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?)
—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?
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:
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.
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.