The New York Times separately credits the photographer of the tower, the photographer of the trees and the photographer of the vulture, as well as the "illustrator" who glued them all together on a colored background.
Let's face it, this picture required only limited artistic choices: which photo of a vulture to pick from the internet? Whether to paste that cupola a little further to the
left or the right? How far to push the color balance slider? These are the art choices of decoupage.
I welcome the computer as an artistic tool when it enhances an artist's expressive range. Even added efficiency is a welcome contribution. But that's not what's happening here. A capable illustrator using traditional materials could've completed this job in a day.
Why is so much illustration like this today? It fills its allotted space just fine, but what is there to admire about the talents required for this kind of image? Are we seeing creative responses to genuine artistic challenges? Are we witnessing the quirks or eccentricities of the human imagination? Are there any manifestations of admirable manual skill or dexterity or taste?
The golden age of illustration-- a glorious century in the history of art-- was only made possible by new technologies, but ultimately the age was ushered out again by newer technologies, more efficient but less hospitable to the artistic imagination.
The golden age began when high quality reproduction, new
kinds of paper, better methods of printing and distribution encouraged unprecedented enthusiasm for images. These innovations spawned a veritable Cambrian explosion, with hundreds of glossy full
color magazines creating an unprecedented platform for illustrations. On this new platform, artistic quality was still tested by what I consider a higher set of artistic challenges:
- Artists had to master the hydrology of liquid media (learning to control liquid, but not too much).
- Artists had to take tincture from minerals in the ground and wrestle with their obdurate molecules to transform them into the appearance of totally unlike substances: water, clouds, organic matter, light
- Artists had to master the physical gestures of art-- impulses that started with the human nervous system and found expression through the wrist, elbow or even the shoulder (as opposed to the touchpad or keyboard).
- Because they were wrestling with physical media in the physical world, artists had to risk starting over if a picture didn't work out because the consequences of a failure couldn't be contained in a separate Photoshop layer. This gives different meaning to an artist's willingness to gamble and to the psychology of maintaining high standards.
The golden age illustrators were working in the prime medium of their day.
ReplyDeleteIt would be more accurate to compare them with graphics teams working on Pixar films than with millions of blog decorators, who have to keep up with a constant rolling release cycle.
Love the duplicated palm tree. Lots of work there. How to make bland with the most steps possible.
ReplyDeletePeople just don't give a shit about illustration on magazine covers anymore.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's just fine, that happens.
Illustration lives on elsewhere.
Being annoyed by "degenerate" art is really just another way of being old and yelling at clouds.
Hi David
ReplyDeleteThis recently article by Peter Suderman on the latest reincarnation of Star Wars seems pertinent to your post.
"If Skywalker reveals anything about the world around it, it's that we are living through an era of mismanagement and lack of vision, of dead-end rehashing, on-screen and off. (Even I have made a version of this argument before.) It's time for those who brought us to this historically low point to finally face some consequences."
https://reason.com/2019/12/19/the-rise-of-skywalker-shows-its-time-for-j-j-abrams-to-be-impeached-from-star-wars/
David,
ReplyDeleteThe thrust of your argument seems to be that the waywardness of physical media is the proving ground that nurtures the creative powers. If this is the case then I would have to disagree. Whilst watchfulness of the suggestive possibilities of fluid media for solutions to the forms of our imaginings is a vital part of artistic mastery, it is not the same thing as imagination itself. The mistaken belief that aesthetic potency is fundamentally reliant on the technical means to communicate it is, in my view, largely responsible for the kind of sterile image making you have exampled in this post.
Richard-- I'd be happy to compare the animation art of Pinocchio or Fantasia with the digital animation art of Pixar and other studios in the 21st century; I view that as more of an apples-to-apples comparison. That kind of comparison shows that computers can be either a help or a hindrance. For example, if you compare a field of flowers from Fantasia with a field of flowers from The Lorax, a 3D digital animated feature film, the latter is able to show every blade of grass and every flower petal on thousands of petals, but it has none of the artistic quality or charm of the hand drawn animation cels. If you think that computer animation is the "prime medium of our day," then why is the 2015 digital Peanuts Movie still so bad in comparison to Charles Schulz' pen and ink drawings that appeared in comic pages at the same time?
ReplyDeleteFoggie 32-- It does make you wonder...
Jan-- A most interesting position. When you say, "illustration lives on elsewhere," I'd love to know where you have in mind. Illustration has always occupied many venues-- comic strips, advertisements, books, posters, magazines, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, etc. If you think the real action has moved somewhere else, it would be exciting to hear where. You say "People just don't give a shit about illustration on magazine covers anymore" which I assume means that you personally don't give a shit about illustration on magazine covers. What kind of illustration do you give a shit about, and what you think about its quality?
I'm also not sure what you mean by "degenerate art." That term has a specific historical meaning, but that meaning seems to have nothing to do with anything we're discussing here. Are you introducing a new theme, and if so, can you explain?
Finally, I've never heard of old people yelling at clouds. I've heard of them yelling at gadgets, teenagers, changing times, noise, traffic, but never clouds. Are you offering clouds as a metaphor for something/
Tom-- I agree with much of your point; I don't know how Suderman proposes that "those who brought us to this historically low point" should face some consequences, but I wouldn't feel bad to see it happen.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I'd go so far to say that we're in an entire "era" of "mismanagement and lack of vision, of dead-end rehashing" but I would agree there is an abundance of it. I attribute part of this to the almost irresistible temptations of our new technologies, especially for people who already love images. Digital media enable us to scoop up up all kinds of pre-existing materials, collateral content, colors, effects and toss them in the shopping cart with very little difficult creative work. As some have said, "curation, not creation."
chris bennett wrote: "The mistaken belief that aesthetic potency is fundamentally reliant on the technical means to communicate it is, in my view, largely responsible for the kind of sterile image making you have exampled..."
