Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity Paperback - 2007

First line

In May 1902, already suffering acutely from the illness that would cause his death the following year, Paul Gauguin wrote from the Marquesas Islands to Georges-Daniel de Monfreid, his most loyal friend, "For two months I have been filled with one mortal fear: that I am not the Gauguin I used to be."

From the rear cover

"[A] really wonderful book. . . . There's something important to be learned about the way our minds work by entertaining the notion that there are two very different styles of creativity, the Picasso and the Czanne."--Malcolm Gladwell, author of Blink

"Beautifully written, well argued, and an exciting read, Old Masters and Young Geniuses is a strikingly novel interpretation of the creative process by a leading scholar in the economics of the arts. It realizes the exceedingly rare accomplishment of providing a fresh way of looking at the careers of the greatest artists of Western civilization."--William N. Goetzmann, documentary filmmaker, coauthor of The West of the Imagination, Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance, Yale School of Management

"A very well written and intellectually stimulating piece of scholarship that deserves to be widely read and debated."--Dean Keith Simonton, author of Creativity in Science: Chance, Logic, Genius, and Zeitgeist, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, University of California, Davis

"This extremely lucid, logical book is very much a voyage of discovery, exploring different ways of extending the author's theory of the two polar types of creative behavior to all forms of artistic and intellectual activity. As with all truly original work, it will be controversial."--Robert Jensen, author of Marketing Modernism in Fin-de-Sicle Europe, Associate Professor of Art History, University of Kentucky