Creative Genius in Literature, Music, and the Visual Arts
Dean Keith Simonton, University of California, Davis, USA
Abstract
This chapter examines creative genius in the three most prominent domains of artistic achievement: literature, music, and the visual arts. Treatment begins with the definition of artistic genius in terms of achieved eminence, with special attention to the measurement issues (i.e. magnitude of consensus and degree of temporal stability). From there discussion turns to the personal attributes of eminent artistic creators in the three domains, with an emphasis on how writers, composers, and artists differ from each other as well as from eminent scientific creators. The next issue concerns the developmental factors involved in the emergence and manifestation of artistic genius. These factors include both early developmental antecedents and adulthood career trajectories (especially the location of career peaks). The final topic pertains to the sociocultural contexts underlying outstanding artistic achievement. These contexts include both internal factors, such as artistic styles, as well as external factors, such as the political and economic milieu.
Keywords
Genius; Eminence; Achievement; Creativity; Literature; Music; Visual arts; Cognitive abilities; Personality traits; Developmental antecedents; Career Trajectories; Social contexts
JEL Classification Codes
D03; Z00; Z10; Z13
2.1 Introduction
What do Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo have in common? Clearly, they all can be considered geniuses. Yet what do they share that they do not share with other geniuses, such as Napoleon or Lenin? Certainly, the first three are creative geniuses rather than military or political geniuses. Moreover, we must get even more specific if we wish to distinguish Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo from, say, Newton or Darwin, for the triad represents creative genius in the arts rather than in the sciences. Shakespeare, Beethoven, and Michelangelo are exemplars of artistic genius. Each demonstrated genius-level creativity in either literature, music, or the visual arts. However, what does genius signify?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant offered a provocative definition in his 1790 Critique of Judgement. According to him, ‘Genius is the talent … for producing that for which no definite rule can be given’.1 As the products of genius follow no definite rules, ‘originality must be its primary quality’. Yet Kant was quick to notice that because ‘there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e. be exemplary’. Such exemplary products can be referred to as artistic masterworks. Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, and Michelangelo’s Pietà prove exemplars of excellence in their respective artistic domains. Interestingly, Kant argued that genius could only appear in the arts, not in the sciences. ‘Fine art is the art of genius’. The reason is that science does have rules to guide creativity – what we might now call the ‘scientific method’. The philosopher even denied Newton genius status. Although Kant’s stance may be debatable, there is no doubt that artistic and scientific creativity do not operate in the exact same manner.2 In some crucial respects, Newton’s Principia Mathematica has a different standing than the masterpieces of the artistic trio. Most obviously, a scientific work is held to strict standards of logic and fact that have no counterparts in an artistic work.
It is my goal in this chapter to review the empirical research on creative genius in the arts. This review will be as broad as the research permits, covering all of the major arts, including literature, music, and the visual arts, in the latter case even encompassing cinema – the ‘seventh art’.3 At the same time, I will spend rather less attention on the theoretical speculations bearing upon this subject. That deliberate neglect reflects the fact that many empirical phenomena have multiple theoretical interpretations, whether economic, sociological, psychological – or even biological. What can be said with certainty is that any comprehensive account of artistic genius in its many forms will have to confront the empirical findings reported in this chapter. Cultural economists may be able to explicate all of the key results in economic terms or they may have to rely at least in part on the theoretical concepts incorporated from kindred sciences. The exact outcome is for future theoretical research to decide.
I begin by discussing achieved eminence – the most commonly used definition of genius, creative or otherwise.4 That accomplished, we can turn to the three sets of factors linked with achieved eminence (Section 2.2) in an artistic domain. These are individual attributes (Section 2.3), lifespan development (Section 2.4), and social processes (Section 2.5).
2.2 Achieved Eminence
Francis Galton (1869) was the first investigator to associate genius with achieved eminence. Genius was taken as ‘those qualities of intellect and disposition, which urge and qualify a man to perform acts that lead to reputation’ where the reputation is that ‘of a leader of opinion, of an originator, of a man to whom the world deliberately acknowledges itself largely indebted’.5 In short, the genius has made contributions that survive Hume’s classic ‘test of time’. In line with this conception, Galton introduced the practice of assessing genius in terms of posthumous reputation, especially as gauged by representation in standard reference works, such as biographical dictionaries, histories, and encyclopedias. Naturally, the methods for implementing these procedures have become far more sophisticated over the past century or so.6 Typically, assessments are based on multiple sources and then combined to form a composite measure that transcends the idiosyncrasies of any particular indicator. For example, the differential eminence of 121 classical composers was gauged using six different indicators7 and that of 772 Western artists was assessed via 27 different indicators.8 On occasion, such multiple source composite measures can be based on virtually every available reference work.9
To illustrate, Murray (2003) has determined the differential achieved eminence of the creative geniuses who highlight the principal forms of art in the most significant world civilizations. Here are the top five geniuses in rank order (the total number of ‘significant figures’10 in each category given in parentheses):
• Western music – Beethoven, Mozart, J. S. Bach, Wagner, and Handel (N = 523).
• Chinese painting – Zhao Mengfu, Gu Kaizhi, Wu Daozi, Dong Qichang, and Ma Yuan (N = 111).
• Japanese art – Sesshu, Sotatsu, Korin, Eitoku, and Tohaku (N = 81).
• Western art – Michelangelo, Picasso, Raphael, Leonardo, and Titian (N = 479).
• Arabic literature – al-Mutanabbi, Abu Nuwas, al-Ma’arri, Imru’al-Qays, and Abu Tammam (N = 82).
• Chinese literature – Du Fu, Li Bo, Bo Juyi, Su Dungpo, and Han Yu (N = 83).
• Indian literature – Kalidasa, Vyasa, Valmiki, Asvaghosa, and Bhartrhari (N = 43).
• Japanese literature – Basho, Chikamatsu, Murasaki, Saikaku, and Ogai (N = 85).
• Western literature – Shakespeare, Goethe, Dante, Virgil, and Homer (N = 835).
Presumably, those figures that made the sample but received lower eminence ratings have lesser claim to the designation of creative genius in their respective art. For example, among the less distinguished contributors of Western literature are Jens Baggesen, William Bryant, Johann Heinse, Jorge de Lima, Laszlo Nemeth, and Geoffroy de Villehardouin. Yet even these more obscure figures belong to an elite selection of 835 significant figures out of a parent population of 1918 writers (Murray, 2003). Hence, more than half of the initial pool consists of literary creators less eminent than Baggesen and his colleagues.
The foregoing assessments were based exclusively on the amount of space devoted to each figure in the archival sources. Yet, for some artistic domains, a different kind of measure of differential eminence can be included. For instance, classical composers can be distinguished according to how frequently their works are performed or recorded.11 Sometimes, too, experts in a given field are surveyed, asking them to provide assessments of relative merit, distinguishing the great from the also-rans.12
Whatever the specific measurement approach, researchers have identified three core findings about the resulting measures: evaluative consensus, temporal stability, and skewed distributions.
