Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (Paperback)

by David W. Galenson (Author) "In May 1902, already suffering acutely from the illness that would cause his death the following year, Paul Gauguin wrote from the Marquesas Islands to..." (more)
Key Phrases: advanced art world, experimental innovators, conceptual innovators, New York, Abstract Expressionists, Citizen Kane (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"Can one be both conceptual and experimental? Can artists reinvent themselves". -- David Honigamann, Financial Times

"Haven't written the great American novel or painted your defining masterpiece yet? Maybe you're just a late bloomer". -- Alison apRoberts, The Sacramento Bee

"When people cross disciplines, they can bring insights to old problems. Galenson is an economist with an interest in art". -- Lucy Sussex, Sunday Age --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review
Galenson's idea that creativity can be divided into these types--conceptual and experimental--has a number of important implications.
(Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker )

David Galenson has developed something approaching a unified theory of art . . . [that] does a surprisingly good job of explaining the relative value of the world's great paintings. . . . While Mr. Galenson has been studying the art world over the last five years, all sorts of other fields have been engaged in their own debate about judgment versus rules. . . . When the traditionalists in these fields describe their skepticism of statistics, they sometimes make the argument that their craft is as much art as it is science. That's a nice line, but the next time you hear it, think back to Mr. Galenson's work. Even art, it turns out, has a good bit of science to it.
(David Leonhardt The New York Times )

After a decade of number crunching, Galenson, at the not-so-tender age of 55, has fashioned something audacious and controversial: a unified field theory of creativity. Not bad for a middle-aged guy. What have you done lately?
(Daniel Pink Wired )

An intriguing book.
(The Age )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (November 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691133808
• ISBN-13: 978-0691133805
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #137,282 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but only a part of the story, October 14, 2008

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clarifying 2 Modes of Artistic Creativity., April 5, 2007

By	E. Grun (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (Hardcover)

This book would be of interest to artists and collectors. Enjoy. I couldn't put it down.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars valuable contribution, January 13, 2007

By	Leslie Ann Keller (Weaverville, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity (Hardcover)

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.