Working Paper: NBER ID: w10885
Authors: David W. Galenson
Abstract: How can minor artists produce major works of art? This paper considers 13 modern visual artists, each of whom produced a single masterpiece that dominates the artist's career. The artists include painters, sculptors, and architects, and their masterpieces include works as prominent as the painting American Gothic, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C. In each case, these isolated achievements were the products of innovative ideas that the artists formulated early in their careers, and fully embodied in individual works. The phenomenon of the artistic one-hit wonder highlights the nature of conceptual innovation, in which radical new approaches based on new ideas are introduced suddenly by young practitioners.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: J0; J4
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| early conceptual innovation (O36) | significant artistic achievements (Z11) |
| one-hit wonders (Y90) | significant works (A39) |
| early conceptual innovations (O36) | prominence of major works (A31) |
| conceptual innovation (O35) | prominence in art history (Z11) |
| Géricault's innovative approach (B52) | creation of landmark piece (Y60) |
| Géricault's 'The Raft of the Medusa' (Y91) | significant portion of artist's total illustrations (Y90) |
| minor artists (Z11) | major works due to early conceptual innovations (B13) |