HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I am currently reading "Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity" [0].

The author starts with the observation that in the world of fine art, it seems that the artists who encountered great success are divided into 2 broad groups: the ones who had a clear vision (often groundbreaking) of what they wanted to accomplish, did it while they were young, peaking early (Young Geniuses); and the ones whose approach was more iterative, built upon theory and learning, who never stopped improving over their lifetime, and whose vision was established over decades (Old Masters).

To support this thesis, he looks at concrete data: for example, for the artists whose paintings sold for the most money, at what age did they paint the works which would later sell for the most? Or, to use an alternative method of approximating "success" - for the works that are most often included in art textbooks, at what age were they painted by their authors? [1] He goes over several measures of "success" in this way, and the data maps pretty well with the commonly accepted wisdom for each artist (e.g. Picasso peaked early, and his later works are nowhere as remembered as his earlier stuff, while Cézanne took a lifetime to build his approach and vision).

He then looks into what those artists had to say about their processes, and how that relates to those findings; and he then explores this thesis beyond just the world of fine art.

It's a fairly dense read - especially if, like me, you have very little knowledge of fine art (in which case I recommend looking up the works as you read the book, even if it doubles your reading time) - but it's extremely enlightening. Highly recommended.

[0] http://www.amazon.com/Old-Masters-Young-Geniuses-Creativity/...

[1] http://i.imgur.com/YmexHi8.jpg

⬐ zb

Another perspective on the author's previous work: http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0...

⬐ FranOntanaya

There's probably no big mystery behind this. For most folks the 30's would be when their number of dependent offspring capable of bipedal motion peaked.

⬐ louhike

As a non-native english speaker, I am not sure I get it. Do you mean they do less things in their 30's because they have children to take care of?

⬐ Rinum

Yes, that's what he means

"Neal Stephenson really matures between Snow Crash and Diamond Age. I read snow crash after some of his later stuff and it's almost hard to believe it's the same author."

This happens with more writers (and other artists) than many people think. I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón's The Shadow of the Wind and The Angel's Game and loved both: they're incredibly rich and detailed yet driven by plot; they have the action that a lot of unsophisticated readers crave and content that can still satisfy someone who's read 10,000 novels. Oh, and it made me laugh out loud.

U.S. publishers are now releasing his young adult novels. Two so far, two more to come. And they're terrible. Almost unreadable bad. No plot, cardboard characters, wild improbability poorly embedded in a paranormal universe. You can see flashes of his later skill, but his early stuff is lousy.

I said this in another comment, but I'll say it again here: I just started reading David W. Galenson's Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691133808/sr=8-1/qid=13150...), which is where Malcolm Gladwell stole / sourced his New Yorker article "Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity?" (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...). Galenson says that there are two basic modes for artists to follow: the experimentalists who try many things over long periods of time and eventually reach fullness, and the "conceptual innovators" whose sudden insight into a field fuels their work, which is often done at a young age. Under your reading, Stephenson would be the "experimentalist."

Anyway, these lists always raise the question of what does "good" mean exactly? Inevitably they're dominated by books that were, in their time, incredibly significant.

I just started reading David W. Galenson's Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity, (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691133808/sr=8-1/qid=13150...), which is where Malcolm Gladwell stole / sourced his New Yorker article "Late Bloomers - Why do we equate genius with precocity?" (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_...). Galenson says:

There are many common misunderstandings of the history of art, but perhaps none is more basic than the confusion over what determines the quality of art. Although it is of course possible to consider separately the quality of a number of different attributes of an artist's work, the overall importance of art is a function of innovation. Important artists are innovators whose work changes the practices of their successors; important works of art are those that embody these innovations. Artists have made innovations in many areas, including subject matter, composition, scale, materials, and technique. But whatever the nature of an artist's innovation, its importance ultimately depends on the extent of its influence on other artists.

It should immediately be noted that the importance at issue here is not the short run-interest that gains an artist immediate critical or commercial success, but the long-run importance that eventually causes his work to hang in major museums and makes his contribution the subject of study by scholars of art. These two types of success have often coincided, but in many cases they have not. {Galenson "Masters"@2}

There are many possible values a work of art can have, of course, and Galenson is only making clear the set he most plans to consider in his work. Nonetheless, I find his argument intriguing, and I also wonder how many of the works listed in the OP contain some major innovation or innovations then used by other science fiction writers.

On a totally unrelated note, it'd be nice to have HN hyperlinks so one doesn't have to put URLs in parentheses.

⬐ radu_floricica

> On a totally unrelated note, it'd be nice to have HN hyperlinks so one doesn't have to put URLs in parentheses.

And if it did, it't be nice if the syntax would be putting the url in parentheses.