Overview
At what stage of their careers do great artists produce their most important work? In a series of studies that bring new insights and new dimensions to the study of artistic creativity, Galenson’s new book examines the careers of more than one hundred modern painters, poets and novelists to reveal a powerful relationship between age and artistic creativity.
Analyzing the careers of major literary and artistic figures, such as Cézanne, van Gogh, Dickens, Hemingway and Plath, Galenson highlights the different methods by which artists have made innovations.
Pointing to a new and richer history of the modern arts, this book is of interest, not only to humanists and social scientists, but to anyone interested in the nature of human creativity in general.
Synopsis
At what stage of their careers do great artists produce their most important work? In a series of studies that bring new insights, and new dimensions, to the study of artistic creativity, Artistic Capital examines the careers of more than 100 modern painters, poets, and novelists to reveal a powerful relationship between age and artistic creativity.
David Galenson's analysis of the careers of such major painters as Cézanne , van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, and Warhol, such important novelists as Dickens, Woolf, Joyce, and Hemingway, and such key poets as Frost, Eliot, Lowell, and Plath reveals the very different methods by which artists have made innovations. Remarkably, each method is associated with a distinctive pattern of discovery over the life cycle. The book's use of simple but powerful quantitative analysis permits systematic generalization about large numbers of artists.
Pointing to a new and richer history of the modern arts, Artistic Capital will be of interest not only to humanists and social scientists, but to anyone interested in the nature of human creativity in general.