2.2.1 Evaluative Consensus
Although it is often said that ‘there’s no accounting for taste’ and that ‘one person’s meat is another person’s poison’, it is clear that alternative assessments of artistic eminence exhibit an impressive agreement. To return to Murray’s (2003) measures, for example, when he used reliability coefficients13 to assess the consensus, he obtained the following values: Western music 0.97, Chinese painting 0.91, Japanese art 0.93, Western art 0.95, Arabic literature 0.88, Chinese literature 0.89, Indian literature 0.91, Japanese literature 0.86, and Western literature 0.95. These statistics compare not only quite favorably with the best measures in the behavioral sciences (e.g. intelligence tests), but these coefficients are calculated for elite samples in which the variance in eminence would be heavily truncated and thus the reliabilities radically attenuated.14 Admittedly, somewhat lower reliability coefficients will obtain when the separate eminence measures are much more heterogeneous (e.g. space measures vis-à-vis expert evaluations). Yet, even then, the consensus will be strong. Most notably, latent-variable models indicate the presence of a single cohesive factor underlying all alternative indicators, a factor that has been referred to as ‘Galton’s G’15 (after an analogy to ‘Spearman’s g’, which represents the general intelligence factor).16 Residual factors (or rather correlations among the error terms for the indicator variables) represent nothing more than ‘difficulty factors’ (e.g. measures with highly skewed distributions will correlate more highly with each other than they will with measures with more normal distributions). These correlated residuals be what they may, Galton’s G explains most of the variance in any set of heterogeneous eminence assessments.
Two other features of this evaluative consensus also deserve mention. (i) The agreement is truly cross-national and even cross-cultural.17 The evaluation does not have to be based on German or Austrian sources for Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven to be placed among the top 10 composers (if not in the top three). (ii) The agreement applies equally well to the assessment of single artworks (Hamlet, the Pietà) and not just to the artistic geniuses who created them. For example, the reliability coefficient for 19 highly heterogeneous evaluations of 37 Shakespeare plays was 0.8818 and the coefficient for 27 assessments of 154 Shakespeare sonnets was 0.89.19 To show that this product-level consensus extends beyond the work of a single creator, the differential merit of 911 operas assessed by 35 diverse measures was 0.86.20 Comparable consensus applies to thousands of feature films evaluated by both critical evaluations and best-picture awards.21 Five critical evaluations have a reliability as high as 0.91,22 while seven best-picture awards have a reliability as high as 0.87.23 In addition, just as a single latent variable underlies varied assessments of creator eminence, so a single-factor solution similarly applies to varied assessments of product merit.24
The above two features are of course connected. Insofar as an artist’s reputation is predicated on the merit of his or her creative work, then the consensus regarding the creator must be partially contingent on the consensus on the products.25
2.2.2 Temporal Stability
To be sure, one could argue ‘fame is fickle’ and therefore suspect that any evaluative consensus is only transient – a mere repercussion of fashions and fads. Eventually, the consensus will fade as the new replaces the old and centuries-old creators will be subjected to re-evaluations, the great becoming small and the small great. Yet the empirical data simply do not endorse this cynical view. To a very large degree, we can say that creative geniuses of the highest order ‘survive the test of time’.
In the first place, several empirical studies have demonstrated that temporal stability of reputation assessments can endure for decades, even centuries.26 Perhaps the most striking example is a recent demonstration that the relative merits of Italian and Flemish Renaissance artists endured across the centuries with relatively minor fluctuations.27 Undoubtedly, just as Michelangelo remains always at or near the top of the pecking order, so will Pablo Picasso’s status in twentieth-century art similarly survive in the eyes of posterity.28
Second, even when latent-variable models are fit to eminence measures spread over time a single-factor solution still obtains.29 This statistical outcome stands in contrast to the alternative hypothesis that consecutive evaluations – such as the judgments of successive generations – might be explained in terms of a first- or second-order autoregressive scheme.30 Rather than each generation of critics or historians simply ‘borrowing’ their opinions from the previous generation of critics or historians (with some ‘random shock’ added), it instead appears that each generation is largely engaged in making an independent assessment of the lifework of those artistic geniuses.31 Any inter-generational influence is reduced to occasional and minor correlations among the residuals for successive indicators that are contiguous in time. Once more, the timeless Galton’s G dominates the data.
Third, and in line with the previous assertion, creative products display a similar degree of transhistorical stability.32 What is deemed a masterwork in the past will most likely be considered a masterpiece in the future (assuming the work survives intact without either deterioration or modification). As an example, one investigation scrutinized the short- and long-term fate of 496 operas created by 55 composers, where the operas were produced over a period spanning from 1607 to 1938.33 The opera’s initial reception by contemporaries was shown to correlate very highly with how well received the same operas are in the later part of the twentieth century. If the aesthetic judgment of single products is highly stable, then so must be the evaluation of the individuals who created those products.
Nevertheless, the expected temporal stability may sometimes display lapses in specific cases. In the previously mentioned study, there were occasional periods in the history of opera where the tastes of audiences who saw the work’s debut did not predict how well the opera would be perceived by posterity (Simonton, 1998b). In particular, operas composed in the 1860s and 1870s, when the operatic form was undergoing substantial changes, appear to enjoy no then-versus-now agreement. Indeed, the opera with the biggest error of prediction was Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, perhaps the most revolutionary operatic product in opera’s history, which was premiered in 1865. Occasionally, products and their creators are ahead of their time – but only occasionally.
2.2.3 Skewed Distributions
Psychologists are accustomed to view most individual differences as being normally distributed in the population – the famed ‘bell-shaped’ or Gaussian curve. For instance, Galton (1869) maintained that genius was just found on the upper tail of the normal curve. Yet this conclusion cannot hold if we choose to define genius in terms of eminence or posthumous reputation. That conclusion is invalid because the distribution of the latter attribute is described by a distribution with a positive skew so pronounced that we cannot even speak of the lower tail of the distribution. The distribution only has an upper tail and one that is stretched out to an unusual degree. Martindale (1995) illustrates this reality in the case of 602 British poets about whom scholars have written 34 516 books. Of these, 9118 books concern Shakespeare, 1280 Milton, and 1096 Chaucer. The top 25 poets then attract the attention of almost two-thirds of the books and the top 12 earn the efforts of almost exactly half. That does not leave that many books for the poets at the bottom of the distribution.
Of course, economists are no strangers to skewed cross-sectional distributions, at least not since the advent of the Pareto Law for the income distribution. Even so, as Martindale (1995) pointed out, the distribution is far more skewed for eminence; he put it this way in his article’s title: ‘fame more fickle than fortune’. The distribution is also far more positively skewed than the similarly skewed distribution for the lifetime output of creative products. In essence, posterity begins with the latter distribution and then exaggerates the upper tail while collapsing together the creators at the lower end of the distribution. The 9118 books about Shakespeare are well out of proportion to the 37 plays, 154 sonnets, and a few large poems credited to the same literary genius. In all probability, that differential can be attributed to his artistry being not only original, but also astoundingly exemplary.