I agree with you that this is a major factor. I don't want to dismiss the importance of the technical means to communicate art, because I think it's indisputable that the technical means to reproduce and distribute art was the genesis of the great century of illustration. And many technical developments, properly wielded, have been turning points in the history of art-- for example the invention of oil paint, or the invention of the piano.
I also think that there is some legitimacy to the argument that "the waywardness of physical media is [a] proving ground that nurtures the creative powers." I didn't intend it as straightforwardly as you present it here; I just meant that as you pay your dues with physical media, you learn a lot of lessons on your way to the finished picture. You take the long road around and find yourself in places you did not intend to go; you are physically and psychologically tested by the frustrations of the media. I'm not at all suggesting that we should make things artificially difficult for ourselves. We are not ascetic medieval monks seeking spiritual elevation through mortification of the flesh. I'm just saying that before we get too giddy about the technical convenience of digital media, we should take a hard look at the quality of photo-illustration and similar current art and ask ourselves whether we have lost something-- perhaps the most important thing-- in the process.
I'm just saying that before we get too giddy about the technical convenience of digital media, we should take a hard look at the quality of photo-illustration and similar current art and ask ourselves whether we have lost something-- perhaps the most important thing-- in the process.
ReplyDeleteWell, in my view, as 'photo-illustration' is little more than collage with photographs the authoring of the images produced is restricted to the juxtaposition of found objects. And as such the 'most important thing' lost is the sense of continuous imaginative flux, in other words; the sustainment of belief.
'Old man yells at cloud' is a meme taken from a visual joke on the Simpsons. Old Abe Simpson used in the meme, one supposes as a general stand in for old people complaining about things of no importance and that they have no control over.
ReplyDeleteWhere have all the geniuses gone? Are they lost, invisible in the media soup? Or are they not there at all?
ReplyDeleteMarc Kingsland-- Thanks for the help with old men yelling at clouds. l'm friends with one of the writers of the Simpsons but I stopped watching the show years ago after I felt that I'd "got it." I'll have to have a chat with him.
ReplyDeleteAs for where all the geniuses have gone... I think I've written about some truly superb artists here-- Fowkes, Cuneo, Fluharty, Hale, Drucker, Payne and a dozen more. And we've recently lost some true greats who've left their mark: Ronald Searle, Fuchs, Frazetta, etc. But today the trajectory clearly seems to be for the bland and expeditious. Who knows why? Lack of attention from a less educated, less appreciative audience? Too many distractions from fast moving competing media? Certainly there is no equivalent of a Saturday Evening Post creating a nationwide platform where an artist such as Norman Rockwell can be given months to work on a single cover, and 50 years to build a legend.
“ the latter is able to show every blade of grass and every flower petal on thousands of petals, but it has none of the artistic quality or charm of the hand drawn animation cels”
ReplyDeleteWhile Scooby Doo, the Flintstones and the Jetsons were painted on cellulose, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and The Garden of Words were all created on the Toonz software — obviously digitally animated films are better, right? We can both pick and choose extreme examples to set up false dichotomies around media all day. It would appear to me that decline in animation had more to do with squash and stretch going out of style, that that sort of animation was dead long before the time the 3D Lorax came around.
My point about the NYTs illustration isn’t about which medium is preferable, but that if you’re comparing huge budget illustrations from the golden age masters to $500 spot illustrations by nobodies you haven’t proven anything. There are fantastic illustrators today working in digital media. They’re mostly working as concept artists on the primary medium of the day.
We don’t have an apples for big budget finished illustration, but you could at least make the comparison between other artists making an actual living at the trade, instead of the photoshop work of rich kids in NYC who couldn’t actually afford to live there if their family money dried up.
In short, if you want to rail on modern illustrators, and hold them up against the best working illustrator of the past, why don’t you compare serious modern working illustrators?
ReplyDeleteIf I hear you rail on idiots like Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel or some nobody from the NYTs editorial again without even mentioning that Kim Jung Gi exists I may barf.
You said: “But today the trajectory clearly seems to be for the bland and expeditious. Who knows why?”
ReplyDeletePerhaps what Balastar Gracian said about the short-lived appreciation of novelty may be instructive:
“Make use of the Novelty of your Position;
for men are valued while they are new. Novelty pleases all because it is uncommon, taste is refreshed, and a brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence. Ability wears away by use and becomes old. However, know that the glory of novelty is short-lived: after four days respect is gone. Accordingly, learn to utilize the first fruits of appreciation, and seize during the rapid passage of applause all that can be put to use. For once the heat of novelty over, the passion cools and the appreciation of novelty is exchanged for satiety at the customary: believe that all has its season, which soon passes.”
“Four days” of respect?!
Yikes!
Mediocrity will eventually weigh more in the balance, novelty and skill is appreciated only briefly, and geniuses have to struggle to be seen and remembered. Makes sense for the old men to yell at the dull clouds, for perhaps they best remember the stars and the sundogs.
chris bennett wrote: "Well, in my view, as 'photo-illustration' is little more than collage with photographs the authoring of the images produced is restricted to the juxtaposition of found objects."
