Quantitative Art History

Part II of a slide presentation about its many repetitions from 1900 to the present, from my post of August 8, 2014 'Déjà-vu (2): repetitions of TIZIANO's 'Amor sacro e Amor profano''
http://kbender.blogspot.be/2014/08/deja-vu-2-repetitions-of-tizianos-amor.html

Transcript of my Blogger-post of July 16, 2014 'Déjà-vu (1): repetitions of BOTTICELLI's 'Primavera', including an interactive timeline presentation of 22 artists from the 1880s to the present, who were inspired by and referred in the title of their artwork to BOTTICELLI's 'Primavera'.

A presentation with text and URLs, pictures and maps, exported from myHistro, a free-to-use interactive website  to create a dynamic timeline with text, video and pictures, combined with geographical location using Google Maps. A popular tool for teaching history, myHistro simultaneously visualizes all three dimensions of a story: what, when and where.
There is no doubt that my 'story' is incomplete and it is hoped that this presentation will bring about more  'repetitions' not yet known to the author.

В статье рассматривается эволюция междисциплинарного направления, возникшего полстолетия назад на стыке истории и информатики. Это развитие можно представить как восхождение по спирали; дается характеристика каждого из пяти ее витков. Показано, как дискуссии, возникшие в процессе становления и развития исторической информатики, трансформировались в течение последних десяти лет в обсуждение вопросов о содержании и функциях Digital History — составляющей полидисциплинарной области Digital Humanities.
The evolution of the interdisciplinary approach, which arose half a century ago at the crossroads of history and computer science, is under consideration in the paper. This development can be seen as climbing the spiral the five turns of which are characterized. It is shown how the debate that arose in the process of formation and development of the historical information science (historical computing) was transformed over the last several years in the discussion on content and functions of the Digital History as a component of poly-disciplinary field of Digital Humanities. © http://history.jes.su/s207987840001263-8-1-en

"Compilation of 2113 artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations) of 912 identified artists of Great Britain and Ireland, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 197 pp.
With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography.
The catalogue is also available as paperback book ($14.00)  or as hardcover book (€26.09): see the link." https://sites.google.com/site/venusiconography/home/topical-catalogues/volume-5-1-the-british-and-irish-venus
Readers interested in the quantitative approach in art history are kindly invited to contact the author directly.

Compilation of 2636 artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations) of 728 identified artists of the Low Countries, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 202 pp. With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography. See further details in the link.
Available as paperback book ($15.00) or as hardcover book (€19.20).
Readers interested in the quantitative approach in art history are kindly invited to contact the author directly.

Compilation of 2997 artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations) of 977 identified French artists from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 194 pp. With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography. See further details in the link.
Available as paperback book ($15.00) or as hardbound book (€19.20). Readers interested in the quantitative approach in art history are kindly invited to contact the author directly.

"Topical catalogue of 3198 sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations of 1506 identified artists of Germany, Switzerland and Central-Europe, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 302 pp.  With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography. Further details in the link.
Available as paperback book ($20.00)  or as hardcover book (€34,12) . Readers interested in the quantitative approach in art history are kindly invited to contact the author directly.

Πρόλογος Το διεθνές ιστορικό και αρχαιολογικό συνέδριο «Νόμισμα / Κόσμημα: Χρήσεις-Διαδράσεις-Συμβολισμοί από την αρχαιότητα έως σήμερα» πραγματοποιήθηκε στην Ίο κατά το τριήμερο 26-28 Ιουνίου 2009 με πρωτοβουλία της Λυδίας Λίθου και σε συνεργασία με τον Δήμο Ίου. Σκοπός του συνεδρίου ήταν να φέρει στον ίδιο χώρο νομισματολόγους, αρχαιολόγους, ιστορικούς του κοσμήματος, φιλολόγους, λαογράφους, ιστορικούς της αρχαίας και νεότερης τέχνης, καθώς και συλλέκτες, με σκοπό την ανταλλαγή ιδεών και απόψεων γύρω από την διαχρονική σχέση νομίσματος και κοσμήματος. Καλύπτοντας ένα ευρύ χρονολογικό και θεματικό φάσμα, μελετητές από πολλές ευρωπαϊκές χώρες παρουσίασαν τα αποτελέσματα της έρευνάς τους και συζήτησαν τα πορίσματά τους με τους συναδέλφους τους, αλλά και το πολυπληθές ακροατήριο. Ο ομότιμος καθηγητής κλασικής αρχαιολογίας του Πανεπιστημίου της Οξφόρδης Sir John Boardman, παγκόσμια γνωστός, μεταξύ πολλών άλλων, και για τις εμβριθείς μελέτες του για την αρχαιοελληνική σφραγιδογλυφία, μας έκανε την τιμή, ως πρόεδρος του συνεδρίου, να κηρύξει την έναρξη και τη λήξη, συμμετέχοντας παράλληλα ενεργά στις εργασίες του. Θα θέλαμε να ευχαριστήσουμε όλους τους συγγραφείς για τις μελέτες και το φωτογραφικό υλικό που μας παραχώρησαν και να εκφράσουμε την ευγνωμοσύνη μας και τη χαρά για τη συνεργασία στους Νιώτες φίλους μας, Ξένη και Δημήτρη Αρτέμη, στον Δήμο Ίου και τον τότε δήμαρχό του, κ. Γιώργο Πουσσαίο για την στήριξη του εγχειρήματός μας και την αφοσίωσή του σε ζητήματα πολιτισμού.