Significantly, the same right skew is found in the distribution of artistic merit of individual creative products.34 The performance frequencies of Shakespeare’s plays, for instance, show a positively skewed distribution, with Hamlet way out on the upper tail and the three plays of the Henry VI trilogy clumped together at the bottom.35 The skew is even more pronounced when the measure of product merit is defined by awards and prizes – a fact that is perhaps most prominent in the case of feature films, only a small proportion of which will rake in the major best-picture awards.36
The extremely skewed distribution often introduces methodological problems. To begin with, if we wish to understand how artistic genius corresponds to individual attributes and developmental factors, we must recognize that much of the variance at the top of the distribution may not correspond to anything at the individual level. That Shakespeare had 86% more books written about him than Milton does not mean that his intelligence quotient (IQ) was 86% higher or that he initially accumulated 86% more human capital. Indeed, all of those book credits were acquired after Shakespeare was long dead and thus could not do anything to increase his fame. In this sense, we are dealing with a phenomenon more akin to the very slack relation between stardom and talent discussed by economists.37 The phenomenon also is linked with the sociological phenomenon of accumulative advantage, which can accrue independent of personal deserving.38 Another difficulty is that when standard statistical techniques are applied to such skewed distributions, sizeable outliers usually appear that exert an inordinate impact on the parameter estimates (e.g. correlation or regression coefficients). It is for this reason that eminence measures are often subjected to a logarithmic transformation to bring the cases at the upper end of the distribution more in line with the rest.
Alternatively, researchers may use a different criterion measure, such as lifetime productivity, that can be assumed to agree more closely with the individual creator’s actual talent.39 Although there is no limit to the number of books that can be written about Shakespeare, his own writing has totally ceased! Even so, because total output also exhibits a highly skewed distribution, this alternative measure should still undergo a logarithmic transformation. The only difference is that because the skew is far less prominent than holds for eminence measures, a log-transformed index of lifetime productivity comes closer to displaying a normal distribution with a less drastic upper tail.
2.3 Individual Attributes
A large number of investigations have examined the individual characteristics of artistic geniuses, most often in conjunction with geniuses in other domains, such as science and sometimes even various domains of leadership.40 These attributes may be grouped into two categories: cognitive abilities and personality traits.
2.3.1 Cognitive Abilities
An obvious cognitive ability is general intelligence, or what is commonly referred to as the IQ. Almost from the outset of historiometric research on genius, researchers have devised means to gauge general intelligence from archival data.41 One investigation, in particular, used historiometric methods to estimate IQ scores for 301 geniuses in modern Western civilization.42 As expected, not only are historic geniuses more intelligent than average, with a mean around 150, but intelligence is positively correlated with eminence.43 Nonetheless, the expected IQ was contingent on the specific domain in which eminence is attained.44 Most strikingly, although great imaginative writers (novelists, dramatists, and poets) had IQs somewhat above average, the classical composers and the visual artists (painters, sculptors, and architects) were somewhat below average, as geniuses go, that is.45 Apparently, the analytical skills captured by this intelligence measure are not as useful for non-literary artistic geniuses.
Closely related to the foregoing issue is creative versatility: the capacity of the genius to make notable contributions to more than one domain.46 Among artistic geniuses, da Vinci and Goethe offer conspicuous illustrations. Not only is versatility positively correlated with both general intelligence and eminence,47 but also the expected magnitude of versatility tends to vary according to the domain of eminent achievement.48 For the artistic geniuses in Cox’s (1926) study, the greatest versatility was exhibited by the literary creators, both fiction and non-fiction, whereas the lowest versatility was displayed by the visual artists and, especially, the classical composers.49 Mozart and Beethoven may count among the all-time greats of classical music, but neither of them was as versatile as Goethe, who was born before Mozart and died after Beethoven.
2.3.2 Dispositional Traits
Researchers have also examined various personality traits.50 Some of these traits are generic rather than domain-specific. That is, all geniuses, artistic or not, display the characteristic. The most critical is motivational. Achieved eminence requires ‘persistence’, ‘tenacity of purpose’, ‘perseverance in the face of obstacles’, ‘ambition’, and the ‘desire to excel’.51 Indeed, ‘high but not the highest intelligence, combined with the greatest degree of persistence, will achieve greater eminence than the highest degree of intelligence with somewhat less persistence’.52 Directed energy can prove as powerful as intellectual ability.53
Other personality characteristics tend to vary across domains of creative achievement.54 Of special interest are those traits or symptoms associated with psychopathology. The commonplace notion of the ‘mad genius’ appears far more appropriate for the artist than for the scientist,55 with literary creators – and especially poets – displaying the most vulnerability.56 Consider the statistics in the following two investigations:
• When Post (1994) scrutinized 291 eminent creators and leaders, he differentiated whether psychopathology was absent, mild, marked, or severe. He obtained the following figures for artistic creators (respectively): composers 17.3%, 32.7%, 19.2%, and 30.8%; artists 14.6%, 29.1%, 18.8%, and 37.5%; and writers 2.0%, 10.0%, 42.0%, and 46.0%. These figures are almost completely inverted for the scientific geniuses in his sample: 31.1%, 24.4%, 26.7%, and 17.8%, for absent, mild, marked, and severe, respectively.
• Ludwig (1995) examined a more recent sample of eminent personalities57 and used a slightly different criterion, namely the lifetime rate of any mental illness whatsoever, regardless of the severity.58 The highest rates were exhibited by the poets (87%), followed by the fiction writers (77%), dramatists (74%), visual artists (73%), non-fiction writers (72%), and musical composers (60%). In contrast, eminent natural scientists have a rate less than half as high as the composers did (28%).
I hasten to point out that some researchers have challenged these statistics.59 After all, such studies almost invariably depend on retrospective diagnoses using largely biographical material. Even so, the basic empirical findings have been corroborated using psychometric, psychiatric, experimental, survey, and epidemiological methods.60 Investigators are even teasing out some of the underlying cognitive, affective, and genetic factors responsible for the association.61 Suffice it to say, creativity and psychopathology share common cognitive and affective attributes even if creative genius enjoys some additional attributes that ameliorate any psychopathological leanings. Furthermore, the stresses associated with the attainment of eminence can themselves contribute to psychopathology, including alcoholism.62 It must be emphasized, nonetheless, that when an artistic genius succumbs completely to madness, then creativity ceases.63 This adverse repercussion is most obvious when the illness induces the genius to commit suicide – a tragic career termination for which female poets exhibit an unusually high risk.64
2.4 Lifespan Development
The next issue concerns the developmental factors involved in the emergence and manifestation of artistic genius. These factors include both early developmental antecedents and adulthood career trajectories. At the close, I will examine the termination of a life and career.
2.4.1 Early Antecedents
Before the artistic genius can even begin to make the contributions necessary for attaining eminence, it is first necessary to develop creative potential. Here I concentrate on two sets of factors: family background and expertise acquisition.
2.4.1.1 Family Background
A classic debate in this area is whether genius is born or made – an issue first explicitly introduced by Galton in 1874 as the nature/nurture question. In 1869, Galton had already argued for a strong genetic basis for genius. His argument was founded on the extensive family pedigrees that can be documented for high achievement in almost every major domain.65 These lineages were conspicuous in composers, painters, and literary figures (e.g. the Bach, Bellini, and Brontë families, respectively). However easy it is to compile such family pedigrees, their relevance to the nature/nurture issue is more ambiguous because parents provide not just genetic make-up for their offspring, but also environmental influences, including role models and mentors.66 Moreover, it is possible to identify other family background factors that are more clearly environmental rather than genetic,67 such as the impact of traumatic experiences in childhood and adolescence (e.g. early parental loss or orphanhood).68 Interestingly, artistic geniuses hail from far more unstable, dysfunctional, unconventional, and even multicultural family backgrounds than do scientific geniuses.69 This salient contrast is apparent in, for example, Nobel laureates in literature relative to the laureates in physics, the latter coming from highly stable and conventional families.70
Art-versus-science developmental differences are also found with respect to birth order. With the exception of revolutionary scientists,71 scientific geniuses tend to be firstborns,72 whereas artistic geniuses may tend to be laterborns.73 A major exception to the latter assertion is that the ordinal position of classical composers is more similar to scientific geniuses than to artistic geniuses.74 This exception makes sense insofar as music is considered the ‘arithmetic of sound’, to use Claude Debussy’s expression.
