Co-Authoring Advanced Art

David Galenson

No 13484, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The joint production of paintings by more than one artist was not uncommon in the past: a number of Old Masters had assistants do much of the work on their paintings, executing images that had been planned by the master. Yet prior to the twentieth century very few paintings were actually signed by more than one artist. Early in the twentieth century, many important conceptual artists occasionally co-authored paintings or drawings, but consistent co-authorship of paintings, sculptures, and photographs is a practice that is novel to the late twentieth century. These recent instances have generally involved pairs of conceptual artists. The English team, Gilbert and George, is the most important pair that has consistently produced co-authored works; they have executed all of their work jointly since 1969, when they made Singing Sculpture, their first and most famous piece. A number of pairs of young conceptual artists had worked closely together earlier in the century, but they did not formally co-author their work, perhaps because of the art world's commitment to the ideal of the autonomous artist. Since the critical and economic success of Gilbert and George has demonstrated that this resistance can be overcome, co-authorship has become more common among younger conceptual artists, and this trend is likely to continue in future.

JEL-codes: J01 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul and nep-his
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Co-Authoring Advanced Art , David W. Galenson. in Conceptual Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Art , Galenson. 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13484.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: Co-Authoring Advanced Art (2009)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13484

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w13484

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().