The "Richard Hamilton" Question: What is it that makes art rankings so appealing?
David Galenson, University of Chicago economics professor
Is Richard Hamilton's 1956 Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing? (click and scroll down) the fourth-greatest artwork of the 20th century? Somehow, I doubt even the artist would make that claim.
David Galenson's ranking of the importance of this and other 20th-century landmarks according to how many times they were illustrated in "33 textbooks he found" is so dead-on-arrival that it would be beneath notice, except that Patricia Cohen did notice it in her piece in today's NY Times---A Textbook Example of Ranking Artworks. (The above quote about the "found" textbooks comes from that article.)
Inquiring skeptics want to know:
---What "textbooks" did Galenson choose? (Coffee-table compendiums or works of serious scholarship?)Cohen cites beer-dumping expert Don Thompson as an authority who seconded the notion that illustration-counting is a valid gauge of artistic importance. Charles Gray, co-author of "The Economics of Art and Culture," chimes in with this:
---Where did he "find" them? (In the local middle-school library? In the pile on the floor of his office, above?)
---Must illustrations be in color to be counted?
---Does size matter?
---Does it matter that virtually no serious art critics, art historians or art lovers will take this analysis seriously?
We all want to believe there is something special about the arts, but I don't buy that there is a difference between artistic and economic value.
We can only hope that Gray has read the three-volume compendium with a title very similar to his own---The Economics of Taste by Gerald Reitlinger (published in 1961; republished in 1982). On page 224 of Volume I, Reitlinger bemoans the disparity between artistic and economic value:
On the significance of frequent illustration in text books, he commented that the Galenson Top 10 "seem to be milestones, and that's fair enough." But to call them the greatest or most important works of the 20th century is, Elderfield scoffed, "frankly...preposterous." The Museum of Modern Art's former (as of Friday) chief curator of painting and sculpture then proceeded to anoint his own faves, which were, unsurprisingly, heavily weighted towards MoMA-held examples...
...proving once again that Top 10's, purporting to rank artistic importance or quality, are in the eyes of the beholder. The only mistake is believing that there's got to be an empirical way to sort these things out.
The most depressing symptom of the present era is the upgrading [in price] of journeyman painters. It was due to the plain impossibility for a private individual to obtain works by more inspired masters.For the last word on artist rankings and on any other subject that he chooses to address during his forced retirement, let's go to John Elderfield, as Cohen wisely did.
On the significance of frequent illustration in text books, he commented that the Galenson Top 10 "seem to be milestones, and that's fair enough." But to call them the greatest or most important works of the 20th century is, Elderfield scoffed, "frankly...preposterous." The Museum of Modern Art's former (as of Friday) chief curator of painting and sculpture then proceeded to anoint his own faves, which were, unsurprisingly, heavily weighted towards MoMA-held examples...
...proving once again that Top 10's, purporting to rank artistic importance or quality, are in the eyes of the beholder. The only mistake is believing that there's got to be an empirical way to sort these things out.
August 4, 2008 12:13 PM
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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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________________________
moreLEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.
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