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. Despite that depressing fact, photo-illustration is all over the place (perhaps for economic reasons and perhaps because no one focuses much on illustration now). There's also a lot of less conspicuous work that I'd call semi-photo-illustration-- art where photography or other automated aides play a far more significant role than photo reference used to play in the 1950s. These tools all help flatten out and minimize the inefficiencies of what you describe as "continuous imaginative flux."
Richard wrote: "We can both pick and choose extreme examples to set up false dichotomies around media all day."
I agree. That's a constant danger whenever one tries to encapsulate big topics in small snippets such as blog posts. What one includes or leaves out, and how much one extrapolates from a single example, are ripe for bias and misuse. I try to be mindful of that fact, and write responsibly here but I'm sure I've strayed from the path several times over the years. On the subject of Chris Ware who you mention, I believe I stopped posting about him years ago for that exact reason; I didn't want to extrapolate too much from one example. If I slipped more recently than that I apologize.
As for your larger point, I do feel that the sample illustration I show here is emblematic of a major trend in illustration today. I picked this particular example because I thought crediting four people for such a thin piece of work was hilarious. But I could have easily picked 50 other examples where information technologies added lifelessness and shallowness to the artistic process. I don't think it is an "extreme" example or an unfair message.
When it comes to animation, I'm not as enthralled by Miyazaki as I know many others are. Visually I prefer the Thief and the Cobbler or Coraline. When it comes to digital animation, I think it's hard to get better than the first half of Wall-E and I think Finding Nemo is a joy. But animation is a huge topic, and not fit to be treated like the tail on this other conversation in the comment section here. It would be more manageable to thrash it out in a whole series devoted to animation.
I don't think I am "comparing huge budget illustrations from the golden age masters to $500 spot illustrations by nobodies." I would make the same claim about 50 of the sketches and small spot illustrations that I've touted on this blog as "lovely drawings" by Fawcett, Briggs, Beckhoff, Fluharty, Cuneo, Sickles, Fuchs, Steig, Blechman, Peak, Ciardello, Searle, Coker, Virgona, Steinberg, Holland, etc. I would gladly pit the quick drawings by the above artists against the illustration shown here. I also think a full page full color illustration in the NYT magazine is a pretty prestigious spot, and I hope these creators got paid more than $500.
Finally, I think Kim Jung Gi presents an interesting case. I agree he is an excellent draftsman; I've watched him work up close and I have his inscribed books. But he is primarily known for his magic trick of drawing complex scenarios without a pencil or preliminary sketch. Technically dazzling yes but I personally would not put him in the same artistic league with most of the talents I've listed above.
> Technically dazzling yes but I personally would not put him in the same artistic league with most of the talents I've listed above.
ReplyDeleteGreat, now we’re getting somewhere.
Between yourself and Kev we have before us perhaps the two best representatives of one of the major future schools of art criticism.
Don’t waste your time reminding us that Ravel is better than Jay-Z this week, and Mahler is better than Rihanna next week.
Does Kim Jung Gi have something to offer by way of comparison? How about Jacob Collins? Katsuhiro Otomo is less important than Briggs? Why is that? Where does Noah Bradley fit into your pantheon?
Let’s hear the real stuff — I say it’s time to extend your brave hand to the big questions in art!
What illustrators get paid isn't determined by prestige but by how much their clients think their....images are worth. I don't think NYT VALUES illustration that much based on what I've seen in recent years so I don't see why they would pay significantly more than what an illustator can get from a non-elite client
ReplyDeleteIn addition to that, good illustrations don't motivate readers to read the newspaper and purchase the products advertised in it, so they are a cost center, something that needs to be minimized.
Artists are told to focus networking instead of their skills because "it's not what you know, but who you know" because they are told it is their likeability that will affect whether they can produce moving work.
I'm also not sure what you mean by "degenerate art." That term has a specific historical meaning, but that meaning seems to have nothing to do with anything we're discussing here
Jews were minimally involved in the visual arts in the West, until the industrial age. The accusation of degenerate art is that they--and other people who embraced Modernism intentionally produced art to destroy standards and promote attitudes and behaviors that they hoped would destroy all tradition and cultures of European countries and replace it with Modern values customs.
Looking at the behavior of many large corporations, I'd say there is a large overlap between
degenerate art i.e. art influenced by modernism and postmodernism and the bottom line. Art made for shock value and to subvert social norms and require less skill seems to be something readily accepted by capitalists.
People valuing art and enjoying it are simply traditions that needed to be destroyed so we can progress as a species.
An old man complaining about degenerate art is just a bigoted white man who is upset that other people are allowed to define art on their own terms.
ReplyDelete"We don’t have an apples for big budget finished illustration, but you could at least make the comparison between other artists making an actual living at the trade, instead of the photoshop work of rich kids in NYC who couldn’t actually afford to live there if their family money dried up."
Early 20th century illustration was an aberration in the history of art in human civilization. Art, has historically been the province of rich kids who were almost always "starving" (being supported by other rich people )The difference between now and 1500 a.d. or 3000 b.c is that there were clear standards on what art was and wasn't. The ruling class held its own members to artistic standards when producing art. Artistic standards are decried today as a form of social exclusion.
