Age and the Quality of Work: The Case of Modern American Painters

Psychologists have found that the age at which successful practitioners typically do their best work varies across professions, but they have not considered whether these peak ages change over time, as economic models suggest they might. Using auction records, we estimate the relationship between artists’ ages and the value of their paintings for two successive cohorts of leading modern American painters: de Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, and others born during 1900–1920 and Frank Stella, Warhol, and others born during 1921–40. We find that a substantial decline occurred over time in the age at which these artists produced their most valuable—and most important—work and argue that this was caused by a shift in the nature of the demand for modern art during the 1950s.