| Quality, not Quantity |
24 March 2003
|
Artist Study Abuses Economic Science
Professor David Galenson has a great deal for which to answer. He has put out a "study" that claims to measure when an artist hits his peak using quantifiable, economic criteria for the assessment. In Life Cycles of Modern Artists, he perpetrates a sin against reason and economics. His tenure should be at risk, but as he teaches at the University of Chicago (which itself has much for which to answer), the winters are punishment enough.
The good professor, for example, suggests that one measure of an artist's greatness can be derived from his sales at auction. The more money pictures from early in a painter's career earn, the more reasonable it is to say he was at his best early on. Another measure is counting the various illustrations that appear in art books -- frequency relates to greatness, to abbreviate the argument.
Professor Galenson's error is that of trying to quantify the qualitative -- the bane of modern business. The more customer service complaints a firm handles is evidence of its success as a pro-customer entity; never mind that the best pro-customer measure is how few complaints there are in the first place.
In Galenson's case, he mistakes the taste of people with disposable income in the millions with objective quality. If anything, one questions the taste of the nouveaux riches who overspend on art. That Canelleto's work is superior to that of the impressionists is a preposition for which one is prepared to kill -- no faulty, faux study of dollar bills and pound notes can pretend otherwise. Shame what passes in the dismal science these days for intellectual success.