Being able to afford the high rent or having certain political views is not seen as a form of exclusion. The landlords , and galleries will tell you it's not their fault that certain barriers exist, it's the fault of late-stage capitalism.
Wealth and IQ are not, as the Marxists would tell you, independent variables.
ReplyDeleteA normal IQ falls between 85 and 110. Only about 1% of the population has an IQ even above 135.
The ability to obtain and retain wealth selects for intelligence, such that the majority of high IQ people end up wealthy barring extenuating illnesses. Therefore, if Art Genius selects from the same population of high IQ people, it’s rather likely they will come from wealth ignoring all other variables. It’s not a bug in “late stage capitalism” that smart people end up wealthy (and that wealthy people produce smart offspring), it’s a feature.
" It would appear to me that decline in animation had more to do with squash and stretch going out of style, that that sort of animation was dead long before the time the 3D Lorax came around." The decline in animation had nothing to do with squash and stretch going out of style" since 3d animation is sometimes highly stylized. It has everything to do with 3d animation being perceived as CHEAPER.
ReplyDelete3D animation like regular animation still requires a lot of labor but it can be done with fewer people.
With illustration and graphic design, using computers gives clients more control over the finished product while at the same time allowing more people to consider themselves professional illustrators or professional graphic designers because they have software proficiency. This increase in the supply of labor while demand is stagnant or shrinks bringing wages down for professional illustrators and graphic designers. Computer technology functions in a similar way that outsourcing or extensive immigration functions-- in the larger economy it keeps labor costs from rising.
"Therefore, if Art Genius selects from the same population of high IQ people, it’s rather likely they will come from wealth ignoring all other variables"
You are jumping to far many conclusions.
#1, ART GENIUS is no longer being selected for in the various art markets.
It's all about hitting the deadlines and parroting the ruling class party lines.
> Genius is no longer being selected for in the various art markets.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, if they were smarter wouldn’t they realize that their chosen artform is garbage?
Well no, not necessarily. Being intelligent doesn’t mean that you’ll think critically about your culture or place within it. There are thousands of world class geniuses busily wasting their lives becoming top World of Warcraft players.
Helen Frankenthaler or Jean-Michel Basquiat may leave something to be desired when compared to Michelangelo (who no doubt had an IQ pushing 200), but I suspect that they were geniuses in their own right, if of a lesser variety. It's hard to get famous, even selling snake oil, if you aren't terribly intelligent.
ReplyDeleteFame has nothing to do with intelligence. One can be a great artist with average intelligence. Someone who has high aptitude in one subject is not going to be above average at all tasks.
I'm afraid you're falling for the marketing. Jean-Michel Basquiat is NOT a genius art art-making. It's just that the critics have made that a reality by constantly saying that he is.
Richard: "Does Kim Jung Gi have something to offer by way of comparison?"
ReplyDeleteHe's clearly a phenomenal talent with an incredible ability to draw from his imagination, without the need for any photo-ref. But the endless dioramas of animals, sci-fi whimsey, hardware fetishism and soft-core babes gets boring very quickly, and seems to have nothing to say. There's an arrested adolescent, stoner, masturbatory quality to it all.
Much of good illustration survives on the fringes, where the geeks and freaks roam.
ReplyDeleteI have also long wanted to read David's thoughts on various 'modern' illustrators and the like. Otomo (Katsuhiro and now his son Shohei, who is an excellent draughtsman), Giger, Moebius, Katsuya Terada, James Jean, etc. I was surprised and pleased to see articles on Matt Muharin (an actual talented photo illustrator), Ashley Wood, Phil Hale, and Tomer Hanuka. And this is the place where I discovered Thomas Fluharty, Carter Goodrich, and others.
ReplyDeleteToday's geeks and freaks are supporting the abysmal good illustration and worse yet, they have enough support from the elite to make it deem "good".
" But the endless dioramas of animals, sci-fi whimsey, hardware fetishism and soft-core babes gets boring very quickly, and seems to have nothing to say. There's an arrested adolescent, stoner, masturbatory quality to it all. "
Just because you can't relate to the male gaze doesn't mean it's bad.
Sounds like you would be more happy with agitprop art, which there is plenty of.
There are plenty of artists promoting some kind of "-ism" or "pride" or "power to this group".
Or perhaps,you have a more female view of the world, which in case I would recommend the New Yorker or Noelle Stevenson.
or perhaps 99% of what is considered "art" these days.
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-15-emerging-illustrators-art-lover
If anything, one has to try very hard to find art made by contemporary artists that
have an incredible ability to draw from his imagination, without the need for any photo-ref , who produce an endless dioramas of animals, sci-fi whimsey, hardware fetishism and soft-core babe, and seems to have nothing to say and has a an arrested adolescent, stoner, masturbatory quality to it all.
Just about every single supporter of the arts (the commercial arts included) has condemned this kind of art .
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete> “ endless dioramas of animals, sci-fi whimsey, hardware fetishism and soft-core babes gets boring very quickly”
ReplyDeleteI agree wholeheartedly (except about the soft core babes part.) I’m personally much more interested in his work in historical Asian scenes, and his fantastic depictions of Shinto/Animism. Unfortunately he’s done much less of that lately.
That said, part of what I like about this blog is that we can discuss fantastic artists who paint and draw garbage. That’s most of what we do here. I think he fits well into the pantheon of artists who do extremely low subjects extremely well. The museums have enough artists who do good subjects poorly, and artists who do good subjects well seem to be almost entirely nonexistent in the last 100 years.
