David W. Galenson, Painting Outside the Lines: Patterns of Creativity in Modern Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. xvi + 251 pp. $29.95 (cloth), IBSN: 0-674-00612-7.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Richard Agnello, Department of Economics, University of Delaware.

"I progress very slowly, for nature reveals herself to me in very complex ways; and the progress needed is endless (Paul Cezanne). ... I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them (Pablo Picasso) (p. 51)."

David W. Galenson (Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago) has written a marvelous book, which explores the effects of the two distinct views of human creativity expressed in these quotes. This exploration provides delightful reading as well as a careful academic exercise, which will appeal to students of both art history and economics. It is rare that a single work should ratify assessments in two distinct disciplines, and thus bridge the wide differences in approach and techniques between two fields. Art history assesses the merit of painters and their works by evaluating their innovation and impact on later artists, whereas economics usually measures merit by market prices. Galenson demonstrates a convergence in these two valuations across over one hundred years of modern painting from the French Impressionists of the late nineteenth century to the post Abstract American Expressionists of the late twentieth century.

In addition, the book sheds light on the determinants of changes in artistic creativity over the stages of an artist's career. Why do some artists produce their best works while young like Picasso, while others like Cezanne continue to improve and refine their styles through their lifetimes? Although the career age/earnings profiles derived for modern painters have some degree of individual uniqueness, there is strong correlation within the various generations of art styles over the period. Galenson finds systematic shifts in the age/earnings profile for the four birth cohorts of artists in the study. Thus, twice during the last one hundred years of modern art the age at which an artist produced his best work has gone from older to younger peaks. Measuring, hypothesizing the causes, and documenting in detail the shifts in labor productivity for the most famous modern era artists comprise the bulk of the book.

In order to provide an economic measure of artistic creativity Galenson uses price data for paintings sold at auction from 1970 to 1997. Art is a particularly appealing application of productivity analysis because output valuation data are readily available in the form of painting prices generated by public auction. Hedonic regressions are estimated for each artist using log price as the dependent variable and various characteristics from the auction and the painting itself as independent variables. One of these characteristic variables is the artist's age when the painting was executed. Using a nonlinear specification for age, the regression is able to capture a variety of average estimated relationships between age and value for the artists included in the study. These estimated relationships document what the market indicates are the time periods in which a particular artist was most creative. Although one can criticize various details of the data and econometric technique, these findings flow from standard statistical analysis.

Whether these auction-market-generated age/value results are meaningful and not just a statistical artifact or a manifestation of the current whims of wealthy collectors depends on how they compare with the assessment of scholars. Galenson proceeds to weave an art historical web around the empirical findings by counting citations for each painting as a measure of the artistic value of the work. In particular he uses the number of illustrations from thirty-three textbooks published since 1968 for the French Impressionists, and the frequency of retrospective exhibitions for American artists. Although not without difficulty these measures do reflect to a certain degree implicit valuations by scholarly writers and museum curators. Perhaps this crude but reasonable initial attempt by Galenson to empirically measure artistic merit will encourage more research. The numbers of these citations for paintings executed in each five-year period of an artist's life represent the value of an artist's career stages based on scholarly assessment. The relationship between these citations and the collector values generated from market auctions are remarkably similar for the various stages of each artist's career. For over ninety percent of the French artists included, collector valuation and scholar valuation agree on the most important decade of the artist's career. For the exceptions such as Matisse, Galenson carefully details potential causes. For American artists the findings show a similar convergence of values. Thus, for whatever reason, the opinions of art experts and the outcomes of art auctions are in agreement as to when modern painters produced their most important work. The results are a victory for both art historians and art economists. Each group has the support of the other. Relative economic valuations appear not to be a "floating crap game," but instead to be clearly grounded in the scholarship of art history (see William J. Baumol, "Unnatural Value: or Art as Floating Crap Game" American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, 1986).

Galenson next tackles the questions of what makes modern art important and why artists do their best work at different stages in their careers. This fascinating discussion will certainly appeal to art historians, but should also interest many others since the parallels with other fields are numerous. Academics, especially those interested in labor economics, will definitely find the discussion of peer review, short and long run success, and effects of changing market structures on career time paths interesting and one that may stimulate additional research. The main contributors to artistic value are innovation and the impact one's work has on other artists. Thus, the question why particular artists have produced their most valuable work at different ages can be restated as why have they innovated and impacted their profession at different career stages. Galenson argues that the timing of an artist's major career contributions depends critically on the methods by which innovations are produced. The procedures and also the motivations for undertaking the work determine the pattern of innovation. Experimental innovators, like the late French Impressionists, tended to refine their work continually by trial and error and thus achieve their most important contributions late in life. Conceptual innovators, like the cubists, made quick breakthroughs that revolutionized both the way art was executed and the way it was interpreted. These artists tended to produce their best work at an early age. These fundamentally opposed approaches to art account quite well for differences in the age/value profiles. In addition, the approach used tends to be generation-specific causing an oscillation in these approaches through time with young artists going in diametrically different paths from the previous older generation.

The rest of the book is devoted to a careful documentation of the individual careers of modern artists, their styles, and the environments in which they produced their work. The details are fascinating, and too numerous to describe at length. Galenson's treatment displays a depth of knowledge uncharacteristic for those writing outside their primary field. Serious students of art history as well as novices should find his thorough treatment both impressive and interesting. Parallels with other academic disciplines abound. In summary, the book is not only worth reading by anyone interested in art, but mandatory for art historians and art economists. The findings and especially the scientific methodologies employed should also encourage further work in an effort to test the robustness and replicability of the results. Other epochs of art should be examined as well as other time periods of economic valuation. The upsurge in art prices in the last thirty years has changed both absolute and relative valuations, and may also have changed career age/value profiles. Future price movements may alter these profiles. Painting Outside the Lines will impact and perhaps bring closer art historical and economic research in the future, and thus provide a shining example of innovation.

Richard Agnello is author of several papers in art economics including "Financial Returns, Price Determinants, and Genre Effects in American Art Investment" (with R. Pierce), Journal of Cultural Economics (1996), pp. 359-383, and "Investment Returns and Risk for Art: Evidence from Auctions of American Paintings," Eastern Economic Journal (forthcoming).