Topical catalogue of 1371 sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations of 629 identified artists of of  the Eastern, Southern and Northern European Regions, from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 154 pp.
With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography.

This paper considers the so-called triumph of American art from the perspective of what Western Europeans could actually see and know of American art at the time. Relying on a database of exhibitions, purchases, and publications of American art in Western Europe from 1945 to 1970 created in the framework of ARTL@S, it reconstructs the precise chain of events and circulations that marked the dissemination and reception of American art in Europe. It consequently draws a more refined and complex understanding of postwar artistic exchanges out of the entangled historical perspectives of the European peripheries, which challenges the retrospectively dominating position of American Abstract Expressionism.

Compilation of 1840 artworks (sculptures, reliefs, paintings, frescoes, drawings, prints and illustrations) of 649 identified Italian artists from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. 156pp. With an Index of Artists, a Directory of Owners and an extensive Bibliography. See further details in the link.
Available as paperback book($ 10.92) or as hardcover book (€ 12.00). Readers interested in the quantitative approach in art history are kindly invited to contact the author directly.

Comment expliquer le succès – ou l’échec – de tel ou tel artiste, ou de tel ou tel objet ? S’appuyant sur les archives des commissaires-priseurs, cet ouvrage pousse la porte des ventes aux enchères publiques à Paris et décompose les rouages du marché de l’art entre 1830 et 1939.

Part I of a slide presentation about the original and its many repetitions till 1899, from my post of August 8, 2014 'Déjà-vu (2): repetitions of TIZIANO's 'Amor sacro e Amor profano''
http://kbender.blogspot.be/2014/08/deja-vu-2-repetitions-of-tizianos-amor.html

Prosopography investigates the common characteristics of a historical group, whose individual biographies may (or may not) be untraceable, by means of a collective study of their lives, in multiple career-line analysis.
Why not use collective biography in art historical research, despite - or even, because of - art history's general prejudice for individual exception? This paper presents Prosopography as a very valuable technique for art history, and among others, for studying modern art. It insists on the relevance of biographical data contained  in Exhibition catalogues, a source too little explored by art historians in a quantitative and statistical way. I propose to examine what prosopographic approaches can say about "intouchable" art-historical concepts that supposedly cannot be approached with numbers: the artwork, the genious, and the style.

With reference to the concept of distant reading in literary history, distant viewing is a valuable analogy for a quantitative approach to art history. In this case study of artistic productivity eight samples are analysed, extracted from a digital thematic research collection about the iconography of Aphrodite/Venus from the Middle Ages to Modern Times. The result is an empirical finding of regularity never before highlighted in art history. The artistic productivity fits perfectly the distribution known as Lotka’s law of scientific productivity in bibliographic science. Issues of collecting and sampling are discussed and the meaning of this empirical finding is hinted. Suggestions for future research are made.

Using the methods of the sociology of art, that of cultural transfers, and the results of analysis of a data base derived from exhibition catalogues (1850-1914), this work retraces the international strategies Parisian avant-gardes employed to gain recognition, from Courbet and the Realists to Picasso, Delaunay, or Duchamp, and the cubists.