“One can be a great artist with average intelligence. Someone who has high aptitude in one subject is not going to be above average at all tasks.”
ReplyDeleteMy experience doesn’t bear that out at all. I’ve found most skilled artists are accomplished in a number of other intellectual pursuits as well. I’m not sure I know of any great artists who appear to have no other signs of intelligence.
That should be expected — some level of mastery of anatomy, optics, perspective, acting, cloth physics, chaotic systems like smoke, architecture, biology, and many many other fields is required to be even a remotely skilled illustrator. To say nothing of the intelligence required to master the media itself, gesture, composition, etc. More than perhaps any other skill, it’s truly multidisciplinary. You have to be a very sharp generalist to make even okay art.
And that’s not just true of art, but of many intellectually demanding tasks. The historians I know are great pianists, or skilled in math, or finance. The sculptors are also programmers. And so on.
General Intelligence is real. Smart people are almost never smart in just one thing (except Ben Carson, but the exception proves the rule).
The current research on this suggests that there’s a threshold at about 120 IQ to be able to think at all creatively. I suspect that were we to raise the requirements to be a good artist, that general intelligence threshold would rise significantly also.
Getting good at art is mentally challenging. A dumb person can practice painting their whole life and they’ll never get any good. The limiting factor, I believe, is the quality of the mind, not the amount of time spent doing it.
As for whether Basquiat and other modern artists had high IQs, we’ll have to agree to disagree. I don’t think the fact that their pictures are meaningless and degenerate means that those pictures are also easy to make. It’s hard to make really good designs that speak to people and get famous for doing so.
I’ve met hundreds of stupid people who TRY to make pictures like Basquiat, Twombly, or Frankenthaler, but I’ve not yet met a single stupid person who could. The accomplished modern artists I know, even though I hate their work, are still themselves as smart or smarter than the average MIT or Harvard educated programmers I work with.
Laurence,
ReplyDeleteDo you like Steve Huston?
Richard,
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with his work.
Only a very few IQ tests contain even a few questions that get at the kind of intelligence involved in art making. I've known brilliant artists who are barely verbal, barely literate, and couldn't sit still long enough to take an IQ test, let alone care about it. The fact is, no brilliant artists have ever been involved in creating IQ tests. Mainly because there are no brilliant artists (or even artists) in the relevant academic or research fields. These are different worlds with different interests and wholly different languages and modes of thought. (Also because modernists and then postmodernists grabbed academia and held on with all their might... and their aesthetic theories are as painfully deficient as their talents.) I don't put any stock in the field's ability to capture the full range of intellectual variation.
ReplyDeletethe majority of high IQ people end up wealthy barring extenuating illnesses.
If anybody thinks there is a necessary connection between IQ and moneymaking, I'd advise them to attend a few months' worth of Mensa meetings. And as far as IQ and creativity, my experience with Mensa was that 'creativity' consisted of repeating Monty Python lines and making inside jokes of the "you had to be there" variety. Or making easy dumb jokes at the expense of normies.
And while it surely true that people in the average IQ range (90 - 110) are going to fail at a whole host of candlepower intensive endeavors, there's nobody more dangerous than a 120-130 IQ person who has developed their sense of self amid 90-110 IQ people. Which is just why there are so many ARRRRGHnorant (ignorant + arrogant) people. It's come to the point that I don't trust any 'intellectual' that doesn't engineer and build physical objects... because only in that consequence-soaked feedback loop between direct experience and the understanding does sanity and humility occur.
I've also met brilliant chess bums galore. And I knew two phd candidates in advanced math who took a decade to finish their dissertations because they tried to become professional Texas Hold'em players. I've known brilliant progressive lawyers barely scraping by because they were consumed by political activism. And so on. Cults are filled with lost but 'high IQ' people.
This points to the main problem with the relationship between IQ and success in the world; the intellect is a modelling system; and not all modelling systems do good or useful work. It is supremely difficult to actually model the world in the mind with any sufficiency; thus most intellectualism is just a kind of egoistic escapism; castles in the sky to dream and ponder and interesting but irrelevant games to win handily.
Intellectuals get addicted to dopamine hits from solving game-like problems all day long. Which is surely why "fail forward fast" works better as a learning model for life than "contemplate the question in solitude." Most intellectuals, it seems safe to say, don't have either the hard-won experience or the epistemological humility to sense the deficiencies in their internal models. Even if its costs them money on a daily basis.
Kim Jung Gi is a fascinating savant. Amazing drawing ability. But he is somewhat like Robert Fawcett to me in his utter fixation on linearity and descriptiveness. Even moreso than Fawcett, KJG's intellection completely overwhelms any other artistic concerns; including those conceptual, compositional, and gestalt concerns which, since the beginning, have been widely and I think rightly considered paramount in importance in the Arts. Which is just why I can't remember a single image of his. It is not the product of synthetic imagination; it doesn't function as visual song. All I recall is bits.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the subject of the New York Times, and other media gatekeepers and tastemakers and 'news' purveyors, there isn't language adequate to explain and describe their failings as cultural stewards. They never should have had the reigns in the first place. But text is a hell of a drug.
> I've known brilliant artists who are barely verbal, barely literate, and couldn't sit still long enough to take an IQ test, let alone care about it.
ReplyDeleteIQ is the best of the measures for general intelligence, but it is by no means a perfect system. IQ is By no means the ideal metric for artistic ability, but that general intelligence is real, and general intelligence and artistic aptitude and strongly related.
