TY  - JOUR
AU  - Galenson,David W.
TI  - The Reappearing Masterpiece: Ranking American Artists and Art Works of the Late Twentieth Century
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9935
PY  - 2003
Y2  - September 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9935
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9935.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 produces the startling finding that art scholars consider Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty to be the most important individual work made by an American artist during the past 150 years.  More generally, quantifying the evidence of the textbooks reveals the source of the  pluralism,' or stylistic incoherence, of American art since the late 1960s. A persistently high demand for artistic innovation has produced a regime in which conceptual approaches have predominated.  The art world has consequently been flooded by a series of new ideas, usually embodied in individual works, generally made by young artists who have failed to make more than one significant contribution in their careers.  The dramatic and monumental Spiral Jetty, made in 1970 by a young artist who was killed soon thereafter while in the process of making his art, has become a symbol for the art of this era.
ER  -