l’armée française[...]

This means that she served in The French Army in 1940, but I am not certain whether this is the Free French Army or the Army of the Armistice. Another source has her serving in Algeria. Verbcatcher (talk) 00:19, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

French Wikipedia has her serving in Algeria in 1944 (no reference). Verbcatcher (talk) 01:33, 12 May 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

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Contribution of Lulita126

I am planning to revert this edit by Lulita126. This is mainly because the additions are unsoyrced, but there are too many other issues to summarise in an edit summary so I will indicate them here.

Quotation in lead

The new text in the lead appears to be a quotation from an interview with Penrose. It is so poorly formatted that it is unclear exactly what it represents, and it is of little use without context. 'Enquête' is not an English word probably indicates a question.

Biography

Valentine Boué was born in Gascon 1898

We already say where Penrose was born, and adding 'Gascon' (presumably Gascony) adds nothing useful. This is also ungrammatical.

Her father was a Colonal hero of Verdun and considered as an inventor and creator.

This is unsourced. 'Colonal hero' might mean colonel or colonial.

She was educated at Légion d'honneur, an establishment by Napolian Bonaparte and the highest French order of merit for military and civil merits.

This is unsourced. The intended meaning is probably that she attended a Maison d'éducation de la Légion d'honneur school. I think it implies that an ancestor was awarded the Légion d'honneur.

She enlisted as a soldier and joined the French Army in 1944, continuing the family military tradition. Her status was a 3rd class soldier in Free France Army and was posted to Algiers, returning to France at the Liberation.

This conflicts with the cited source, which says:

Séparée de Penrose en 1936, Valentine repart aux Indes avec Alice Rahon Paalen. Elles deviennent très liées et une symbiose exceptionnelle se manifeste dans leur poésie de 1936 à 1945 environ. De retour en Europe en 1940, Valentine Penrose sert quelque temps dans l’armée française, passe en Angleterre, hébergée la moitié du temps chez Roland Penrose et sa nouvelle épouse : il en sera ainsi jusqu’à la fin de sa vie.

There is no source for the details of her military service.

Returning to France from India in 1939, she lived the early war years in England associating with the surrealist group.

This conflicts with the source that I have quoted above.

La Comtesse Sanglante

This is sourced to the translation of Penrose's book, and it reads like the publisher's blurb from the book. A Google search for the first two sentences leads to several 'free download' sites for the book, whose Google summary is very close to this text. (I have not downloaded from these sites as they are probably illegal and possibly infected with malware.) I am also suspicious of this paragraph because its style is very different from Lulita126's other contributions. If it has been copied from elsewhere then it is almost certainly a copyright violation and unacceptable here. Otherwise, it is too detailed and is overweight in relation to the rest of this article.

I will revert this edit. Please do no restore this without discussion here. Verbcatcher (talk) 21:54, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Apologetically herself?

This sentence looks wrong:

For a female artist of her time it was unconventional for a women to illustrate such erotic and violent works but Penrose was a rebellious artist who was apologetically herself.

The normal phrase is unapologetically herself. The current text indicates that Penrose apologised for the eroticism, violence and rebellion in her works, which seems unlikely. I do not have access to the cited source [Humphreys, 2003]. User:Myusername2019, you introduced this text - is this a mistake? Otherwise, please confirm that this is supported by the source. If no conformation is forthcoming I propose to delete the second part of the sentence (after 'works'). Meanwhile I will tag it with {{Disputed inline}}. Verbcatcher (talk) 23:15, 30 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I have deleted the disputed text. Verbcatcher (talk) 18:01, 6 June 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Surely she is a surrealist artist as well

I added Valentine Penrose to the "Surrealist artist" category and this change was undone. She is in the Women surrealist artists category, surely she belongs in the Surrealist artist category as well. Until I started making changes yesterday, the "Surrealist artists" category was strictly men. We can do better than this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Breadteam (talk • contribs) 16:11, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia categories form a hierarchy; normally if an article is in a category we do not include it in this category's parent category, or in any category above it, see Wikipedia:Categorization. However, there are exceptions, and this appears to be one. Category:Women surrealist artists is labelled as a a non-diffusing subcategory of Category:Surrealist artists, so in this case articles can be in both categories. I find this topic confusing, and the category might have been wrongly labelled as non-diffusing. Some might argue for classifying all surrealist artists in Category:Female surrealist artists and Category:Male surrealist artists, but this would raise an issue of other gender identities. I hope this helps. Verbcatcher (talk) 21:36, 2 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]