Lastly, I would be remiss not to mention the powerful impact of gender on artistic genius. Let me begin by observing that women are drastically under-represented among historic geniuses, who tend to be ‘dead (white) males’.75 Nevertheless, the historical data also show that female genius, when it does appear, has the likelihood of appearing in the arts, especially in literature.76 For example, the female percentages in the main world literatures are as follows: Western 4.4%, Arabic 1.2%, Indian 4.7%, Chinese 3.6%, and Japanese 8.2%.77 Although we are still a long way from understanding these gender effects, researchers have identified some of the potential influences,78 many of which take place in the home.79 It is also clear that the emergence of female genius is contingent on larger societal gender biases and stereotypes that operate outside the family setting.80 One reason why women can excel as creative writers is that one does not have to acquire a professional position – academic or institutional – but rather can write at home. Still, many talented women avoided societal prejudices by writing under a male nom de plume, as did Mary Ann Evans (George Elliot) and Amantine Lucile Dupin (George Sand).
2.4.1.2 Expertise Acquisition
Economists have recognized the concept of ‘human capital’ in which talent can be considered an investment in terms of ‘education, study, or apprenticeship’.81 Research on talent development has amply documented the importance of this personal investment. In this sense, genius is made rather than born. One manifestation of this necessity is found in the research on expertise acquisition. Here investigators have discovered what has become known as the ‘10-year rule’, namely that it takes a decade of intense training, study, and practice before a talent attains the capacities of genius.82 Even a composer as precocious as Mozart did not become a mature artist until he had passed through over 10 years of apprenticeship.83
That said, the role of expertise acquisition in creative development is far more complex than this simple rule might imply.84 In the first place, young talents vary immensely in the time they need to master the domain and this cross-sectional variation has consequences for later impact. In particular, those who have shorter periods of apprenticeship are prone to attain higher levels of creative genius.85 For this reason, eminence and total lifetime output are often associated with precocious productivity.86 This inverse relation may bear some connection with innate talent: those born with greater ‘gifts’ within an artistic domain will require less time to attain domain mastery and then go on to display higher creativity in their adulthood career.87
Another complication concerns the phenomenon of versatility discussed earlier.88 If the 10-year rule applies to each domain in which a genius achieves eminence, then it would seem impossible for anyone to exhibit the versatility of a Goethe or Leonardo, or if some genius did display such versatility then the products would be more inept than those produced by narrow-minded specialists. Yet the reverse appears to be the case. To illustrate, an empirical study of opera showed that composers were more likely to produce great works if they mastered different operatic genres and even composed non-operatic music.89
A final complication is that expertise acquisition can take many forms that can feature rather distinct effects on the development of artistic genius. One form occurs when a young talent works under an established master in a mentor-apprentice role.90 This process not only has positive consequences for creative development, but also those benefits appear to be improved if the artistic genius studied under more than one master.91 A second process is formal training, such as provided by colleges and universities.92 Here the effects are more ambivalent, especially given some tentative evidence that high levels of formal education – as indicated by higher degrees – appear to hinder creative development in most artistic endeavors.93 Even in modern times it is rare for artistic geniuses to have PhDs listed after their names. The third and final expertise-acquisition process is self-education in which the developing genius independently reads and studies. Yet in line with what was said before about versatility, this self-education is not necessarily concentrated on a single specialized domain. In fact, achieved eminence in most domains is positively associated with a person being a voracious and omnivorous reader.94 This propensity is endorsed by the general empirical finding that creativity is positively correlated with openness to experience, including intellectual curiosity and a desire for new information.95
It might seem paradoxical that creative development depends on the acquisition of expertise well beyond the particular artistic domain in which creativity will be concentrated, but the creative process itself is most likely enhanced by exposure to knowledge and experiences that reside ‘outside the box’ that defines the domain proper.96
2.4.2 Career Trajectories
Once an artistic genius acquires the requisite creative potential, that potential must then become actualized in the form of actual artistic products, whether poems, paintings, compositions, or films. Although there occasionally exist ‘one-hit wonders’ whose fame rests on a single masterpiece,97 most often creators will produce a large number of works distributed over a career lasting 30 or more years.98 Empirical research has concentrated on two aspects of this career-wise distribution: the productivity curve and the career landmarks.99
2.4.2.1 Productivity Curve
The first scientific inquiry concerning artistic genius was published by Adolphe Quetelet originally in 1835 (Quetelet, 1968) decades before Galton’s (1869) classic monograph. Quetelet wanted to know how the output of creative products changed across the career course. The specific products selected were the plays created by major French and English playwrights. He showed that productivity increased until the dramatist attained a career peak, after which output gradually declined. In addition, Quetelet found that the same longitudinal function holds for both major and minor plays. Those periods in which the most major works were produced also tended to be the periods in which the most minor works were produced. In other words, and somewhat surprisingly, even creative geniuses were not able to increase their ‘hit rates’ with increased artistic maturity.
Needless to say, a great deal of research has been conducted on this question since 1835, albeit not always with the same degree of methodological sophistication that Quetelet exhibited.100 In particular, not every researcher introduced control for differential lifespans.101 Nonetheless, for the most part later research has replicated the non-monotonic single-peaked function.102 The only substantial qualification on this empirical generalization concerns the specific shape of the curve. Thus, sometimes the productive peak may come relatively early in the career and then precipitously decline, whereas other times the peak may occur much later during the life cycle and the decline be far less pronounced.103 This contrast is quite apparent in the output of poets versus novelists – the former tending to peak at younger ages than the latter.104
Quetelet’s second finding – that the productivity curves are congruent for both major and minor works – has proven more controversial. Although some investigations find that quality is a function of quantity,105 others report that the ratio of major to minor works tends to increase over the career course.106 The latter finding lends support to the hypothesis that artistic geniuses can increase their expertise even after the end of their period of apprenticeship.107 By the end of a lifelong career, only masterpieces will emerge from their pen, brush, pencil, camera, or chisel. Nevertheless, it clearly can happen that the reverse can hold, the best work predominating in the early part of the career.108 A famous example is Pietro Mascagni, whose greatest opera was his Cavalleria rusticana, his very first.
This second, quality/quantity question can perhaps be better addressed by scrutinizing career landmarks.
2.4.2.2 Career Landmarks
Rather than investigate total output, researchers can focus on what have been identified as the three landmarks of a creative career.109 These are the first major work, the best work, and the last major work. For example, for a classical composer, the first landmark would constitute the first work that endures in the standard repertoire, the last landmark would be the last work still regularly performed in the repertoire, while the middle landmark would represent the composer’s most frequently performed work. Given these three landmarks, we can then gauge the ages at which artistic geniuses produce their first, best, and last major work (even though some researchers concentrate just on the middle landmark).110 The first researcher to introduce this tactic was Evelyn Raskin (1936) a century after Quetelet’s original publication. She looked at 243 geniuses, 120 in science and 123 in literature. In the latter case, the first career landmark appeared around age 24, the best around age 34, and the last around age 55 (the corresponding figures for the scientific geniuses were 25, 35, and 59, respectively). Similar figures have been found by other researchers. To illustrate, a study of 120 classical composers found that the first, best, and last landmarks appeared around ages 26–31, 40–41, and 51–52, respectively (depending on the specific operational definitions).111 Apropos to the issue raised at the close of the previous section, the middle career landmark tends to be either closer to the first landmark or roughly midway between the first career landmark and the last career landmark.112 If artists could accumulate creative expertise throughout their careers, we would expect that the single best work would also be the last major contribution. Indeed, the last major contribution would not only be the best, but also the last, contribution because there would be no minor contributions at all in the final years. Yet it is rare for an artistic genius to save the best for last.
Naturally, the foregoing figures are only statistical averages. Each mean has a sizeable standard deviation, with the magnitude of that deviation increasing from first to best to last landmarks.113 As an example, for 120 classical composers the first landmark may appear between age 5 and 60, the best between age 16 and 80, and the last between 18 and 86.114 More critically, this substantial variation in the longitudinal location of the three landmarks correlates with other variables. Perhaps most telling are the associations with eminence or lifetime productivity.115 If genius is to be gauged by posthumous reputation or total output, then the degree of genius is negatively correlated with the age at the first major work, positively correlated with the age at the last major work, but uncorrelated with the age at the best work.116 Stated differently, the greatest artistic geniuses produce their first substantial contribution at an unusually young age and their last substantial contribution at an unusually old age, and yet create their top contribution at about the same age expected of a lesser genius. In short, both great and small have the same expected career peaks.
Earlier I indicated that the productivity curves vary according to the domain of artistic creativity. To the extent that the output of major works parallels the output of minor works, as Quetelet discovered, then we would predict corresponding contrasts in the career location of the three landmarks.117 Certainly if productivity peaks early in a domain then it is reasonable to expect that the single best work tends to occur earlier as well. Likewise, domains that exhibit steep post-peak declines will feature earlier last works than domains that display more shallow decrements. These expectations have been confirmed in empirical research.118 For example, a poet’s single best poem tends to appear at a younger age than a novelist’s best novel – a difference that constitutes a cross-cultural and transhistorical universal.119 These longitudinal contrasts echo what is seen in scientific genius. For instance, masterpieces in mathematics tend to appear at a younger age than those in the earth sciences.120
Recently the economist David Galenson (2005) has proposed another factor that determines the placement of the landmarks. Put simply, he distinguishes between two kinds of artists. On the one hand are what he calls the ‘old masters’121 (or ‘seekers’) who engage in experimental creativity, gradually developing ideas over the course of their long careers. Their best work tends to be the products of maturity and hence their career peak appears relatively late. On the other hand are what Galenson calls the ‘young geniuses’ (or ‘finders’) who engage in conceptual creativity, coming up with a brilliant idea that can be almost instantaneously manifested in a masterstroke. Galenson gives Paul Cézanne as one illustration of the former type and Pablo Picasso as an illustration of the latter type. This distinction encompasses every form of artistic creativity, from literature to cinema.122
Galenson’s theory has attracted abundant criticisms and qualifications on both theoretical and empirical grounds.123 The expected differences in creative life cycles are not always replicated. Even if his theory were valid, it should be made clear that the career-trajectory contrasts among disciplines can remain independent of any potential contrast between experimental and conceptual artists.124 Hence, both poets and novelists can be either experimental seekers or conceptual finders. Accordingly, we obtain the following expected ages for the best single work: conceptual poets 28, experimental poets 38, conceptual novelists 34, and experimental novelists 44.125 Representative cases include T. S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf, respectively.
2.4.3 Life and Career Termination
Earlier I mentioned the need to control for lifespan when calculating the relation between age and artistic output. Failure to do so can introduce spurious findings, particularly when individual time series are tabulated into aggregate statistics.126 The same potential artifact holds for research on career landmarks.127 After all, age at death imposes an unalterable upper bound on the age at the last work, major or otherwise, so that long-lived artists have more opportunity to produce a late masterpiece.128 In extreme cases, a shortened lifespan can even impose constraints on the longitudinal location of the single best work and even the first landmark.129 When Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga, the ‘Spanish Mozart’, died at age 19, he was not yet at the average age for producing the first career landmark, and farther still from the age at best work. His reputation survives based on compositions that show tremendous promise without attaining true greatness. Consequently, Arriaga did not make it into a list of 522 significant figures in classical music.130
As the placement of the career landmarks is contingent on lifespan, we have to take note of the fact that life expectancies vary consistently across achievement domains.131 Particularly striking are the low expected lifespans of poets and mathematicians.132 Given that poets and mathematicians also tend to display career landmarks shifted to earlier ages, it is reasonable to ask whether these two sets of facts are related.133 For instance, do poets die young because they can die young and still leave behind enough great poetry to establish their posthumous reputation? Or is there something about writing poetry that lowers life expectancy? Participating factors might include trauma, mental illness, and an unhealthy lifestyle.
I should close this section by discussing two related phenomena associated with the last years of life. Art critics have often speculated about the existence of an ‘old-age’ or ‘late’ style134 and some empirical evidence exists that such a late-life stylistic shift can indeed take place.135 The late works of Michelangelo and Titian provide ready examples. At the same time, stylistic changes do not have to reflect age per se, but rather can be the function of death’s proximity. This possibility is illustrated by the ‘swan-song phenomenon’.136 In the last few years of a composer’s life, compositions become more concentrated and the thematic material simplified. This shift might reflect premonitions of death and the corresponding need to produce a last artistic testament. Alternatively, swan songs might be the upshot of late-life cognitive changes (e.g. in integrative complexity).137 The important point here is that this effect is independent the composer’s chronological age.138 Musical geniuses who die young – such as Mozart and Franz Schubert – can also create swan songs if they see their end coming.
2.5 Social Processes
Artistic genius is often viewed as an utterly individualistic phenomenon (i.e. the ‘poor starving artist in the attic’). Isolated and independent, he or she sets out on their idiosyncratic path without regard to the world beyond. This viewpoint is inaccurate. This inaccuracy becomes apparent when we address the following three social processes: interpersonal relationships, collaborative groups, and sociocultural context.
2.5.1 Interpersonal Relationships
The greatest artists tend to be part of great networks. This fact was abundantly demonstrated in a empirical study of 772 Western artists who were active between the Renaissance and the twentieth century.139 The artists were first reliably assessed on differential eminence using a large number of reference works. Then an inventory was compiled of the relationships they had with contemporary artists who were also in the sample. These relationships were rivals, collaborators, associates, friends, co-pupils, and siblings. With one exception, the number of relationships was positively correlated with eminence. Famous artists have more rivals, collaborators, associates, friends, and co-pupils. The sole exception was siblings – a relationship that showed a slight negative relation. Furthermore, an artist was also more eminent to the extent that the artists with whom they had these relationships were also very famous (again with siblings as an exception). The two most potent relationships were rivals and associates. It would be easy to conjure up illustrations from the career of any great artist from Michelangelo to Picasso.
It is interesting to think of this issue in terms of the law first proposed by the historian Derek Price.140 This law says that if k is the number of creators active in a particular domain at a particular time, then √k estimates the number in that subset who account for all creative products in that domain. Thus, if there are 100 active artists, just 10 will be responsible for half of all works. As an example, about 250 composers have contributed at least one work to the classical repertoire, but just 16 ≈ 15.8 = √250 account for half of the works in that repertoire.141 A curious implication is that as k increases, a smaller proportion of k can be credited with half the creativity.142 In other words, the prolific elite becomes even more prominent and the skewed distribution of lifetime output even more skewed. This result might suggest that artistic genius becomes more accentuated when surrounded with many other creative artists of varying degrees of genius.
The foregoing could help explain why the Golden Ages of creativity in any given artistic domain tend to consist of so many lesser lights who are working alongside the most illustrious artists of the time and place. Conversely, when the civilization enters a Silver Age, not only does the number of high-order geniuses vanish, but also the number of lower-order geniuses declines. For instance, one historiometric study used generational time-series analysis to determine the relation between major and minor figures in the history of Chinese civilization.143 After collecting geniuses in a diversity of achievement domains and splitting them into the major and minor figures according to differential eminence, sizable positive correlations were found between the two series. Thus, across 141 consecutive generations, the number of major poets correlated 0.38 with the number of minor poets (after first rendering the two series stationary). Better yet, lagging one or another time series reduced the magnitude of the correlation. In this way, the minor geniuses are just as much part of the Golden Age as the major geniuses whose names we are most likely to remember centuries later.144
2.5.2 Collaborative Groups
Notwithstanding the impact of interpersonal relationships, it should be evident that the creation of a poem, painting, play, or other artistic product is still grounded in the individual’s creative process. It rarely happens that a great work of art is produced by two or more creators taking turns adding a stanza, image, scene, or other fragment of the whole. To be sure, artistic geniuses can sometimes collaborate under special circumstances, each making their own special contribution. Yet such cases remain rare and the resulting creative product can seldom withstand comparison with the best work of the same geniuses working separately.145 That said, in certain types of artistic products collaboration becomes essential rather incidental. Without collaboration, the product cannot even materialize, even less become recognized as a masterpiece.
An unequivocal case is cinema or film. Although in the early days of the motion picture it was possible for a single person to create a complete product – as was accomplished by the innovator Georges Méliès in the late 1890s and early 1900s – those days of heady cinematic individualism are long gone. Even so-called ‘auteurs’ must rely on the contributions of dozens if not hundreds of collaborators, many of whom must be considered bona fide artists in their own right, and not just technicians. Consider the 1941 classic Citizen Kane. As much as this film bears the imprint of its director (and lead actor) Orson Welles, its artistic greatness also depended on the script by Herman J. Mankiewicz (co-written with Welles), the cinematography by Gregg Toland, the film editing by Robert Wise, the music score by Bernard Herrmann, the sound recording by John Aalberg, and the art production by Perry Ferguson, Van Nest Polglase, A. Roland Fields, and Darrell Silvera. Indeed, all of the persons just named received Oscar nods for their contributions and the screenwriters were actually awarded with the statuette. The resulting product was nominated for best picture as well and it would probably have received the honor were it not for William Randolph Hearst’s notorious campaign against the film. In any event, Citizen Kane is widely considered one of the greatest Hollywood films ever made. However, no specific artist made it, quite unlike Shakespeare’ Hamlet, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, or Michelangelo’s Pietà.
Cultural economists and kindred researchers have generated a considerable empirical literature on the movie industry, with special focus on financial performance.146 What makes a blockbuster? Does the marquee presence of big (but expensive) movie stars help or hinder profits? In contrast, psychologists have long been fascinated with cinematic creativity and aesthetics.147 What cinematic characteristics produce a film that wins critical acclaim and garners best-picture awards? This distinction between film as business and film as art is crucial insofar as (i) box office success has a weak and sometimes negative connection with artistic merit and (ii) the predictors of the former are often rather different from the predictors of the latter.148 The complete connections among criteria and predictor variables are extremely complex.149
Nonetheless, because this chapter is dedicated to understanding artistic genius, we should concentrate on those findings that are most germane to that question. That limitation in mind, I would like to confine discussion to the following three points.
First, not all of the cinematic collaborators make equal contributions to the aesthetic success of the final product. To be specific, those who contribute to the film’s dramatic impact prove most important, namely the director and screenwriter, and to a lesser extent, the film editor and the actors150 (with the male actors making a greater contribution than the female actors151). The director, and especially the writer-director if the film has such, has the most influence on artistic merit, at least as judged by the reviews of film critics and the awards bestowed by major professional organizations.152 The primacy of the writer-director falls in line with the auteur theory that views great films as the creation of a single artistic vision.153 Whether director or writer-director, the resulting film’s eventual critical acclaim is a curvilinear, single-peak function of the number of films directed.154 This longitudinal function closely parallels what was said earlier about the age-achievement relation.155
Second, many of the other cinematic collaborators appear far more significant with respect to the film’s financial success, particularly those responsible for special visual and sound effects.156 Although these ‘bells and whistles’ are required for a box office hit, one might consider these technicians to represent more experts than creators per se. Expertise is not the same as creativity.157
Third, other collaborators seem irrelevant by any criterion whatsoever. The most conspicuous instance is the composers who contribute the film’s score and song.158 Only the score makes any positive contribution and then only by the criterion of movie awards.159 Great songs, in contrast, can actually detract from cinematic effectiveness.160 Most suggestive is the evidence that the career trajectories of cinema composers are very similar to the trajectories of classical composers.161 Evidently, the movie theater has replaced the concert hall and opera house as a principal vehicle for composing in the large symphonic style. Consequently, the composer’s creativity is largely decoupled from the cinematic merit of the film in which the music appears. This minimal impact contrasts immensely with what appears in another ambitious form that would otherwise seem comparable to film: opera. Although opera requires both word (libretti for dialogue and monologue) and music (overtures, arias, choruses, etc.), empirical research indicates that the music exerts far more influence on operatic success than do the words being sung.162 If it were otherwise, then Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore – a horrid libretto coupled with sublime music – would have been a total failure on the opera stage.
2.5.3 Sociocultural Context
The final topic pertains to the sociocultural contexts underlying outstanding artistic achievement. These contexts include both internal factors, such as artistic styles, as well as external factors, such as the political and economic milieu.
2.5.3.1 Internal Milieu
To some degree, creative activity within a given artistic domain is determined by factors that reside within that domain and are thus independent of what may be happening outside the domain, whether in other domains or in society at large.163 Let me offer two illustrations.