I agree that Mensa members are a miserable class of people. Intelligence and good sense are weakly correlated, if at all. Being intelligent won’t do the work to get you rich, but I believe it’s a prerequisite.
Being intelligent won’t do the work to get you rich, but I believe it’s a prerequisite.
ReplyDeletethe majority of high IQ people end up wealthy barring extenuating illnesses.
The data on this stuff is really sparse, despite the surety and conclusiveness of the various articles readily available on the net. Media outlets prefer eyeballs to epistemology, and so junk science and bad statistical claims win the day every day.
Afaict, to the extent this has been studied, a "moderately positive" .5 correlation between IQ and relative wealth was found. That means only 25% of the direct consequential relationship therein is actually operative. Which means that 75% of what causes relative wealth inequality is not IQ related.
The variable with the strongest correlation with relative wealth is actually Age, not IQ. The older humans get, the likelihood is the more relatively wealthy they'll get compared to younger humans.
Regarding absolute wealth differences in relation to IQ over time, sufficient data doesn't exist to make any kind of solid case. And I don't think it will ever exist.
But it is interesting to relate the following in connection with the question; the average IQ of people with 10 million dollars is 118. With the same average IQ (118) for those at 1 million. For one-hundred-million-aires (centimillionaires) the average IQs seems to be 124. Only at 'Billionaire' does the IQ average get to 130, which is what I would consider a "high IQ."
Afaict, to the extent this has been studied, a "moderately positive" .5 correlation between IQ and relative wealth was found. That means only 25% of the direct consequential relationship therein is actually operative. Which means that 75% of what causes relative wealth inequality is not IQ related.
ReplyDeleteThat includes both self-made rich, and those who inherited their wealth. Bill Gates is in the billionaire population, but I imagine so will be his children Phoebe, Rory and Jennifer. It's reasonable to hypothesize that out of the 4, Bill is the one with the brains.
Perhaps Gates' intelligence was 99% of the cause of his wealth, but in his household he's the only one with a high IQ. Say, 180 (180 + 120 + 120 + 110 = 520. 520/4 = 130). He will give birth to generations of billionaires, only some small percentage of whom will be born with the same level of intelligence.
While this effect is easy to see in the Gates microcosm, I would propose that this same issue tracks through all of the wealth percentiles.
the average IQ of people with 10 million dollars is 118. With the same average IQ (118) for those at 1 million. For one-hundred-million-aires (centimillionaires) the average IQs seems to be 124. Only at 'Billionaire' does the IQ average get to 130, which is what I would consider a "high IQ."
First, I would point back to my argument above.
Second, given the first argument, an average IQ of 130 for billionaires is actually exceptionally high and could go a long way to supporting my argument.
There should be a significant distribution of intelligence among those billionaires. Given that an IQ of 180 is somewhere between the 99.999 and the 99.9999 percentile, then in the US we should expect between 30 and 300 people with IQs of 180 and above.
Extrapolating from those two points, then that would strongly suggest that a significant portion of the country's population with IQs north of 180 are also billionaires.
The same sort of analysis could be applied to the centimillionaires, tens of millions, etc.
Extrapolating from those two points, then that would strongly suggest that a significant portion of the country's population with IQs north of 180 are also billionaires.
ReplyDeleteNo! My god, epistemology!!! EPISTEMOLOGY!!! Find the good data first, try to destroy it, then when you have the good data, then really work the problem. Anybody can make wild guesses. And what is a "significant portion?" 5%? 25% 75% Earlier, you stated "a majority" (50 percent or more) of High IQ folk end up rich!
Study showed that $2.3 million dollars is the cut off for being rich/wealthy. Most rich people are just rich, not way way rich. There are a million millionaires, but only 7000 billionaires. Which means most rich people average an IQ of 118; just above average.
But let's do a back of the envelope calculation on 130+ IQs causing extreme wealth.
There are about 240 million adults in the United States. 2.1% have a 130 IQ or above. Which means over 5 million adults have an IQ of 130 or above. Yet there are only 7,000 or so billionaires. Which means only 0.14% of 130+ IQ people are billionaires.
It seems that most billionaires are between 60 and 80 years old. So let’s say that that age group is 1/5 of the adult population. Which gives us a ballpark figure that there are 1 million 60-80 year olds with 130+ IQs. (And since IQ’s decline with age, we’ll assume they had a 130+ IQ all along.)
Given the stat related above that there are only 7,000 billionaires, this means that 0.70% of 130+ IQ individuals in the 60-80 age cohort are billionaires. Which means 99.3% of High IQ 60-80 year old people are not billionaires. Thus, going through life with a high IQ does not cause billionaire-ness. The end.
Which means 99.3% of [people with IQs above 130] are not billionaires. Thus, going through life with a high IQ does not cause billionaire-ness.
ReplyDeleteI would note that I didn’t say a significant portion of 5 million people with IQs above 130 IQ fell into the 7000 billionaires. You are right, that with be arithmetically preposterous.
My argument was instead that a significant portion of the ~300 people with IQs above 180 fell into the 7000 billionaires.
If we say that perhaps 50 people with IQs above 180 (16%) are beset my debilitating illnesses of one kind or another (mental, e.g. autism, extreme depression, social anxiety, or physical, e.g. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.) we’re left with a cohort of 250 healthy people with IQs north of 180.
