Is this Picasso the greatest piece of art of the 20th century. One economist and art researcher believes so.You've got to love the NY Times for its articles on the fine and decorative arts. The NY Times has become a very good source for AW posts. Am I really endorsing reading the NY Times? Well, lets not get off track on newspapers and their news and editorial content, this particular article ran in early August, where an economist, through quantitative methods, ranks fine art of the 20th century by primarily counting the number of times the individual works appear as images in books.
David Galenson, a University of Chicago has quantified what he considers the 100 greatest pieces of 20th century arts by the number of times an image appears in a group of 33 textbooks published between 1990 and 2005. The article states "many of the most important individual works rarely, if ever, come to market, he (Galenson) decided to use art history textbooks to value each piece. He tallied the number of illustrations of each piece in the 33 textbooks he found that were published between 1990 and 2005, on the assumption that the most important works merited the most illustrations.
There is, as would be expected a fair amount of debate on the worthiness of such a quantification. Of course Mr Galenson and his quantitative method of ranking art is not being taken seriously by many of the leading art connoisseurs and many economists as well. Many art experts state that textbooks also run in phases, listing what is currently popular, rendering the research and quantitative analysis somewhat suspect.
The most important 20th century work according to Galenson is “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon,” a 1907 painting by Picasso.
To read the full New York Times article, click HERE. Or for a list of the top 8, click HERE.
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