progress in economics (cont.)

Wojtek Sokolowski sokol at jhu.edu
Fri Mar 31 10:49:33 PST 2000


At 07:35 PM 3/30/00 -0500, Doug quoted:
> 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 famous
> paintings, and why do some relatively minor artists produce some
> of the most famous individual paintings? The answer may lie in
> an important difference in approach between experimental and
> conceptual painters. Experimental artists work incrementally,
> their innovations appear gradually, and they generally do their
> best work late in their careers; conceptual artists innovate
> more suddenly, produce individual breakthrough works, and
> usually do their best work early in their careers. This paper
> demonstrates that artistic success can usefully be quantified,
> and that doing so increases our understanding of the working
> methods of modern painters.

It is quite possible that the initial commercial success promoted some artistis to do "sequels" - which reduced their originality and thus overall place in history. The artists who produced out of "creative passion" rather than for commercial markets might have failed to produce a single commercially successful piece of work, but their efforts pais in the "long run."

As with everything else in qunatitative econ - you can argue either way, the proof is in further empirical studies - so there is little to be gain from qunatification.

wojtek



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