If even only 50 healthy people with IQs 180+ fell into that 7,000 person cohort, I would call that extremely significant, since that you would tell you that (having no other information) you could confidently tell any given healthy person with a 180+ IQ that they have roughly a 1 in 5 chance of having more money than God.
Study showed that $2.3 million dollars is the cut off for being rich/wealthy.
I should have been clearer. When I say “rich”, I’m using it in the common sense.
Surveys of Americans show that the average American thinks that if you make $100k or more then you are “rich”.
A $100k income puts you in the top 20% income bracket. There are 69 million people in the top 20% income bracket.
I don't think it's remarkable to suggest that if you are one of the 5 million people with IQs north of 130, then you are almost assured to end up in this 69-million-person cohort if you do not have an illness. Perhaps even if you do have an illness, it’s still likely that with an IQ of 130+ you’ll end up in the top quintile of income.
So to go back to my original argument with Anon, if there is a bottom threshold for creative ability at 120-130, and the vast majority of those 5 million people should end up falling into the top 69 million people by wealth, then the fact that most artists come from rich families shouldn’t be chalked up to “late stage capitalism”. It’s a demographic inevitability.
The words you used, "rich" and "wealthy" (or "Billionaire") reference static states, where people "end up." The $2.3 million net worth cut-off for "wealthy/rich" I related was also the result of a survey.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what stat you sought out, but an income of $100,000 a year is not an indication of wealth because we don't know the expenses and expenditures pulling against that number, so we don't know the actual net worth that resulted. Plus we don't know how many years that income lasted, cost of living changes, etc.
Instead of pontificating about ultra-high IQ (above 170, say) individuals and wealth, you can simply google them and see whether there is a "significant" number of billionaires among that cohort. After a quick googling, I do not believe there is.
As mentioned earlier, the 0.5 correlation tells against IQ being all that significant compared to other relevant factors in wealth. Above-average intelligence surely matters, but not super duper high IQ, thus the weak correlation. I'd put Age, Health, Ambition, and Opportunity as more relevant.
Most artists don't come from rich families. Naturally, arguments in defense of that erroneous contention will lack rigor.
Instead of pontificating about ultra-high IQ (above 170, say) individuals and wealth, you can simply google them and see whether there is a "significant" number of billionaires among that cohort. After a quick googling, I do not believe there is.
ReplyDeleteTalking about IQ is predominantly speculation. They are hardly measured despite their significance, and the incidence of error is very high. I could not myself find a single verified IQ score for a billionaire.
Occasionally you can find an estimate based on an SAT score, or a mention of a childhood achievement but not much more.
It appears that the only attempt to correlate millionaire or billionare status to high IQ is by Wei (the numbers you offered up earlier), but to obtain those estimates he was rather unscientific about it.
Wei sampled each income bracket to see where they usually go to school. He then took the average SAT score for that school, and extrapolated from the bottom SAT score a demographic estimate of IQ.
So if Billionaires often went to Stanford, and Stanford's minimum SAT is a 1400, and 1400 is estimated to be a 137 IQ, then Billionaires get weighted towards 137 IQ by the percentage of Billionares who went to Stanford. Not terribly impressive. Those estimates could wildly exaggerate or underestimate the IQ variance between income brackets.
Like you, I am speculating about IQ based on how I think the world works.
I believe that work ethic and luck are highly exaggerated economic forces. That we get a clearer view by interpreting success as primarily a function of intelligence. A force that drive can choose to apply, but not a force that drive can supplant.
McDonald's employees don't have the neurological capacity to be Controllers, Controllers don't have the capacity to be Doctors, Doctors don't have the capacity to be CIOs, and CIOs generally don't have the capacity to be self-made Billionaires.
To circle back to Art, I believe that professional artists telling lecture halls of amateurs to "practice practice practice" are lying to them. For the vast majority of people who would like to be artists, they don't neurologically have the mental capacity for the work anymore than I think Albert Einstein telling third graders to "work harder" is being realistic about the average person's capacity to understand his proofs for relativity, let alone make similar discoveries.
I'm not even sure work ethic is real per se. I suspect that visual intelligence produces interest, and interest produces habit, and habit plus intelligence produces skill. I don't believe that habit on its own produces anything at all. The exceptional intelligences I've met never seem to work a day in their lives -- they're always scratching a mental itch. When I see billionaires, I see people scratching an otherworldly big itch.
I'm comfortable being the odd man out on that one. There are strong political motivations by the two primary positions to ignore IQ as it relates to wealth -- Democrats prefer to blame Rich People and Racial Injustice, Conservatives prefer to blame Work Ethic and Morality. From my experience, both sides are wrong, and few people on either side have the stomach to honestly grapple with the strong possibility that maybe rich people are rich because society rewards intelligence, and poor people are (from no fault of their own) just plain stupid.
> Most artists don't come from rich families. Naturally, arguments in defense of that erroneous contention will lack rigor.
ReplyDeleteLike the IQ argument, this will just circle around anecdotal evidence.
Given that we don't have data on it, there's not much to work with. We can only extrapolate from anecdotes, which can only really amount to a measure of our biases.
Yes, I agree that the high quality and sufficient data isn't there, as I mentioned earlier.
ReplyDeleteSuch data that there is, however, tells against a strong correlation between IQ and wealth, while telling for a moderate correlation. I don't dispute that a moderate correlation is significant. It is certainly true that the average IQs of millionaires and billionaires is above average. But it is also true that the vast majority of high IQ people are not millionaires or billionaires - and that is a very strong tell against high IQ being the most relevant factor in monetary success.
