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Loading... Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativityby David W. Galenson
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Galenson, an economist with the University of Chicago and the NBER, analyzes the creative lifecycles of artists and develops a thesis correlating an artist’s age and with their creative style.. He concludes that there are two types of creative artists, experimental innovators (old masters) and conceptual innovators (young geniuses). In the book he quantifies the two types and makes arguments as to why they are valid, describing the characteristics of each type, and addressing criticisms of his argument. His research focuses on modern artists, but he expands it to other genres of painting, sculpture, film, literature, though, oddly, not music. It’s primarily a social science / economic work. I don’t agree completely with his arguments and conclusions, but there is a lot of insight into the creative process of artists in general and specifically the modern artists. In fact, I learned a lot about the modern art movement and the book was worth reading solely because of that. I also find myself using his framework whenever I see a film, painting, or read a book now. While it is written for a popular audience, it can be a little dry since it’s academic-based, though I found the reading flowed well. It will be a bit denser than books like Freakonomics or Gladwell’s books, and is more focused than those works, but it can offer general insights much like they do. If you like economics /social science or are someone into art, I recommend this book. If you’re looking for another Freakonomics, Blink, The Tipping Point, etc, this might bore you. (  )rlwillis | May 31, 2009 |   0.021 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0691121095, Hardcover)When in their lives do great artists produce their greatest art? Do they strive for creative perfection throughout decades of painstaking and frustrating experimentation, or do they achieve it confidently and decisively, through meticulous planning that yields masterpieces early in their lives? By examining the careers not only of great painters but also of important sculptors, poets, novelists, and movie directors, Old Masters and Young Geniuses offers a profound new understanding of artistic creativity. Using a wide range of evidence, David Galenson demonstrates that there are two fundamentally different approaches to innovation, and that each is associated with a distinct pattern of discovery over a lifetime. Experimental innovators work by trial and error, and arrive at their major contributions gradually, late in life. In contrast, conceptual innovators make sudden breakthroughs by formulating new ideas, usually at an early age. Galenson shows why such artists as Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, Robert Frost, and Alfred Hitchcock were experimental old masters, and why Vermeer, van Gogh, Picasso, Herman Melville, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and Orson Welles were conceptual young geniuses. He also explains how this changes our understanding of art and its past. Experimental innovators seek, and conceptual innovators find. By illuminating the differences between them, this pioneering book provides vivid new insights into the mysterious processes of human creativity. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:24 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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