A post  of August 19, 2016, four years after a first one ‘Digital Art History: a brave report and a new project’ and two years after a second one ‘Digital Art History: a sequel and a book review’. Hubertus Kohle, Professor of Art History, presents eight arguments for the innovative potential of
Digital Art History and Max Marmor, President of the Kress Foundation which sponsors projects, responds. The post focuses on the prototype PHAROS Art Research Database. In an exercise with the data of PHAROS it is shown that the relative 'loss' of paintings depicting 'Venus' (ca 50%) is constant from the 15th to the 18th century.

Post of August 3, 2012. There is much talk nowadays about the digital age, digital humanities and digital art history. Obviously, the word digital  underwent a semantic shift: it means literally numerical, but it got the general meaning 'related to the new media technologies'. The scientific background for this digital turn is not recent. When computers became available in the 195Os and the understanding of informational and communication systems became important, many related concepts were coined with the general word cybernetics.
The word cybernetic is utterly more meaningful than digital. It seemed almost forgotten.
A cybernetic approach to art might help to understand the creation of art, its evolution and its impact on society.
The purpose of this post is to explore the link between cybernetics and art history and reference is made to several of former posts to underpin this vision.

NOTA : Here you can download the first half of the book, with all metholodogical articles (from page 1 to page 190). See the file !

Parler de chiffres en histoire de l’art est souvent malvenu, car cela semble considérer que l’on pourrait codifier des données dont on aime à penser qu’elles relèvent de l’immesurable, de l’insondable, du spirituel : « On ne met pas la beauté en boîte. » Mais pourquoi ? On met bien les tableaux dans des cadres, sur des murs et dans des musées, et on sait bien aussi que les œuvres d’art vivent d’abord par leur rang dans un classement élaboré depuis des siècles, dont les musées et les histoires de l’art, mais surtout le marché, sont les meilleurs comptables.
Cette question préoccupait depuis plusieurs années les participants du séminaire « Art et Mesure », tenu à l’École normale supérieure, à l’Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, depuis 2006 : aucun n’aurait jugé honnête de ne pas reconnaître ce qu’apportait l’approche quantitative à ses recherches – et d’abord la constitution d’une base de données rigoureuse. Les premiers travaux ayant abouti à un numéro spécial de la revue Histoire et Mesure (déc. 2008), le présent volume va plus loin : il réunit, outre des historiens, des économistes, des sociologues, des mathématiciens, des statisticiens. Il se veut un outil de travail pour les historiens de l’art qui souhaiteraient, en cohérence avec les questions suscitées par leur objet de recherche, passer par l’analyse quantitative, qu’elle soit très simple ou plus raffinée.
Les articles qu’il contient proposent, à partir des exemples les plus divers, une approche très méthodique de l’analyse quantitative, qui vise d’abord à faire comprendre ce qu’est une base de données, comment il faut la construire et ce qu’elle peut apporter. Mais on a veillé à ce que les auteurs ne se dérobent pas à la question heuristique des effets du chiffre sur l’interprétation des arts…
L’ouvrage s’articule ainsi en trois grandes parties : « L’approche quantitative est-elle utile à l’histoire de l’art ? », « De la sociologie à l’histoire de l’art » et « Défis pour l’approche métrique ». Indispensable à la formation des spécialistes de l’histoire de l’art, il ne veut cependant pas les faire renoncer à l’originalité de leurs approches : la connaissance de l’histoire des styles et des formes ; le désir de comprendre les arts sans les déconnecter de leurs époques, tout en gardant la conscience de leur rayonnement jusqu’à nos jours ; l’intérêt jamais démenti pour la dimension matérielle des objets qu’ils étudient, pour la manière dont ils ont été faits, et pour la philosophie ou l’esthétique qui en a inspiré la création ; l’amour des belles choses, et le désir de comprendre pourquoi on les tint ou on les tient pour belles ; et plus généralement une curiosité affirmée pour l’intimité : celle des artistes, celle des amateurs, celle des contemplateurs, comme celle qui s’instaure, on ne sait comment, entre un objet et celui qui l’apprécie.

"The paper analyses quantitatively three large data sets of artworks (7473 in total) and their artists (2374 in total) of the Low Countries, of France and of Italy from the 16th century to the present time. The time series analysis shows a clear shift of the peak production from the 16th century in Italy to the 17th century in the Low Countries and the 18th century in France.

Topics ‘Venus and Cupid’ and ‘Venus and Adonis’ are among the most popular ones in Italy and France during different periods, but ‘Venus and Adonis’ is definitely the most popular topic in the Low Countries from 1600 to 1799.

A ranking of the ten most productive artists in each region reveals that the artists of the Low Countries were more productive than their colleagues in France, and those in France more than the artists in Italy.

