Innovation Identified

The Scream. Credit: wikimedia Commons

When we ran an analysis of 1,700 paintings, there were several notable findings. For example, the algorithm scored the creativity of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” (1893) much higher than its late 19th-century counterparts. This, of course, makes sense: it’s been deemed one of the most outstanding Expressionist paintings, and is one of the most-reproduced paintings of the 20th century.

The algorithm also gave Picasso’s “Ladies of Avignon” (1907) the highest creativity score of all the paintings it analyzed between 1904 and 1911. This is in line with the thinking of art historians, who have indicated that the painting’s flat picture plane and its application of Primitivism made it a highly innovative work of art – a direct precursor to Picasso’s Cubist style.

The algorithm pointed to several of Kazimir Malevich’s first Suprematism paintings that appeared in 1915 (such as “Red Square“) as highly creative as well. Its style was an outlier in a period then-dominated by Cubism. For the period between 1916 and 1945, the majority of the top-scoring paintings were by Piet Mondrian and Georgia O’Keeffe.

Of course, the algorithm didn’t always coincide with the general consensus among art historians.

For example, the algorithm gave a much higher score to Domenico Ghirlandaio’s “Last Supper” (1476) than to Leonardo da Vinci’s eponymous masterpiece, which appeared about 20 years later. The algorithm favored da Vinci’s “St. John the Baptist” (1515) over his other religious paintings that it analyzed. Interestingly, da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” didn’t score highly by the algorithm.

Picasso’s “Ladies of Avignon.” Credit: Wally Gobetz via Flickr

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