New Book Uses Statistical Methods to Analyze Avant-Garde Art
The patterns emerging from Mr. Galenson’s crunched numbers suggested that the careers of avant-garde artists tended to fall into two categories, embodying distinct kinds of innovation.
Some painters developed new techniques over a long period of experimentation, often through painstaking trial and error. Prime examples are Paul Cézanne and Mark Rothko. By contrast, Mr. Galenson found that other artists tended to have one or more creative breakthroughs that he calls “conceptual”: a sudden, radical retooling of what or how they paint. The most dramatic example would be Pablo Picasso, who ran through a series of radically distinct and original visual idioms – each of which seemed to emerge full-blown, as though the idea had taken shape in his head and simply needed to be executed. . . .
With experimentalists, says Mr. Galenson, the later canvases tend to be the most valuable, both on the art market and in the judgment of artists and historians. In contrast, conceptual breakthroughs usually came early in artists’ careers. The reputation of their later work tends to fall off drastically over time. . . .
(Link from John Hull on the Armchair Economists mailing list.)