Quantifying artistic success: ranking French painters--and paintings--from impressionism to Cubism.

Abstract. For 35 leading painters who lived in France during the first century of modern art, this article uses textbook illustrations as the basis for measuring the importance of both painters and individual paintings. The rankings pose an interesting puzzle: Why do some of the greatest artists not produce famous paintings, and why do some relatively minor artists produce some of the most famous individual paintings? The answer may lie in an important difference in approach between experimental and conceptual painters.

Experimental artists work incrementally, their innovations ...

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