Art scholars have puzzled over the behavior of Pablo Picasso, Gerhard Richter, and Sigmar Polke - important modern painters who have made frequent and abrupt changes of style. Yet in each case the scholars have assumed this behavior to be idiosyncratic, and have consequently failed to recognize...

For 35 leading painters who lived in France during the first century of modern art, this paper uses textbook illustrations as the basis for measuring the importance of both painters and individual paintings. The rankings pose an interesting puzzle: why do some of the greatest artists not produce...

This paper studies life cycle creativity among Nobel laureate economists. We identify two distinct life cycles of scholarly creativity. Experimental innovators work inductively, accumulating knowledge from experience. Conceptual innovators work deductively, applying abstract principles. We find...

In recent years, some English critics have claimed that Damien Hirst and his fellow young British artists have made London the new center of the advanced art world. As Hirst reaches the age of 40, this paper uses auction results to measure the importance of the YBAs compared to their American...

Pablo Picasso was by far the greatest artist of the 20th century: textbooks of art history contain more than twice as many illustrations of his work as of that of his closest rival, Henri Matisse. A survey of textbooks also identifies Jackson Pollock as the greatest American artist, by a narrow...

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:...

For 35 leading painters who worked in France during the first century of modern art, this paper uses illustrations in French textbooks as the basis for measuring the importance of both painters and individual paintings. The rankings closely resemble those obtained earlier from a similar analysis...

There have been two very different life cycles for important modern artists: some, including Picasso, have made their greatest contributions early in their careers, whereas others, like C‚zanne, have produced their best work late in their lives. Art's young geniuses have worked deductively to...

Although American painters of the late nineteenth century were much less influential than their European counterparts, the methods and careers of the leading American artists of the period reflect the same division between visual and conceptual approaches that characterized French art. The...