Young Geniuses and Old Masters: The Life Cycles of Great Artists from Masaccio to Jasper Johns

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511605390.009

7 - Young Geniuses and Old Masters: The Life Cycles of Great Artists from Masaccio to Jasper Johns

from PART III - HUMAN CAPITAL OUTLIERS

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 December 2009

David W. Galenson and

Edited by

Frank D. Lewis and

David Eltis: Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Frank D. Lewis: Affiliation:
Queen's University at Kingston, Canada
Kenneth L. Sokoloff: Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles

Book contents

Get access

Summary

THE PRODUCTIVITY OF PAINTERS

Artists occupy a distinctive place in our economic life. As the art historian Meyer Schapiro (1979: 224) observed, the works they produce are “perhaps the most costly man-made objects in the world.” Supporting evidence abounds. Thus in the twelve months ending in July 2000, worldwide auction sales of works by Pablo Picasso totaled $232 million; this raised total auction sales of Picasso's work since 1988 to $1.5 billion (Barker 2000). And impressive as these numbers are, they vastly understate the wealth created by Picasso, for his most important works have long since been captured by museums, where they attract millions of viewers annually. It is not possible to estimate with any precision the market value of such landmark works as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the single most famous work owned by New York's Museum of Modern Art, or Madrid's Guernica, or the Picasso Museum's Still Life with Chair Caning. And although Picasso stands at the head of the line of modern painters, even among moderns he is hardly alone in having created work of enormous value, and it is likely that the wealth embodied in his work is modest compared to that of a number of old masters.

Curiously, economists have shown little interest in the extraordinary productivity of these workers: economists have devoted little attention to the determination of the market value of works of art, and even less to the process by which artists produce this value.

Type: Chapter
Information: Human Capital and Institutions
A Long-Run View
, pp. 221 - 247

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511605390.009 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, Laurie Schneider. 1991. A History of Western Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar

Alpers, Svetlana. 1988. Rembrandt's Enterprise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Ames-Lewis, Francis. 1986. The Draftsman Raphael. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar

Barker, Godfrey. 2000. “The Art Market's Two-Ton Gorilla.” Forbes 166, No. 16: 146.Google Scholar

Bell, Clive. 1982. “The Debt to Cézanne.” In Frascina, Francis and Harrision, Charles, eds. Modern Art and Modernism. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar

Bell, Janis. 1997. “Color and Chiaroscuro.” In Marcia, Hall, ed. Raphael's “School of Athens.”Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Biadene, Susanna, ed. 1990. Titian: Prince of Painters. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art.Google Scholar

Bowness, Alan. 1989. The Conditions of Success: How the Modern Artist Rises to Fame. New York: Thames and Hudson.Google Scholar

Britsch, Ralph A. and Britsch, Todd. 1984. The Arts in Western Culture. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar

Carmean, E. A. and Rathbone, Eliza E.. 1978. American Art at Mid-Century: The Subjects of the Artist. Washington DC: National Gallery of Art.Google Scholar

Cleaver, Dale G. 1972. Art, Second ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar

Cornell, Sara. 1983. Art. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar

Croix, Horst and Richard, G. Tansey. 1975. Gardner's Art Through the Ages, Sixth ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar

Freeman, Julian.1998. Art. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.

Friedman, B. H. 1995. Jackson Pollock: Energy Made Visible. New York: Da Capo Press.Google Scholar

Fry, Roger. 1962. Last Lectures. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar

Galenson, David. 2001. Painting outside the Lines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Galenson, David. 2006. Old Masters and Young Geniuses. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Gebhardt, Volker. 1998. The History of Art. New York: Barron's.Google Scholar

Golding, John. 1988. Cubism, Third ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar

Hartt, Fredrick. 1989. Art, Third ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar

Honour, Hugh and Fleming, John. 1999. The Visual Arts, Fifth ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar

Jensen, Robert 1994. Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar

Karmel, Pepe, ed. 1999. Jackson Pollock: Interviews, Articles, and Reviews. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Kemp, Martin, ed. 2000. The Oxford History of Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Koestler, Arthur. 1964. The Act of Creation. New York: Macmillan.Google Scholar

Kubler, George. 1962. The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar

Oberhuber, Konrad and Vitali, Lamberto. 1972. Il cartone per la “Scuola d'Athene”. Milan: Silvana Editoriale de'Arte.Google Scholar

Rewald, John, ed. 1995. Paul Cézanne Letters. New York: Da Capo Press.

Rosand, David. 1982. “Titian and the Critical Tradition.” In Rosand, David, ed. Titian: His World and His Legacy. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar

Rosand, David. 1987. “Editor's Statement: Style and the Aging Artist.” Art Journal 46: 91.Google Scholar

Rubin, William. 1977. Cézanne: The Late Work. New York: Museum of Modern Art.Google Scholar

Rubin, William, Seckel, Hélène, and Cousins, Judith. 1994. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. New York: Museum of Modern Art.Google Scholar

Ruskin, Ariane. 1974. History in Art. New York: Franklin Watts.Google Scholar

Schapiro, Meyer. 1979. Modern Art: 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: George Braziller.Google Scholar

Shiff, Richard. 1984. Cézanne and the End of Impressionism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Spencer, Harold 1975. The Image Maker. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.Google Scholar

Stokstad, Marilyn. 1995. Art History. New York: Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar

Gogh, Vincent. 1958. The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh. London: Thames and Hudson, Vol. 3.Google Scholar

Wetering, . 1998. Rembrandt. The Painter at Work. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar

Wetering, . 1998. “Rembrandt's Bathsheba: The Object and Its Transformations.” In Adams, Ann Jensen, ed. Rembrandt's “Bathsheba Reading King David's Letter”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Varnedoe, Kirk, ed. 1996. Jasper Johns: Writings, Sketchbook Notes, Interviews. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

Vasari, Giorgio. 1971. The Lives of the Artists. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar

Whistler, JamesMcNeill, Albert. 1922. The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar

Wilkins, David G., Schultz, Bernard, and Linduff, Katheryn M.. 1997. Art Present. New York: Harry N. Abrams.Google Scholar

Wollheim, Richard. 1995. “Minimal Art.” In Battock, Gregory, ed. Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar

Wood, Michael, Cole, Bruce, and Gealt, Adelheid. 1989. Art of the Western World. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar