The Science Behind a Massive Hit: What Will You Bring to the World?
Creating is most often a solitary experience we indulge in. Yet work we make and keep in isolation is doomed to remain lonely. This is especially true for art masterpieces.
In modern life we depend on ratings and status. How popular is this restaurant on Yelp? How many people liked this post? We look at the signals we’ve grown to trust and we glance past the underlying stories and messages. But what made it to the top before all the upvotes and social media?
Today we’ll take a closer look at how to make a timeless hit: the science of popularity and what makes something extremely famous. At the end, we’ll cover how you can integrate this into your life (I hope you read that most if anything).
Why is bad art so popular?
This is one of life’s mysteries that no one really seems to have an answer for. If you’ve been to your local art museum you’ve most likely seen the coveted Impressionist artwork. If you look a little closer, there’s an interesting story behind how it came to be.
Typically you’ll see people flocking to artists like Monet, Manet, and Cezanne in a modern art museum. You’ll look around and think you could paint something that looks better if you spent some time on it (and odds are, you could).
You might see another artist next to the famous impressionist painters who gets a lot less hype, Gustave Caillebotte. He’s know as the ‘least known of the French impressionists’ but also the most influential.
His paintings are exquisite. His style is exacting and it looks like a camera took the pictures he painted. But no one cares as much about his artwork today.
In his time, Caillebotte was considered one of the boldest of the group. But still, 140 years later, Monet is one of the most famous painters in history, while Caillebotte remains practically anonymous.
It’s a mystery. Two painters hang their pictures side by side, one is clearly superior, and the lesser quality image is coveted and published everywhere the word art is mentioned.
It Goes Deeper
What we’re discussing has actually been studied for centuries. Philosophers, artists, and psychologists have studied modern art to try and figure out beauty and popularity.
Fortunately, studying the brushstrokes won’t tell you the reason behind why one artist is famous and the other isn’t. Many have focused on the paintings themselves but the answers lie in the history surrounding the artwork.
Famous songs, blockbusters, and musical hits seem seem to occur so naturally to a general populace that doesn’t understand the underlying fabric. The origin story is hidden away from our view.
A team of researchers from Cornell University took a close look at the Impressionist canon and what they found may surprise you. It wasn’t social connections or the fact they came from the 19th Century, it was hidden from plain sight and it started with Caillebotte.
Gustave
Gustave Caillebotte (born in 1848) was part of a wealthy Parisian family who drifted from law, to engineering, to serving in the Franco-Prussian war. In his 20’s he discovered he was really good at art. He later submitted a painting The Floor Scrapers to the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris to have it rejected.
He was told by one critic to, “Do nudes, but do beautiful nudes or don’t do them at all.” A seemingly ordinary response that would demand an outburst of wild emotions today.
The impressionists (les Intransigents) disagreed. Auguste Renoir and others loved his paintings and he became friends with young artists like Monet, and Degas, buying dozens of their artworks at the time while few rich Europeans cared about them.
Caillebotte was convinced he would die young so he wrote a will instructing the French state to accept his art collection and hang nearly 70 of his impressionist paintings in a national museum.
He died of a stroke in 1894 (age 45) and his fears were proven right. His will requested around 16 artworks by Monet, 8 by Renoir, 8 by Degas, 5 by Cezanne, 4 by Manet, 18 by Pisarro, and 9 by Sisley. His walls today would be valued at several billion dollars in a modern art sale.
At the time his collection was of no interest to anyone. In the will he requested all the paintings to be hung at the Musee du Luxemborg in Paris. The French government refused to accept the artworks. The French elite, politicians, and critics considered the request bizarre and didn’t want the atrocities hanging on the walls in the museum. They were considered trash.
After years of fighting to get the artworks accepted, they eventually took about half of the collection. When the artworks were finally hung in 1897, it represented the first Impressionist exhibit ever. The public flooded the museum to see the art they’d previously criticized or ignored. This brought unprecedented attention to Caillebotte’s intransigent friends.
100 Years Later
One Century later, Cornell concluded 7 Impressionist painters made up the core of impressionist artwork: Monet, Renoir, Degas, Cezanne, Manet, Pisarro, and Sisley. This was the impressionist canon.
But what actually set these painters apart? They had no common style or theme and they had no praise from art critics. The core 7 impressionist painters were the only 7 in Gustave Caillebotte’s will.
A century after Caillebotte’s death, James Cutting stood in front of one of the most famous paintings at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and thought why is this thing so famous? It was Renoir’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette.
He went back to Cornell and his theory was that Caillebotte’s death helped to create the impressionist canon. The canon has been studied exclusively by art historians since, hung more prominently, artworks sold for more money, were valued more by art connoisseurs, and dissected and studied more by art students.
Cutting had yet another theory: The fact Caillebotte’s will shaped the impressionist canon spoke to something deep and universal about media, popularity, and entertainment. People actually prefer paintings that they’ve seen before.
Meaning and recognition are highly intertwined for people. Cutting tested his theory in two of his art classes. In one he showed the impressionist canon more and the other he focused on other random impressionist artists. The results of his popularity contest turned the canon upside down.
The power of repeated exposure proved to be right. It forms and shapes biases in taste for artwork, among other things.
So it turns out that Caillebotte’s will helped shape the canon of impressionist artists. His principle was to buy his friends paintings, especially those which seemed particularly unsellable.
Today, Renior’s Bal du Moulin de la Galette (the one Caillebotte saved from obscurity) sold for $78 million in 1990.
Lack of exposure might account for Caillebotte’s anonymity for another reason: Impressionism’s most important collector didn’t try to sell his art.
Another important behind-the-scenes figure named Paul Durand-Ruel (French art collector and dealer) fueled the impressionist fire. He found great success selling impressionist art as the industrial revolution came about in America. Newly wealthy people inhabited big, new apartments in NYC and Paris and needed artwork that was affordable, beautiful, and widely available. Impressionist artworks happened to fit all 3 categories.
Caillebotte’s gift rolled through history. When you look at impressionist artwork today you’re actually looking at a century’s worth of exposure, marketing, and fame.
Gustave Caillebotte is the least known of the French impressionist artists, not because he was the worst, but because he offered his friends a gift he was willing to withhold from himself; the gift of exposure.
What story are we telling ourselves?
It doesn’t matter if your rough draft sucks. Your first attempt, your first business, or your first artwork. There’s a student waiting to sign up, someone who needs a guide, someone who wants to go somewhere. If you hesitate you’re letting us down, you’re actually doing the world an injustice. You’re stealing from someone who needs to learn and grow from you.
“You’re telling yourself a story. Every day. We may market to ourselves that we’re struggling. We may tell ourselves that we’re unknown and deserve to be so. We may tell ourselves that we’re a fake, a fraud, a manipulator. We may tell ourselves that we’re unjustly ignored. They’re as true as you want them to be. And if you tell yourself a story enough times, you will make it true.”
-Seth Godin
People who aren’t as gifted or as generous as you are running circles around you because they’re showing up as professionals. Too many people with something to offer are holding themselves back. They’re their own competition.
Make waves, be present, spend time on things that you care about, and develop your taste. You never know who might offer wind to your sails or spread your exposure and presence. According to critics, the ‘impressionist trash’ is now worth billions so your chances can’t be near as bad as you may have initially thought.
What story will you tell yourself? How will you change it to get where you’re trying to go? Who will you serve? The year is 50% over. The time is now.
Credit:
Hit Makers by Derek Thompson
This is Marketing by Seth Godin
Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday
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