The productivity of artists follows in this case study exactly the formula of Lotka, known as the law of scientific productivity: 60% of all artists in the samples create only one Venus-artwork."

The alternative “centre‐periphery” is essential to the myth of modern art and its historiography. Even though Postcolonial studies have denounced the implications of such geopolitical hierarchies, as long as our objects remain centred on one capital city and within national boundaries, it will be difficult to escape the hierarchical paradigm that makes Paris and New York the successive capital cities of Modernism. This paper highlights how approaches focusing on different scales of analysis—from the quantitative and geographic to the monographic—challenge the supposed centrality of Paris through 1945.

L’alternative « centre/périphéries » est essentielle au mythe de l’art moderne, comme à son historiographie. Si les études postcoloniales en dénoncent les implications, tant que les objets d’étude restent centrés sur une capitale et un cadre national, il reste difficile de sortir du paradigme hiérarchique qui a fait de Paris et New York, les capitales successives de la modernité. Cet article remet en cause la prétendue centralité de Paris jusqu’en 1945 à partir d’approches à plusieurs échelles, du quantitatif et du géographique au monographique.

Saint-Raymond, Léa, 2015, "Félix Ziem's account book (1849-1883)", http://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZFZIMD, Harvard Dataverse, V1

Félix Ziem (1821-1911) was one of the wealthiest painters of the nineteenth century in France. Recognized as the “painter of Venice”, he kept accounts during more than thirty years, from 1849 to 1883. The account book is an 86 page notebook curated at the Musée Ziem in Martigues. For an art historian, such a source is all the more valuable as it is unusual, especially for the primary art market.

In this third post of December 13, 2015 about visualizing art historical data, we selected VOSviewer with subtitle 'Visualizing scientific landscapes', a software tool developed at the University of Leiden. The tool can be downloaded free of charge but it can also be used directly on the web and only two text files - one map.txt and one network.txt - are needed to start. 
VOSviewer is demonstrated in this post for a network of 322 artists: 84 Italian CREATORS (labeled in upper case) and their 238 Imitators (labeled in lower case) from all over Europe. You can also view two maps directly in VOSviewer and play around with all the functionalities.

Diversas novas tendências filosóficas nos estimulam a rever as metodologias em história da arte no sentido de descolonizar a mais poderosa de suas narrativas: o cânone modernista. Com este fim, o presente artigo explora como as abordagens quantitativas, cartográficas e estatísticas, combinadas com a utilização de outras abordagens mais tradicionais, podem nos ajudar a reconsiderar as hierarquias existentes no campo da história da arte. Utilizado geralmente para analisar grandes corpos de fontes similares, especialmente catálogos de exposições e periódicos, em longos períodos de tempo e em escalas globais, “o olhar distante” é útil para a construção de uma narrativa coerente e global, presente nas geopolíticas modernistas em suas dimensões sociais, quando a complexidade é restaurada e a agência das circulações artísticas encontra seu lugar.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.11606/issn.2316-901X.v0i67p17-37

*May 31, 2017 "Distant Viewing (8): two love stories compared among sister-arts"
*March 13, 2017 "Distant Viewing (7): Without food and drink, love grows cold"
*February 21, 2017 "Distant Viewing (6): Make love, not war"
*December 11, 2016 "Distant Viewing (5): Love, War and Propaganda"
*November 19, 2016 "Distant Viewing (4): Love and Death"
*September 14, 2016 'Distant Viewing (3): Beauties and their peeping toms'
*July 21, 2016 "Distant Viewing (2): Two well-known beauties, naked and shameless, and their dummies"
*June 30, 2016 "Distant Viewing (1): 'Love disarmed', an example of moralizing mythography"

In this second post of November 20, 2015  about visualizing art historical data, we selected PALLADIO, a simple-to-use web-based tool for visualization of network data, also used by the Getty Research Institute for their art market data (see PART I). Four figures demonstrate the possibilities, but also the visual limitations, of PALLADIO with a selected dataset of 80 Italian Creators and their 171 Imitators from eight different countries.
Simple measures of association or connectivity between Creators and their Imitators, and of the international dispersion of Imitators are proposed. Such measures may be helpful for comparing datasets or subsets.
Note that the web-post features also the update in 'real time' of the Google Sheet of the dataset - a work in progress, in this transcript only shown in a static picture. Interested readers are welcome to view, comment or collaborate on the Google Sheet.