One-Hit Wonders
Why Some of the Most Important Work of Modern Art are not by Important Artists
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11253166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David W Galenson (National Bureau of Economic Research, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 101-117 |
| Publication date | 2005-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Historical Methods A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0161-5440 • E-ISSN: 1940-1906 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.3200/hmts.38.3.101-117 |
| OpenAlex | W4240297673 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
How can minor artists produce major works of art? The author considers 13 modern visual artists, each of whom produced a single masterpiece that dominates the artist's career. The artists include painters, sculptors, and architects, and their masterpieces include works as prominent as the painting American Gothic, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. In each case, these isolated achievements were the products of innovative ideas that the artists formulated early in their careers and fully embodied in individual works. The phenomenon of the artistic one-hit wonder highlights the nature of conceptual innovation, in which radical new approaches based on new ideas are introduced suddenly by young practitioners
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Humanities · Minor (academic · Painting · Phenomenon · Visual arts · Wonder · Work (physics · Art, Technology, and Culture · Artistic and Creative Research · Creativity in Education and Neuroscience · Engineering · Philosophy · Mechanical Engineering
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |