Abstract art grandmasters score like Class D amateurs
Recently Hawley-Dolan and Winner [1] reported their experiment where they had shown to 32 art students 30 pairs of paintings. In each pair, one painting was by a renowned abstract expressionist and another by a child or by an animal (monkey, gorilla, chimpanzee, or elephant). They asked the subjects which painting is better. In the case when the paintings were unlabeled, the art students in 67% of the cases said that the painting by a renowned artist is better. Hawley-Dolan and Winner concluded that their findings “challenge the common claim that abstract expressionist art is indistinguishable from (and no better than) art made by children.” Do they really?
Four years ago, I published [2] the results of my “True art, or fake?” quiz [3]. It consists of a dozen pictures. Some of them are masterpieces of abstract art, created by famous artists. The rest are fakes, produced by myself. The takers are to tell which is which. The average score received by fifty-six thousands quiz-takers is 66% correct. Though, on average, masterpieces won over fakes, one fake was selected as masterpiece more often than one real masterpiece. Hawley-Dolan and Winner do not report the statistics for separate pairs of paintings, only the average number. Since their average number is close to mine, I suspect that in Hawley-Dolan and Winner experiment some monkeys had won over some artists. In such case, their argument is very unconvincing. For if there is a gap between apes and artists – there is a quantitative difference. If there is a quantitative difference, one can argue that it is big enough to be qualitative. However when artists and apes overlap – it is obvious that there is no qualitative difference.
Now let us turn to the magnitude of the quantitative difference. What does it say about the difference in quality? In [2] I answered the question using a comparison with one classic study [4]. A hundred years ago psychologist F.M. Urban performed an experiment on just perceptible differences [4]. He asked the subjects to compare a hundred-gram weight with a set of different weights. When the weights were close, the judgment was poor. However, statistically, the lighter weight appeared to be heavier in less than half of the cases. For example, a 100-gram weight appeared to be heavier than 96 and 108-gram weights in 72% and 9% of trials respectively.
An abstractionist is judged better than a child/animal in 67% of the trials, while a 100-gram weight is judged heavier than 96-gram weight in 72% of the trials. This means that there is less perceptible difference between an abstractionist and child/animal than between 100 and 96 gram. Thus, if we assign to the artistic heavyweights used in [1] the weight of 100 artistic grams the weight of child/animal paintings is more than 96 artistic grams. The difference in their weights is 4%.
The boxers are divided into seventeen weight classes according to their weight [5]. The heavyweights are those weighting above 190 pounds. The category just below heavyweights is called cruiserweights and includes people weighting between 175 and 190 pounds. The difference between upper and lower bound of cruiserweights is about 8%. Since the difference between abstract art heavyweights and monkeys is only 4%, the monkeys must either be artistic heavyweights as well or belong to the weight category, which is just below heavyweights.
Dutch chess player Ivan Sokolov taken
during the 2004 Essent Tournament in
Hoogeveen, the Netherlands/Wikimedia.
More simple and instructive is the comparison with chess. In 1960s, Arpad Elo developed a rating system for chess players, which is now in common use [6]. Elo rating is a number computed based on player’s performance, which can be used to compare players’ relative strength. When the difference in rating between players is 200 points the probability that a higher rated player will win the game is 77%. When the difference is 400 or 600 the corresponding probabilities are 93% and 98% respectively. The players are divided into nine categories (see Table 1), from world championship contenders to novices, with the difference between bordering categories of 200 points.
Table 1 - Elo rating of chess players.
|
Elo rating |
Player category |
|---|---|
|
2600 and up |
World championship contenders |
|
2400 - 2600 |
Grandmasters |
|
2200 - 2400 |
National masters |
|
2000 - 2200 |
Candidate masters |
|
1800 - 2000 |
Amateurs – Class A |
|
1600 - 1800 |
Amateurs – Class B |
|
1400 - 1600 |
Amateurs – Class C |
|
1200 - 1400 |
Amateurs – Class D |
|
Below 1200 |
Novices |
Since abstract art grandmasters win over a monkey only in 67% of cases, the difference in their artistic Elo ratings is less than 200. This means that apes are either grandmasters or national masters of abstract art. However, being serious, one cannot class a gorilla above a novice. I conclude that abstract art grandmasters are at best class D amateurs.
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Bonner
Good job miakng it appear easy.
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Limmy
Quote:
With much respect to dh, whom no doubt have much knowledge in modern art (probably an abstract-expressionist himself), I would have to agree with you, sir.
For one thing, dh had unwittingly made counter-arguments with points made by him/herself on this subject- that artworks "real" or "fake" are based on a very personal bias. We should also be reminded that, many great artists are only recognized after their deaths while being ridiculed by critics before.
Now, let's talk about "Value". dh argued that this quiz have no value as there are no values to be discussed on, for artworks. I disagree. The actual value of the artwork would come in the form of consensus. The number of people who could appreciate the artwork versus the number of people who feel that it was done by a frenzied monkey.
When I say "appreciate", I mean "true appreciation" and not the type which was forcibly presented due to peer pressure. Yes, we all know "those" type; the ones who go "yes, yes" and nodding their head at a Toilet sign just because somebody else was looking at it. However, it is because of these people (who, sadly, represent most of the masses) that would inflate or deflate the value of "real" and "fake" artworks (in the case of Nat Tate).
True Art inspires and evokes a strong (set of) emotion(s), whether through Sounds or Images. If an accomplished artist failed to paint something that does so, the viewer (ANY viewer) would sense it and get disconnected from it. Should a baboon be able to create something that makes us leap with joy, cry with sorrow, then I say we have a True Artist in that primate, regardless of his skills or education.
Finally, anyone who could replicate Rembrandt or Leonardo and pass off their work as genuine is definitely no novice, in my opinion.
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Mikhail Simkin
Quote:
One can measure art as the fraction of people who are artfull enough to produce an artwork of certain quality. Results of the experiments show that abstract art masterpieces are of the same quality as doodles produced by an arbitrary person or, in some cases, even by an ape.
The quiz that you suggest I composed two years ago
http://reverent.org/vermeer_or_meegeren.html
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dh
this has really no value whatsoever. if your conclusion was to be taken seriously it would need to imply that art can indeed be measured and also that all those people who voted did vote based on the same exact criteria which again would need to be based on something that could be measured. this doesn't really prove that there is no distinction between abstract art and fake art but that at most that both might look similar. but is art something for how it looks like and for how it is judged by the average joe? also, I remember your quiz and I scored it 100%. I am sure there were people who scored it as low as 30% or less too. what does this tell you? surely that I was judging things from a very different background than someone else. this doesn't only include knowledge on the matter which made me recognize all "real" artworks because I simply knew them but also my idea of what art is. which basically mean all these are all subjective results on a subjective matter.
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Mikhail Simkin
Quote:
I know that. The 67% number refers to the 32 art students only. It is not an average over all 72 people. Actually, the use of art students is the only interesting new feature of Hawley-Dolan/Winner experiment. Some people critisized my work (Ref. 2), saying that my quiz takers were not experts in art.
By the way, in 2005 I composed the "Artist, or ape" quiz ( http://reverent.org/an_artist_or_an_ape.html ). This is more similar to what Hawley-Dolan/Winner did. And in 2009 Graydon Parrish and me made the "Bremen artists" quiz ( http://reverent.org/bremen_artists.html ). This is already an exact match.
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Rick Wicklin
This is an interesting article. I especially like your comparison with detecting small differences between weights.
One correction: In your first paragraph you say that Hawley-Dolan/Winner showed the art to 32 art students. Their article points out that they also used 40 non-art students.
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