The first concerns the clustering of artistic genius across time and space. Geniuses are not randomly distributed across historical periods and societal systems, but rather are grouped into what Alfred Kroeber (1944) called ‘cultural configurations’.164 The most prominent of these configurations include the Golden Ages and Silver Ages mentioned earlier, whereas the low points in the temporal and geographic distribution represent Dark Ages. Within any given geographic unit, we can examine the temporal distribution using generational time-series analysis.165 It has been consistently found in both Western and Eastern civilizations that the number of creative geniuses at generation g is a positive function of the number at generation g − 1 (and sometimes g − 2), where the unit of tabulation is the 20-year period.166 Expressed in more formal terms, the resulting generational time series are best fit using a first-order (and sometimes second-order) autoregressive model (after first rendering the data stationary). In Japanese civilization, for example, the following lag − 1 autocorrelation coefficients emerged: nonfiction 0.718, poetry 0.250, fiction 0.410, drama 0.099, painting 0.290, sculpture 0.526, ceramics 0.461, and swords 0.617.167 These autoregressive generational effects have been attributed to role modeling, the emergence of genius at generation g being contingent on the availability of potential within-domain models in immediately preceding generations.168 Naturally, some of these role models may actually be involved in the direct master–apprentice relationships mentioned earlier.169
The second illustration concerns historical shifts in artistic styles. At any one time and place, artistic geniuses will usually be creating under certain stylistic conventions. For instance, in the European arts since the late Middle Ages we might identify such styles as Renaissance, Mannerist, Baroque (early and late), Classical (or Neoclassical), Romantic (early and late), Modern, and Post-Modern.170 Not only will these styles predominate within a given genre, but they will also often cut across genres, yielding cross-media artistic styles. For example, even naive observers can notice how the Baroque, Neoclassical, and Romantic styles apply to painting, architecture, music, and poetry.171 In a sense, a Neoclassical painting by Jacques David has more in common with a Neoclassical poem by John Dryden than it does with a Romantic painting by Eugène Delacroix.
Yet as geniuses constrain their creativity to a given style, they also make changes to that style. According to Martindale (1990), creativity in the arts is strongly driven by the need to express originality and that motive often obliges the artist to push the stylistic envelope. Within a few generations, the stylistic constraints become increasingly less restrictive until the point is reached where a new style appears that allows originality to manifest itself through advocacy of a novel set of stylistic rules. The whole process then continues in Hegelian-like cycles, each style containing the seeds of its own destruction. It must be stressed that Martindale did not just speculate about stylistic change, but actually devised ingenious content analytical methods to subject his conjectures to empirical tests. In addition to confirming the basic predictions for the major genre in literature, music, and the visual arts, these tests have been applied to single artistic geniuses. As a case in point, Martindale used his methods to scrutinize the two big stylistic shifts in the compositions of Beethoven, shifts that demarcate his Early, Middle, and Late periods.
The above two illustrations have an implicit connection that is worth making explicit. In the first illustration, each new artistic talent grows up under the influence of the previous generation of active creators. Among the influences that are carried over must be the stylistic conventions that the next generation must apply to their creative output. Yet the new generation must surpass rather than just imitate their predecessors, and thus manifest its own distinctive originality. The received style is then pushed to the limit and eventual disintegration. Then some artistic genius proposes a new style and the cycle repeats over another set of generations. Even so, the number of possible styles is probably small within a given sociocultural system. Once all of the available styles are ‘used up’, the result is what Kroeber (1944) referred to as ‘pattern exhaustion’. The upshot is the ‘end of art’ and a Dark Age for that genre. Such periods of stagnation have already been witnessed in past civilizations and some have argued that Western civilization has now entered that phase for the primary art forms.172 Even if true, we cannot dismiss the possibility that artistic talent is now being channeled into totally novel art forms, like music videos, video games, application software, and artificial intelligence systems. It must be recalled that there was once a time when film was not considered a high art.173 Sometimes comparable talents can be diverted from dead to upstart genre.
2.5.3.2 External Milieu
Artistic genius is not immune from extrinsic influences, whether political, economic, cultural, or societal.174 These external influences can be roughly grouped into two kinds of effects.
In the first place, extrinsic events and circumstances can exert qualitative effects on the artistic products that emerge from the creator’s pen, brush, pencil, camera, or chisel. By qualitative effects, I mean influences on content and style. To offer a few examples: (i) the thematic content of Athenian and Shakespearean plays created in a given year is responsive to concurrent political events;175 (ii) the thematic content of poetry written in a given generation is associated with the prevailing philosophical Zeitgeist and political conditions;176 (iii) the melodic structure of works in the classical repertoire is affected by the occurrence of such political events as contemporaneous warfare;177 (iv) the designs displayed in Greek vase painting reflect the degree of social stratification;178 and (v) even women’s high fashion designs change in response to international and civil wars.179 In short, to a certain extent content and style reflects the larger characteristics of the sociocultural system.
Secondly, extrinsic events and circumstances can exert quantitative effects. These quantitative effects involve the output of artistic products in a given year, the artistic impact of those products, or the number of artistic geniuses active in a given generation.180 Research has shown that one or more of these quantitative indicators have negative or positive associations with such external factors as political fragmentation, ideology, international war, civil war, and economic growth or prosperity.181 Significantly, some of these effects are virtually simultaneous, whereas others operate after a considerable delay, even a generation or more. One intriguing example of the latter helps resolve an issue advanced at the end of the previous section.
I then pointed out that a given cultural pattern can become exhausted and that this exhaustion then obliges the domain to decline into a Dark Age. In lieu of innovators, we witness imitators. Nevertheless, history provides numerous instances of civilizations undergoing revival after an interim of dismal artistic creativity. This revival often requires a major shock to the system that provides a new cultural pattern. This shock can often come via the intrusion of ideas from an alien civilization, either by military conquest or by peaceful means. Japanese history illustrates the latter possibility.182 In some periods, Japan would be relatively isolated from other civilizations, and during those periods, the arts would show the typical rise and fall. The decline would be reversed when Japan became open to outside influences (mainly China but later Western civilization). These foreign influences include artistic geniuses who immigrated from outside Japan, native Japanese artistic creators studying abroad, or Japanese studying under foreign masters. Although such influences successfully resuscitated creative activity in poetry, fiction, nonfiction, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, the impact was by no means immediate. On the contrary, it usually took two generations for the revival to take place. That is, the number of creative geniuses active in generation g was a positive function of the extent of foreign influence in generation g − 2. Apparently, it requires some time before the alien infusion becomes assimilated as part of Japan’s cultural matrix. Only after this assimilation is accomplished can the new cultural elements provide the foundation for a cultural configuration.
2.6 Conclusion
In this chapter, I have reviewed the key empirical findings regarding creative genius in literature, music, and the visual arts – inclusively defined to include film as well. As we have seen, this subject has attracted scientific attention for a very long time. After all, the very first relevant investigation was published back in 1835.183 Since then, much progress has been made. In particular, we have learned a great deal about achieved eminence, which we have chosen as the objective definition of artistic genius. Moreover, using this criterion, investigators have expanded our knowledge about the individual attributes, lifespan development, and social processes involved in the phenomenon.
