A conceptual revolution swept through the arts during the late 1950s and early '60s, as radical young innovators changed the subjects, methods, and often the materials of their disciplines. Jack Kerouac published On the Road in 1957. Jean–Luc Godard's Breathless exploded on the film world in 1960; Bob...

In Age and Achievement, the psychologist Harvey Lehman measured the ages at which large numbers of practitioners of scores of different activities made their greatest contributions. For painters, he wrote that the best period — that of the "maximum average rate of highly superior production" — was...

The continuing economic crisis in France has had many effects. One has been to cut museum budgets, and to prompt curators to find inexpensive subjects for exhibitions. This has produced a renewed interest in some of the more esoteric figures from Paris' lost era of advanced modern art. The latest...

In elementary school in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, in the 1960s, Keith Haring wrote a penmanship assignment titled "When I Grow Up":

When I grow up I would like to be an artist in France. The reason is because I like to draw. I would get my money from the pictures I...

When in their careers are artists most creative? Since the publication of Harvey Lehman's Age and Achievement in 1953, psychologists have contended that the answer depends on the artist's domain, or genre. So for example Lehman concluded that "the golden decade for the writing of secular poetry occurs not later...

Growing up in Brooklyn as the son of a Russian immigrant factory worker, Emmanuel Radnitzky stole tubes of paint from a local art supply store, but had no remorse because of the nobility of the cause: "I consider the painting of a picture the acme of human accomplishment." Decades later,...

Kurt Schwitters was one of the most engaging mavericks of the art of the 20th century. His art is invariably grouped with Dada, although personal clashes prevented him from being admitted formally to membership, and by nature he would never be fully committed to any collective movement, even one of...

Pablo Picasso was the quintessential artistic genius of the 20th century. Importance in intellectual disciplines is a function of influence, and Picasso's influence makes him not only the greatest painter of the modern era, but the greatest artist overall, for his innovations spread throughout all the arts. Thus Cubism directly...

Art experts enjoy claiming that markets for fine art have no logic. So for example in 1978 Robert Hughes, of Time magazine, declared that "The price of a work of art is an index of pure, irrational desire." Similarly, in 2006 Sotheby's chief auctioneer, Tobias Meyer, claimed that the market's...

In 2004, the American Film Institute announced its members had voted "Over the Rainbow" the greatest movie song of all time, ahead of "As Time Goes By," "Singin' in the Rain," "Moon River," "White Christmas," and "Mrs. Robinson." "Over the Rainbow" has been recorded by scores of famous...

The psychologists who specialize in the study of creativity are virtually unanimous: the old may be wise, but only the young are creative, and never the twain shall meet. In 1953, Harvey Lehman conceded that "the old usually possess great wisdom and erudition," but he observed that these were accompanied...

Canaletto was not the first or last painter to devote his career to recording the beauty of Venice, but he was the greatest. In 1725, when a collector asked his agent to order two more paintings of the city by Luca Carlevaris, the leading producer of these, the agent rejected...

One of the most widespread and persistent myths about creativity is that it is the domain of the young. So for example in surveying popular attitudes toward aging, the psychologist Dean Simonton observed that "Most conspicuous is the notion that creativity is the prerogative of youth, that aging is synonymous...

The art world is not flat. When I imagine the contour map of a metaphorical art world, there are high walls around some places, and Argentina is one of these. Argentina's artists are not a backward group, unaware of developments elsewhere; the country in fact has a number of highly...

Lucian Freud, (undated photo, courtesy of Getty Images)

In November 2003, the critic Martin Gayford began sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud, which was completed in July 2004. In 2010, Gayford published...

by David Galenson and Clayne Pope

This article is our third on collaboration. The first considered differences between science and art with respect to collaboration; the second surveyed the history of collaboration in art. This article considers the present and future of collaboration in art.

The conceptual art world of the 20th century produced a number of revolutionary movements that exploded like fireworks, then faded equally rapidly. One of the more engaging of these movements is memorialized in an elegant museum in a quiet suburb of Amsterdam.

Introduction by David Galenson


Bill Siemering wrote the original mission statement for National Public Radio, served as the first director of programming for NPR, and invented NPR's first signature program, All Things Considered. But NPR was not his only achievement, for at the age of 70 he founded a...

Bill Siemering has been a key figure in the modern development of public broadcasting. What he calls his life-long love affair with radio began when he was in the first grade, in a two-room country school near Madison, listening to the two daily 20-minute programs of the Wisconsin School of...

Introduction by David Galenson

I met Richard Erdmann and Christine Drew in 2008, when they invited me to speak at a retreat their company, Syfr, ran for school administrators. The theme of the retreat was Creativity, and the discussions ranged widely over ideas drawn from a number of different...