TY  - JOUR
AU  - Galenson,David W.
TI  - Was Jackson Pollock the Greatest Modern American Painter? A Quantitative Investigation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 8830
PY  - 2002
Y2  - March 2002
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8830
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w8830.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
David Galenson
Department of Economics
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-8258
Fax: 773/702-8490
E-Mail: galenson@uchicago.edu
AB  - A survey of the illustrations in textbooks of modern art demonstrates that scholars do consider Jackson Pollock the most important modern American painter, but not by a wide margin over Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol, the leading artists of the following generation. The distribution of the illustrations furthermore reveals a sharp contrast in the careers of the major artists of these two generations: the Abstract Expressionists produced their most important contributions late in their careers, whereas their successors innovated early in theirs. This difference resulted from the differing approaches of the artists, for the Abstract Expressionists were experimental innovators, who developed new visual images by a process of trial and error, while the leading artists of the 1960s were conceptual innovators, whose work embodied new ideas.
ER  -