Without doing complex psychometric and family and work-history work-ups on each and every millionaire and billionaire AND each and every high IQ person who is not a millionaire or billionaire (the vast majority) it is impossible to know just when and how IQ translates into wealth and when and how it doesn't. Whatever the answer, it won't be the simple formula you seek.
Regarding anecdote about artists coming from "rich" families; as the line goes, "the plural of anecdote is data." That I can tell, of the thousand or so artists I've met, only a handful came from the upper middle class.
I agree that high intelligence tends to be in pursuit of some fascination. But I don't agree that such fascination is necessarily marketable or even tangible. IQ is not an Entrepreneurship Quotient. Creative people tend to have higher-than-average IQs, true, but higher than average IQ doesn't guarantee creativity.
It is very common among high IQ people that they take menial jobs during the day in order to fund their intellectual interests at night. A great many high IQ end up in academia, earning salary teaching. There is also a positive correlation between high IQ and depression, 'over-analysis/analysis paralysis' and other mood and anxiety disorders, in excess of the general population. Anecdotally, some of the most dysfunctional, miserable people I've ever met were ultra-high IQ; clever people are very clever at fooling themselves, it turns out. 1 in 4 of the Ashkenazi heritage known for having a higher than average IQ, carry genetic diseases. And so on.
Bottom line; the answer isn't simple.
> 1 in 4 of the Ashkenazi heritage known for having a higher than average IQ, carry genetic diseases.
ReplyDeleteI have done next to zero reading in epidemiology, so I don't have the faintest idea whether Ashkenazi have more genetic diseases than other populations.
I do know however that Lisa Keister of Duke University found that American Jews have a median household income of $150,000, roughly three times the median income of the entire sample. Given that American Jews have a Standard Deviation (15 points) higher IQ than the American average, this appears to me to be an extremely clear example of the IQ/Wealth relationship in action.
Somehow, Keister ignores this possibility entirely, theorizing "going to religious services may be another opportunity, especially for Jews, to be indoctrinated with beliefs that help build wealth."
Interesting word choice there lady!
"Also, it is a social network issue – a church or synagogue can be a good place to meet people with investment tips or money to loan for a new business."
Evidently, to Keister, the intelligence of the advisor and the quality of the investment tip doesn't enter into the equation. With that logic, I know a few flat-earth-believing drunks at the local dive that oughta strike middle class any day now, they're filled with creative investment ideas!
I do know however that Lisa Keister of Duke University found that American Jews have a median household income of $150,000, roughly three times the median income of the entire sample. Given that American Jews have a Standard Deviation (15 points) higher IQ than the American average, this appears to me to be an extremely clear example of the IQ/Wealth relationship in action.
ReplyDeleteAmerican Jews have a median IQ of around 113. The question begged is what is the median income of all people with around 113 IQs. If it's lower than 150k (and it is) then other questions are begged about why American Jews in particular are earning above the norm. (I can tell you, anecdotally, that my Jewish father and uncle were both told from birth that they were going to be lawyers. And almost everything my grandparents did with them in childhood was aimed at molding them into lawyers. And high class lawyers too. They took dance lessons and piano, and always wore shoes and ties even as children. My father's skin didn't touch denim and his ears didn't hear doo-wop until he was in his late 50s.)
How to unpack the Jewish income thing returns us back to the problem with millionaires having a median IQ of 118. This doesn't mean that people with IQs in the 118 range become millionaires. The vast majority do not. So there are other crucial factors working synchronistically with IQ that cannot be dispensed with in order to understand the phenomenon. If those factors aren't present, IQ can't make up for that deficiency. That is why the correlation between IQ and wealth is only .5, which is 25% strength.
I can tell you, anecdotally, that my Jewish father and uncle were both told from birth that they were going to be lawyers. And almost everything my grandparents did with them in childhood was aimed at molding them into lawyers. And high class lawyers too. They took dance lessons and piano, and always wore shoes and ties even as children. My father's skin didn't touch denim and his ears didn't hear doo-wop until he was in his late 50s.)
ReplyDeleteThis opens the kaleidoscopically complicated question of precedence.
I’m going to assume from my impressions of your own intelligence, that they had well above average IQs.
Now, it could be that their culture is an independent variable from their intelligence. It could also be that their culture was a direct behavioral projection of their IQ (when given the option).
My own grandfather was raised in a single-mother household by a Cuban Actress, with a taste for strange men, in the cold-water flats in Queens. He was himself remarkably brilliant, and became a relatively accomplished lawyer. Despite not growing up in a particularly stable or socially conservative household, he sounds very much like your grandfather.
On one occasion when I was three, I soiled the only outfit I had packed, and he was asked to run to the store to pick up a change of clothes. He came back stuffed to the gills with bags of three-piece suits, ties, and leather shoes, insisting that even a three year old boy must dress like a gentleman.
I believe it is much more likely that his taste for order was a projection of his intelligence, not the cause of it.
Which does not mean that culture is merely a feature of the IQ of a given individual. Raising a person with a 180 IQ in a near feral environment, and dropping them into the stone age, isn’t going to give you a Rembrandt. But it may give you the creator of Löwenmensch.
Thanks for the interesting debate. I’ll be signing off on this conversation since we’re now we’ll behind David’s current post. Cheers.
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