progress in economics (cont.)

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

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