 2009-01-02 - Like the theory...but some conclusions go too far
This is a terrific book -- Galenson has really contributed something new and meaningful to how we think about peoples' development/expression of creativity.
As other reviewers have noted, the book's central premise is that creative breakthroughs (artistic and literary genius is the focus here) comes in more than one form. While some, like Picasso, offer textbook cases of creative genius achieved in youth, Matisse represents the other extreme--genius that takes many years to develop. Galenson's insight is that conceptual innovators like Picasso develop breakthrough ideas and the ability to express them artistically early on. They know what they want to say and are able to just put it out there. In contrast, "experimental" innovators often need to work things through over many years. The don't necessarily know what they want to express in their youth and it takes practice and much trial-and-error to literally figure it out. But, as with Matisse, persistence can pay off in later works that are highly innovative.
Great insights, which Malcolm Gladwell also builds on it in his "Outliers" book and in several articles (see "Late Bloomers" in the New Yorker) and talks (see "Age Before Beauty" given at Columbia U.) that explore success and what leads to it.
Galenson is careful to use several independent data sources to assess the "importance" of paintings, including: prices for works paid at auction, reproductions of works in art textbooks, and even museum holdings for key artists. That's good, even if the term "importance" is open to interpretation. And the data do support Galenson's premise that the art world seems to value the early work of conceptual artists more than their later work, while the reverse is true for experimental artists.
I think my one quibble is with how Galenson interprets and generalizes from some of his data. He uses it to explain why, for example, the art world views particular works by a minor conceptual artist like Serusier as more important (i.e. the work is reproduced in textbooks more often) than any single work by major experimental artists like Degas and Renior. Galenson's answer: being a conceptual artist allows one to create breakthrough masterpieces in a way that experimentalists can not.
Though I like Galenson's argument, the data he presents doesn't really support it. Following Galenson, I could argue that there is something inherently special about journeyman baseball players that hit game-winning home runs in the world series. I'll call them "BIG BIG game clutch hitters." I could readily show that these individual home runs by minor players get much more attention from the press and fans than a whole career's worth of home runs hit by several hall-of-fame sluggers who never played in a world series. Maybe appealing, but I don't really need a new theory about types of batters to explain this difference. A simpler observation could be that, in both art and sports, it helps to be in the right place at the right time. Like an average player on a team to goes to the world-series, artists who are active at the start of a new movement have a better chance to do something noteworthy and be recognized for it.
Now, if Galenson wants to argue that conceptual artists are more likely to be one-hit-wonders than are experimentalists, I think that's worth looking into. He could test that theory by examining all the one-hit-art-wonders in the 20th century and seeing what categories they fall into. But until he's done that analysis, his conclusions about conceptual breakthroughs seem to be over-reaching a bit. [Note: for a really pointed -- and in places unfair -- critique of Galenson's approach and methodology, see Edward Tufte's essay titled "Corruption in evidence Presentations" in his book "Beautiful Evidence." The critique is directed at Galenson's earlier book "Painting Outside the Lines" but it has some relevance for this book as well]
 2008-10-14 - Interesting, but only a part of the story
The contrast between 'conceptual' and 'experimental' artists, the first being the prodigy- geniuses, and the second being the slow- developers is at the heart of this work. The idea is that the first kinds of creators work in accordance with a scheme, arrive at a kind of fixed solution. They usually do their greatest work when they are young. They are sure of themselves, and receive their idea and inspiration suddenly. The second learn through experience and never come to the kind of Certainty that the first do . Galenson contrasts F.S. Scott Fitzgerald who became famous overnight at the age of twenty- six with Mark Twain who wrote 'Huckleberry Finn' over a ten year period. He contrasts T.S Eliot who wrote 'Prufrock' and 'Wasteland' with Frost who came to his best work later in life. He contrasts film- directors Orson Welles who revolutionized film with 'Citizen Kane' when Welles was in his twenties, with John Ford whose whole body of work developed slowly and is richer towards the end. The prodigy Picasso is contrasted with the late- blooming, experimenting Cezanne. The distinction does give certain insight but is also extremely problematic. It ignores in the Picasso-Cezanne case the fact that Picasso experimented all his life, created many new styles, produced some of his greatest work including 'Guernica' when he is well out of his twenties.Is Wordsworth whose great poems came in his early years , not an experimental artist in those years? Did Wordsworth stop experimenting in the years when he wrote his longest, if not his greatest work, 'The Prelude?' Where does Melville fit here, when he wrote his greatest masterpiece at the age of thirty- two, then immediately after had his ambitious failure 'Pierre' and then as his last great literary act gave us in old age, his novella masterpiece, 'Billy Budd'? Is it possible to speak of Tolstoy who wrote 'War and Peace' between the ages of thirty- five and forty simply as a 'conceptual artist' when the great adventure of his masterpiece is one in which he comprehends whole worlds of Experience in a way never done before?
It is possible to go on endlessly here bringing examples which confound the basic idea of this work? Dostoevsky was declared the great genius of Russian Literature by its foremost critic when Dostoevsky was in his twenties? But the greatest Dostoevsky masterpieces come in the very last years of his life.
I believe very simply ' creativity' is too rich and complex a subject to be pigeonholed even when the distinctions do apply in some cases, and are elegantly elaborated.
One more point. Galenson is critical of David Lehman's pioneering work on Age and Creativity in which he suggests that different kinds of creative artists do their best work in certain age- ranges, for instances lyric poets and mathematicians when very young, and philosophers towards the end of their lives. My own sense is that while there are of course countless exceptions Lehman's fundamental overall insight is a sound one.
2008-02-08 - Very Useful Analysis
I've shared Galenson's inciteful analysis with many friends; some of them artists, some of them dealers or other professionals in the field, some of them, like me, just interested in art.
Well-written, clearly organized and thought-provoking, "Old Masters and Young Geniuses" increased my understanding of the creative process and how it differs among artists. Highly recommended.
2007-04-06 - Clarifying 2 Modes of Artistic Creativity.
This book would be of interest to artists and collectors. Enjoy. I couldn't put it down.
2007-01-13 - valuable contribution
As a creative artists who moves in slow incremental steps-searching, exploring, and experimenting-, I am much gratified to have Galenson's positive take on my plodding nature. It is the unknown that draws me forward (the experimental), not the laborious execution of a well thought-out scheme (the conceptual).
I have studied art and art history my entire life and Galenson has given me my first ever clear understanding of 'conceptual' art. I realize now that my own methods have little in common with most conceptual artists, much more in common with the 'experimental' artists of which he writes.
I find it quite refreshing and commendable that an Economics professor who comes from outside the insular field of art has delved so successfully into the minds of artists. Shouldn'd we all take more than a moment to step outside our own fields, get a fresh perspective on the world around us, and thus, on ourselves?
Kudos to professor Galenson for doing such a fine job of expanding our understanding of the creative mind, and for taking the risk to have a look from the outside.
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