• oTom
  • oTom
  • Charms Professor
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Topic: Creative Genius, Mac Culkin v. Eastwood

One of my favorite professors did a lot of research on the idea of artistic creativity and output.  I thought maybe you guys would like to read an article Wired did with him a few years ago:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html

A good setup snippet:

Galenson collected data, ran the numbers, and drew conclusions. He selected 42 contemporary American artists and researched the auction prices for their works. Then, controlling for size, materials, and other variables, he plotted the relationship between each artist’s age and the value of his or her paintings. On the vertical axis, he put the price each painting fetched at auction; on the horizontal axis, he noted the age at which the artist created the work. When he tacked all 42 charts to his office wall, he saw two distinct shapes.

For some artists, the curve hit an early peak followed by a gradual decline. People in this group created their most valuable works in their youth – Andy Warhol at 33, Frank Stella at 24, Jasper Johns at 27. Nothing they made later ever reached those prices. For others, the curve was more of a steady rise with a peak near the end. Artists in this group produced their most valuable pieces later in their careers – Willem de Kooning at 43, Mark Rothko at 54, Robert Motherwell at 72. But their early work wasn’t worth much.

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  • From: Seattle, WA
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Re: Creative Genius, Mac Culkin v. Eastwood

Does this track the price of pieces of art during their life, or posthumously?

Because the first shows when they were 'successful', whereas the second might better show real artistic merit.

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  • oTom
  • oTom
  • Charms Professor
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  • From: Chicago
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Re: Creative Genius, Mac Culkin v. Eastwood

Jasper Johns is obviously still alive.  For THAT particular study he ran the regression analysis on contemporary artists.  But he's designed dozens of studies, including dead artists.

Galenson decided to test the robustness of his conclusions about artists’ life cycles by looking at variables other than price. Art history textbooks presumably reflect the consensus among scholars about which works are important. So he and his research assistants gathered up textbooks and began tabulating the illustrations as a way of inferring importance. (The methodology is analogous to Google’s PageRank system: The more books that “linked” to a particular piece of art, the more important it was assumed to be.)

When Galenson’s team correlated the frequency of an image with the age at which the artist created it, the same two contrasting graphs reappeared. Some artists were represented by dozens of pieces created in their twenties and thirties but relatively few thereafter. For other artists, the reverse was true.

Bottom line, there is hope for old people.

That said, studies like these always remind me of how Steve Pinker (accurately) described Malcolm Gladwell - beware the minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning.

EDIT:  Not that I think Galenson's study is flawed.  In fact, if I could find a hole in any of his work that would be an instant PhD.  Just on matters of art in general I'm leery of MATLAB.  Math is witchcraft.

EDIT EDIT: In fact, I know some people who would love to punch holes in Galenson's work and face.  He once told the kid next to me in class that he'd be a competent ditch-digger.  And he took one girl's 30 page final, didn't write a single note, and simply taped a match to the last page.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: And he was one of the nice professors.  The average GPA in that department was 2.5.  Like it should be.  One of the more famous papers from the dept. was one bashing Harvard's grade inflation.  Walking the walk...

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT:  I'm just going to turn this post into my mirco blog.  Come back soon for updates.

EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT EDIT:  I own Lethal Weapon 1,2, & 4, but not 3.  Is the quality differential so great as to exclude 3?  Dunno, but my free market has spoken.

EDIT:  My little sister is taking a human sexuality class.  Thankfully, what you learn in college isn't applicable in the real world.

EDIT: Spousal abuse is funny! http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs … _sad_f.php

EDIT:  Remember they had to call the Ghostbusters cartoon the REAL Ghostbusters because of copyright?  Think that's why it's called Real Steel?  Is Shaq that litigious?

EDIT:  It's not even Christmas at Radio City but these Raisinettes are dancing in my mouth.

EDIT:  I wanted to visualize a fight between Ayn Rand and Marx, so I was going to throw their books in the dryer.  But Atlas Shrugged would probably win.  Not even the same weight class.  Can't have that.

EDIT: A great revenge gag would be to throw popcorn into a convertible when a lot of pigeons are around.

EDIT: Ebert gave the first Human Centipede 0 stars, and he has the option of choosing what to review... so why would he go see Human Centipede 2?  Did he genuinely think the franchise was capable of course correction?  Also, why am I reading Ebert?

EDIT: I know of a dude who has a PhD in astronomy and is now getting dual graduate degrees in landscape architecture and in regional planning.  I don't know what his master plan is, but I can't wait to find out.

EDIT: Where is my minority report!? http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20117 … detection/

EDIT: Patton Oswalt gets mentioned a lot, and today's commentary moved me to check him out.  Dorkman is right.  He's not very funny.  In fact, he's a lot like Dane Cook only with fewer adverbs, adjectives, and cocaine.  One of his better bits was the misuse of the time machine, and there's a lot of, "you saw that movie too!?" call and response.  Same shit when he says, "in a bathrobe watching Princess Bride."  People lost their shit when he mentioned that movie.  No punchline.  Anywhere.  Fuck you.

EDIT: If this excessive, self-indulgent miscarriage of forum post wasn't proof enough, let's solidify my mindlessness -  CNN ran a headline: "Transgendered vet describes 'pain'" and I totally thought it was going to be a story about a veterinarian.

Last edited by oTom (2011-10-09 10:42:31)

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