Despite all of the accumulated information since 1835, I would be the first to admit that we still have a very long way to go before we obtain a complete picture of the artistic genius. Indeed, I find our ignorance especially striking given what we know about the scientific genius.184 No doubt, researchers, who are themselves scientists, tend to take more interest in science than in the arts. Furthermore, the emphasis on scientific genius allows research to concentrate on a simpler problem. For example, artistic geniuses constitute a far more heterogeneous population for investigation: poets and painters have much less in common than do physicists and economists, as can be verified immediately by comparing their creative products. The individual attributes, lifespan development, and social processes are also far more homogeneous for scientists than is the case for artists.185 Finally, it is far easier to judge the impact of scientific discoveries than it is to assess the merit of artistic creations.
All that admitted, artistic geniuses generate creative products that have far more personal meaning than anything produced by the greatest scientific geniuses. In all likelihood, more persons have been profoundly affected by Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, or Michelangelo’s Pietà than by Newton’s Principia Mathematica or Darwin’s Origin of Species. From an economic standpoint, too, that differential means that more people are willing to pay more money to experience Hamlet on stage, hear the Fifth in concert, or view the Pietà in St Peter’s than even to buy a second-hand copy of the two greatest scientific books ever written. Artistic geniuses are prototypical of the phenomenon.
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4For example, Cox (1926), Galton (1869), Kroeber (1944), Sorokin (1937–1941).
6Murray (2003), Simonton (1991c).
10These were that elite subset of creators who appeared in all sources rather than in just one source.
11For example, Moles (1968), Simonton (1998).
12For example, Farnsworth (1969).
13Reliability coefficients assess the magnitude of agreement between or among two or more measures; they range from 0 (zero consensus) to 1 (perfect consensus).
14Simonton (1990b, chapter 4).
17Simonton (1991c); see also Simonton (1998a).
26For example, Farnsworth (1969).
27Ginsburgh and Weyers (2006, 2010).
28It goes without saying that the addition of new artists may bump older artists down the ordinal placement (e.g. Picasso jumped ahead of many older artists), but the rankings will remain more or less the same among the earlier artists (e.g. Picasso will not alter Michelangelo’s ranking relative to Daniele da Volterra).
30For example, Rosengren (1985).
32For example, Simonton (1989a).
34For example, Moles (1968), Simonton (1991b).
38Allison et al. (1982), Merton (1968).
39For example, Simonton (1991b).
40For example, Cox (1926), Raskin (1936), Simonton and Song (2009).
41Simonton (2009c), Thorndike (1936, 1950), Woods (1906).
43Cox (1926), Simonton (1976a, 1991d), Simonton and Song (2009), Walberg et al. (1978), see also Simonton (2008a).
44Cox (1926), Walberg et al. (1978).
46Cassandro and Simonton (2010).
47Rankin (1936), Simonton (1976a), see also Sulloway (1996).
48Cassandro (1998), White, (1931).
50Cox (1926), Raskin, (1936), Simonton and Song (2009), Thorndike (1950).
51Cox (1926), see also Ebersole and DeVogler-Ebersole (1985), Galton (1869), Walberg et al. (1980).
52Cox (1926, p. 187), italics removed.
53See also Duckworth et al. (2007).
55Cf. Ko and Kim (2008).
56Andreasen (1987), Kaufman (2000–2001, 2005), Martindale (1972), Post (1996).
57Albeit with some overlap with Post (1994), see also Ludwig (1992).
58See also Ludwig (1998).
59For example, Schlesinger (2009).
60Andreasen (1987), Andreasen and Canter (1974), Barron (1963), Götz and Götz (1979a, 1979b), Jamison (1989), Karlson (1970), Ludwig (1994), Nettle (2006).
61For example, Carson et al. (2003), Eysenck (1995), Kéri (2009, 2011), Ramey and Weisberg (2004), Weisberg (1994).
65See also Bramwell (1948), Rothenberg and Wyshak (2004).
67Berry (1999), Walberg et al. (1980).
68Albert (1971), Eisenstadt (1978), Illingworth and Illingworth (1969), but see Ludwig (1995).
69Berry (1981), Post (1994), Raskin (1936).
70Berry (1981), see also Schaefer and Anastasi (1968).
72Galton (1874), Roe (1953), Simonton (2008b), Terry (1989), cf. Clark and Rice (1982).
75Ellis (1926), Cattell (1903), Murray (2003).
78Murray (2003), Ochse (1991).
82Ericsson (1996), cf. Gardner (1993), Kaufman and Kaufman (2007).
83Hayes (1989), cf. Simonton (1991b).
86Lehman (1953), Simonton (1977b, 1991b), cf. Kaufman and Gentile (2002).
90Bloom (1985), Simonton (1984a), cf. Simonton (1992b, 1992c), for comparable effects in scientific genius.
93Raskin (1936), Simonton (1976a, 1984b, 1986b).
95Carson et al. (2005), McCrae (1987).
98Albert (1975), Dennis (1966), Lindauer (1993b, 2003).
100Lindauer (2003), Simonton (1997b).
102Crozier (1999), Simonton (1997b).
104Lehman (1953), Simonton (1975a).
105For example, Simonton (1977a), Weisberg (1994).
106For example, Hass and Weisberg (2009), Kozbelt (2005).
108Lehman (1953), Simonton (2000a).
110For example, Lehman (1953).
112Raskin (1936), Simonton (1991b), cf. Simonton (1991a).
113Raskin (1936), Simonton (1991b, 1997b).
114Simonton (1991b), cf. Simonton (1991a).
116Raskin (1936), Simonton (1991b, 2007a), cf. Simonton (1991a).
121This usage is confusing, ‘old masters’ normally refers to historically older, pre-Modern artists.
122For latter, see extensive discussion in Simonton (2011b).
123Accominotti (2009), Ginsburgh and Weyers (2005), Hellmanzik (2009), Winner (2004).
124Cf. Galenson (2005).
128Crozier (1999), Lindauer (1993b), Simonton (1991b, 2007a), see also Simonton (1991a).
131Cassandro (1998), Cox (1926), Simonton (1997a).
132Kaufman (2003), Simonton (1975a, 1991a).
133Cf. McCann (2001).
137See Porter and Suedfeld (1981), Suedfeld and Piedrahita (1984).
141Simonton (1984a), cf. Moles (1968).
144For some complications, see Simonton (1996).
145See, e.g. Jackson and Padgett (1982).
146For example, De Vany (2004), for extensive review, see Hadida (2008).
147For example, Arnheim (1957), Münsterberg (1916), Plucker et al. (2008), Plucker et al. (2009).
148For example, Simonton (2005b, 2009a), for reviews see Simonton (2009b).
149See Simonton (2011b), for a detailed analysis.
152Pardoe and Simonton (2008), Simonton (2005b).
154Zickar and Slaughter (1999).
155See also Lehman (1941).
164For more fine-grained clustering, see Hellmanzik (2010).
165Simonton (1984c). For more fine-grained analysis at the city level, see Hellmanzik (2010).
166Simonton (1975b, 1988b, 1992b, 1997c), Simonton and Ting (2010).
168Simonton (1984b), see also Kroeber (1944).
170Cf. Martindale (1990).
172Martindale (2009), Murray (2003).
175Simonton (1983a, 1986c, 2004d).
177Cerulo (1984), Simonton (1986a, 1987).
178Dressler and Robbins (1975).
181Kavolis (1963, 1964, 1966), Simonton (1975b, 1976b, 1986a, 1986c, 1992a, 1997c), Simonton and Ting (2010).