Toward Abstraction: Ranking European Painters of the Early Twentieth Century

David Galenson

No 11501, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Paris was the undisputed capital of modern art in the nineteenth century, but during the early twentieth century major innovations began to occur elsewhere in Europe. This paper examines the careers of the artists who led such movements as Italian Futurism, German Expressionism, Holland's De Stijl, and Russia's Suprematism. Quantitative analysis reveals the conceptual basis of the art of Umberto Boccioni, Giorgio de Chirico, Kazimir Malevich, and Edvard Munch, and the experimental basis of the innovations of Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and Piet Mondrian. That the invention of abstract art was made nearly simultaneously by the conceptual Malevich and the experimental Kandinsky and Mondrian emphasizes the importance of both deductive and inductive approaches in the history of modern art.

JEL-codes: J0 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-his
Note: LS
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Published as Galenson, David W. "Toward Abstraction Ranking European Painters of the Early Twentieth Century." Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 39, 3 (Summer 2006): 99-111.

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