November 11, 2018

Tenth anniversary of this blog


Bonjour aux promeneurs, Hello walkers
picture of a sculpture by Fernand Châtelain
  
Today, November 11, 2018, this blog exists for ten years and it meanwhile includes an inventory of over 450 art environments in a variety of countries in Europe.

As in previous years I will relate here some data (as of November 10) about numbers/origin of visitors and about most viewed art environments.

Number of visitors

On November 10, 2017 the all time number of visitors was 697.157. On November 10, 2018 it was 755.533 an increase of 58376, or on the average 160 visitors a day. Over the period 2016-2017 the average was 312

All time page views by country

As in previous years here is the all time rank of top ten countries as regards page-views:

   1. United States 259.539 (rank 2017 idem)
   2. Netherlands 75.870 (rank 2017 idem)
   3. France  68.414 (rank 2017 idem)
   4. Germany 54.874 (rank 2017 idem)
   5. United Kingdom 48.974  (rank 2017 idem)
   6. Russia 23.201 (rank 2017 was 7)
   7. Ukraine 21,718 (rank 2017 was 6)
   8. Italy 18.437 (rank 2017 was 9)
   9. Spain 14.780 (rank 2017 was 8 )
 10. Poland 6.391 (rank 2017 idem)

The top ten list includes the same countries as in 2017, almost in the same order. Once more the interest from Russia and Eastern Europe is lasting.

Most viewed sites all time

These are the sites with the most all time views (as on November 9):

    1. Bill and Elisabeth Charge, UK Shell garden 6192
    2. Robert Garcet, Belgium Tour Eben-Ezer 5300
    3. Jose Maria Garrido, Spain Shell decorated interior 4800
    4. Joseph Ferdinand Cheval, France Palais Idéal 4489
    5. Robert Tatin, France Singular architecture 4440
    6. Bodan Litnianski, France Decorated garden 4128
    7. Abbé Fouré, France Sculpted rocks 3487
    8. Chomo, France Préludian art 3877
    9. Francisco Grajera, Spain Decorated house 3594
  10. Joseph Pujiula i Vila, Spain Labyrinth 3447

The first place for Bill and Elisabeth Charge has to do with a one time event. End October 2016 the husband of a granddaughter of Bill and Elisabeth posted a message on the Watford Memories and History page on Facebook, asking -with a link to the relevant post in this blog- if anyone remembered the decorated garden. Thousands of people did remember the site and this resulted in over 5000 hits of the post in a few days time, which meanwhile has grown to over 6000.

For the rest, the top ten includes the same set of names as in previous yeas, with Robert Garcet from Belgium. Facteur Cheval, Robert Tatin, Bodan Litnianski, Abbé Fouré and Chomo from France and José  Maria Garrido, Francisco Grajera and Joseph Pujiula from Spain ¹.

On 11-14 the same artists as in 2017 appear: Erich Bödeker (Sculpture garden, 3366) from Germany,  Karl Junker (Decorated interior, 3359) also from Germany. Willem van Genk (Arnhem bus station, 3151) from the Netherlands and Jean-Daniel Allanche (Decorated interior, 3074) from France.

Julius Klingebiel (Decorated hospital room, 3050from Germany is now on 15, Stephen Wright  (House of dreams, 3119, England) is on 16 and Raymond Isidore, also known as Picassiette (Mosaic Picassiette, 2958, France) on 17.

The other most viewed posts in 2017 include Robert Vasseur (Mosaic decorated house, garden, 2937,France) on 18, José García Martin (Sculpture garden, 2933, Spain) on 19 and Viktor IV (=Walter Karl Glück) (Floating structures, 2763, Netherlands) on 20.

Eastern Europe and Russia

The past three to four years I have focused my attention on searching art environments in Eastern Europe and Russia west of the Urals. which until November 2018 delivered some 65 sites, including some 35 located in Russia.

These are the sites with all time views above 1400 (as on November 9):
   
Eastern Europe
   Bogdan Ziętek, Interior with sculptures, Poland, 2320 
   Václav Levý, Sculpted rocks, Czech Republic, 2250
   František RintSedlec Ossuary, Czech Republic2247
   Stanislav Sartsevich, Sculpture garden, Ukraine, 2109
   Nicolas Golovan, Decorated house, Ukraine, 2049
   Boguslawa Iwaneskiego, Sculpture garden, Poland, 1655
   Felicja Curylova, Decorated house, Poland, 1639

Russia
   Alexander Emelyanov, Architectures, sculptures, 2125
   Alexander LadoginaSingular architecture, 2002
   Pjotr ZhurilenkoSculpture garden, 1653
   Sergey KirillovDecorated house, 1651
   Yevgeny Malakhin (=Bukashkin)Frescoe decorated walls,  1512

Creating art environments is not kind of a competition of course, so above listings are just meant to give an idea of the focus of the visitors who visit this blog.

Pages

This weblog includes a number of pages (a general introduction, a time line, referrals to books, expositions and museums). In 2017 the all time most viewed pages were the index of sites by region/countries (in 2017 some 10900 views) and the index of sites by name of artist (in 2017 some 5500). Recently I have revised these two indexes, creating new pages and deleting the former ones, so the data of all time visitors got lost.  But it is obvious these pages are used a lot.

note
¹ In 2017 I added the number of visitors to posts about books, expos and other happenings with regard to Cheval and Fouré to the number of visitors of the main post about life and work of these artists. This year I only counted the number of visitors to the main post, which has affected the current order, but not the entry in the top ten. Info about books etc now is published on the Facebook page Outsider Art Environments Europe 

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