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

by David W. Galenson

Book Overview

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, C zanne, 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691121095
• ISBN13: 9780691121093
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Finally, a deep understanding of creativity

I'm a painter, and I often have been puzzled by the reactions of other artists to my work. Some critiques seemed on point; others were hard to understand. Old Masters and Young Geniuses has shown me the core reason for these inconsistent reactions - that different people approach art from two completely different mindsets. Whether to plan a lot before starting or to just start and see how things develop? Whether to try for a big, smashing result or to move consistently over time in an incremental way towards a challenging goal? Some successful artists do it one way; other successful artists do it the other way. This book makes that distinction in style and in process clear. It is a big achievement.

Interesting, but only a part of the story

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 so

Very Useful Analysis

I've shared Galenson's inciteful analysis with many friends; some of them artists, some of them dealers or other professionals in the field, some of them, like me, just interested in art. Well-written, clearly organized and thought-provoking, "Old Masters and Young Geniuses" increased my understanding of the creative process and how it differs among artists. Highly recommended.

Clarifying 2 Modes of Artistic Creativity.

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

valuable contribution

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.