Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art

David W. Galenson
Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press, 2001
Cloth, 190 pp.
ISBN 0-674-00612-7
1. Painting, American—20th century

Reviewed by Robert Pepperell
PøLAR (Posthuman Laboratory for Arts Research)

pepperell@ntlworld.com

According to author David Galenson, despite the many and various ways in which art and science have intersected in recent times, art historians have consistently failed to apply the methodology of ‘econometrics’ to the analysis of trends in art: "Yet although quantitative methods have now been profitably applied to a host of topics in social and economic history, the history of modern art has remained virtually untouched by quantification." (p. xv). Derived from the quantitative statistical measurement techniques of economic theory, econometrics seeks to establish causal relationships between social behaviour patterns and statistical data. In this case Galenson, an economics professor, looks for a correlation between artists’ ages and their creative peaks. To cite two of the most obvious "archetypes": the work Cézanne produced late in his career (such as Les Grandes Baigneuses) is his most widely known and highly valued, whereas for Picasso it was the work produced early in his career (such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon) which has the highest art historical profile, and hence market value. Galenson asserts that artists of Cézanne’s generation tended to have late creative peaks, whereas those of Picasso’s tended to peak early.

Galenson conducts a detailed statistical survey of two intensive periods of western art: the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries in France, and the post-war period from the ‘forties to the ‘sixties in the US, with cultural and commercial epicentres in Paris and New York respectively. The essential thesis is quite straightforward, and well made. For Galenson, an artist’s practice can be characterised in one of two general ways — experimental or conceptual. Experimental artists tend to engage with the creative process in an extended war of attrition, an on-going struggle between artist and materials which results in a slow, incremental evolution of style. The exemplar is, again, Cézanne whose painfully careful method and constant repetition of subject matter suggests an oeuvre gravitating towards some distant and unobtainable state of perfection. On the other hand, Picasso, who for Galenson exemplifies the conceptual approach, was prone to rapid stylistic turnover in a career marker by early and significant innovations (often referred to in the literature as ‘protean’).

The pattern is repeated in the US art community after the war, where Abstract Expressionists developed a style that evolved over several decade of gradual change (e.g. Pollock and de Kooning), with an attendant uncertainty about the content and direction of the work. This was followed by the more conceptually driven Pop artists (e.g. Johns, Warhol) who tended to exploit the inherently rapid and immediate processes of print or replication that gave rise to more certain results. Galenson summarises his case thus: "For the experimentalists, innovations usually came slowly and gradually, appearing incrementally in large bodies of work, whereas for the conceptualists, innovations could come quickly and abruptly, often appearing in celebrated individual breakthrough works." (p. 163).

The book provides enough entertaining and well-informed art history, including many specific quotes from artists, dealers, critics and collectors, to sustain the broad argument, despite the many exceptions and overlaps between artists who display both experimental and conceptual tendencies. To this extent, the "Painting Outside the Lines" project has something of value to offer students of art in general, and students of art historical trends in particular.

But the claims made by Galenson about the efficacy of the methods of quantitative analysis in his introduction seem less secure the more one works through the book. Indeed, in several places he betrays a degree of uncertainty about one of its core assertion — the correealtion between artists’ birth-date and their creative output. In concluding the main chapter on French painting he offers two apparently inconsistent sentences in the same paragraph: "Although this chapter has only briefly surveyed the early development of modern painting in Paris, its evidence is sufficient to show that there was no simple, deterministic relationship between an artist’s date of birth and his conception of the nature and goals of art.", while a few sentences on he claims: "Nonetheless, it is clear that there was an association between an artist’s birthdate and his approach to painting . . . " (p.111). This prevarication is at odds with more confident tone of the opening sections.

Given that much of the argument rested on detailed economic research gathered from auction rooms, I was surprised at the omission of two key economic influences that might have contributed to the tendencies Gelenson identifies. First, many nineteenth century artists, like Cézanne, Degas and Corot, enjoyed private incomes which allowed extended periods of experimentation free from the pressures of dealers and salesrooms. Many of the artists that followed, such as Picasso, were impelled by conditions of extreme personal poverty towards rapid innovation, if only to establish a foothold in a market which celebrated innovation and was accustomed to stylistic progress. Second, Galenson touches only lightly on the determining role played by the rapid expansion of the art markets in both turn-of-the-century Paris and post-war New York. In each case the art market booms fuelled new methods and stylistic approaches, spurred on by acquisitive collectors and articulate, ambitious critics. The relationship between style and market expansion would have seemed an ideal subject for Galenson’s quantitative approach.

Finally, there is another interesting psychological dimension to the observation that certain artists peak late in their careers, which can be summarised as ‘success breeds complacency’. It is a phenomenon seen regularly in the music industry, when an individual, or group, achieve great early success they tend to lose the creative edge and hunger that originally drove them to produce good work. By contrast, a lack of formal recognition early in a career spurs certain people to even greater efforts to find success, which sometimes culminates in late recognition. This is a further aspect of this interesting question that Galenson omits to address.

It is difficult to see who could benefit most from "Painting Outside the Lines". The art historical stories and anecdotes are readable and narratively pacey, but widely available elsewhere. The quantitative analysis is, in many respects, selective and open to differing interpretations, and therefore of limited value to the empirical researcher. Perhaps the most valuable contribution is the evidence drawn up in favour of the distinction between the experimental and conceptual approaches, as discussed above. But these labels are less quantitative measures than subjective, qualitative judgements, which by Galenson’s own admission are anything but precise when whole decades of artistic practice are considered.

But despite its deficiencies, Galenson’s attempt to unite the otherwise incompatible disciplines of quantitative analysis and art history in "Painting Outside the Lines" represents an act of intellectual courage, and provides further evidence of the value cross-disciplinary studies.