5 Myths About Art, Age and Genius
By David W. Galenson
Washington Post
"Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job." So said Andy Warhol, one of the greatest artists of the past century. He zeroed in on a myth that lives on in the art world and academia alike. Dazzled by genius, too many people assume that artists are born with mystical abilities unknowable to the rest of us. In fact, many innovations spring not from their creators' innate talent, but from their years of accumulated knowledge. Keep that in mind when you head to an art museum, settle into your seat at a theater or open a new book. Sometimes what looks like creative genius is just regular old hard work.
1. Only young geniuses produce great innovations.
Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Rimbaud, Orson Welles and Bob Dylan all revolutionized their artistic disciplines before they turned 30. They were archetypal young geniuses. But Paul Cézanne, Mark Twain, William Butler Yeats, Alfred Hitchcock and Irving Berlin made equally important contributions to the same art forms, and they all produced their greatest work at 50 or older.
The differences between these artists' creative life cycles are not accidental. Precocious young geniuses make bold and dramatic innovations -- think of Picasso's cubism -- and their work often expresses their ideas or feelings. Wise old masters, on the other hand, are experimental thinkers who proceed by trial and error. Their work, such as Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," often aims at realistic representations of what the artists see and hear.
So how did the young geniuses upstage the old masters? The word "genius" is derived from the Greek word for birth, and since the Renaissance philosophers and critics have associated creative genius with youth. Mature artists are no less important than budding ones, but the gradual innovations they make over a lifetime are less conspicuous than sudden breakthroughs. The subtle craftsmanship of old age attracts less attention than the pyrotechnic iconoclasm of youth.
2. All great innovators produce timeless masterpieces.
Because young geniuses tend to be conceptual thinkers, they often create iconic individual works. Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," which he painted at 26, appears in more than 90 percent of art history textbooks published in the past 30 years. Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte," which he finished at 27, appears in more than 70 percent.
(Continued here.)
Washington Post
"Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job." So said Andy Warhol, one of the greatest artists of the past century. He zeroed in on a myth that lives on in the art world and academia alike. Dazzled by genius, too many people assume that artists are born with mystical abilities unknowable to the rest of us. In fact, many innovations spring not from their creators' innate talent, but from their years of accumulated knowledge. Keep that in mind when you head to an art museum, settle into your seat at a theater or open a new book. Sometimes what looks like creative genius is just regular old hard work.
1. Only young geniuses produce great innovations.
Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Rimbaud, Orson Welles and Bob Dylan all revolutionized their artistic disciplines before they turned 30. They were archetypal young geniuses. But Paul Cézanne, Mark Twain, William Butler Yeats, Alfred Hitchcock and Irving Berlin made equally important contributions to the same art forms, and they all produced their greatest work at 50 or older.
The differences between these artists' creative life cycles are not accidental. Precocious young geniuses make bold and dramatic innovations -- think of Picasso's cubism -- and their work often expresses their ideas or feelings. Wise old masters, on the other hand, are experimental thinkers who proceed by trial and error. Their work, such as Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," often aims at realistic representations of what the artists see and hear.
So how did the young geniuses upstage the old masters? The word "genius" is derived from the Greek word for birth, and since the Renaissance philosophers and critics have associated creative genius with youth. Mature artists are no less important than budding ones, but the gradual innovations they make over a lifetime are less conspicuous than sudden breakthroughs. The subtle craftsmanship of old age attracts less attention than the pyrotechnic iconoclasm of youth.
2. All great innovators produce timeless masterpieces.
Because young geniuses tend to be conceptual thinkers, they often create iconic individual works. Picasso's "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon," which he painted at 26, appears in more than 90 percent of art history textbooks published in the past 30 years. Georges Seurat's "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of la Grande Jatte," which he finished at 27, appears in more than 70 percent.
(Continued here.)
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