An Economist’s View on Art
Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
This week an interesting article appeared in the New York Times.
David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, reduced the ranking of “influence” of an artwork into a simple formula: the frequency the piece appears in art history textbooks. He believes that there is nothing particularly special about the arts, he “[doesn't] buy that there is a difference between artistic and economic value.” By his theory, he ranks Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” as number one because it appears 28 times in art history books. Number two goes to The Monument to the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin with 25 appearences (what, you don’t know who that is?), and number three is the Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson (23 appearances in art history textbooks).