IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/8779.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Life Cycles of Modern Artists

Author

Listed:
  • David W. Galenson

Abstract

There have been two very different life cycles for great modern artists: some have made their major contributions early in their careers, while others have produced their best work later in their lives. These patterns have been associated with different artistic goals and working methods: artists who peak late are motivated by aesthetic considerations and work by trial and error, whereas artists who peak early are motivated by conceptual concerns and plan their work in advance. This paper shows that Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and the other leading Abstract Expressionists, who were experimental innovators, produced their best work considerably later in their careers than did Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and the other leading conceptual innovators of the generation that followed them. These results not only yield a new understanding of the life cycles of creative individuals, but also provide new insights into the value of works of art.

Suggested Citation

  • David W. Galenson, 2002. "The Life Cycles of Modern Artists," NBER Working Papers 8779, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8779
    Note: LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w8779.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David W. Galenson, 2002. "Was Jackson Pollock the Greatest Modern American Painter? A Quantitative Investigation," NBER Working Papers 8830, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Etro, Federico & Pagani, Laura, 2012. "The Market for Paintings in Italy During the Seventeenth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 423-447, May.
    2. Francesco Daveri & Maria Laura Parisi, 2010. "Experience, Innovation and Productivity - Empirical Evidence from Italy's Slowdown," CESifo Working Paper Series 3123, CESifo.
    3. David W. Galenson, 2004. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young or Old Innovator: Measuring the Careers of Modern Novelists," NBER Working Papers 10213, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Victor Ginsburgh & Sheila Weyers, 2006. "Creativity and Life Cycles of Artists," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 30(2), pages 91-107, September.
    5. Carlos Casacuberta & Ianina Rossi & Máximo Rossi, 2003. "El arte y el éxito: un matrimonio incómodo," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0303, Department of Economics - dECON.
    6. David W. Galenson, 2004. "One Hit Wonders: Why Some of the Most Important Works of Modern Art are Not by Important Artists," NBER Working Papers 10885, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Karen D. W. Patterson & David Eduardo Cavazos & Marvin Washington, 2014. "It Does Matter How You Get to the Top: Differentiating Status from Reputation," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 4(2), pages 1-14, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Robert B. Ekelund & John D. Jackson & Robert D. Tollison, 2015. "Age and productivity: An empirical study of early American artists," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 81(4), pages 1096-1116, April.
    2. Carlos Casacuberta & Ianina Rossi & Máximo Rossi, 2003. "El arte y el éxito: un matrimonio incómodo," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 0303, Department of Economics - dECON.
    3. David W. Galenson, 2003. "The Reappearing Masterpiece: Ranking American Artists and Art Works of the Late Twentieth Century," NBER Working Papers 9935, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:8779. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.