LATEX TikZposter
On the evolution of western modern art:
Characterizing a paradigm shift in the production of painting
artists
Jorge Alexis Castillo Sepúlveda1, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo1,2,
Tamas David-Barrett1,2,3,4, Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert1
1 Universidad del Desarrollo, Facultad de Gobierno, Centro de
Investigación en Complejidad Social (CICS), Chile; 2 Department of
Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford,Oxford,United
Kingdom; 3 Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany; 4
Population Research Institute,Finland
On the evolution of western modern art:
Characterizing a paradigm shift in the production of painting
artists
Jorge Alexis Castillo Sepúlveda1, Isabel Behncke Izquierdo1,2,
Tamas David-Barrett1,2,3,4, Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert1
1 Universidad del Desarrollo, Facultad de Gobierno, Centro de
Investigación en Complejidad Social (CICS), Chile; 2 Department of
Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford,Oxford,United
Kingdom; 3 Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany; 4
Population Research Institute,Finland
Abstract
In this paper we characterize a shift paradigm in modern western
(european) painting art between the late 1800s and early 1900s,
inwhich avant-garde movements and more abstract concepts developed
in the broad of paintings. On one hand, this characterizationof
transition can be measured in terms of complexity measures in
painters community, like number of artists and
heterogeneity,focusing on art movements and art specilities by
painter. On the other hand, we show that the cultural trait of art
productioncan be proved extracting concepts of pictures via Image
Content Analysis and thereafter applying Structural Topic Modeling
inthese concepts in order to see how the painters developed
emergent ideas in their works in this revolutionary epoch. This
workshows evidence for that the transitions in sociocultural
evolution can be described in terms of complexity measures of
systems andshowing how certain cultural traits changes according to
the change of another critical variables that motivates those
changes.
Background
Figure 1: Evolution of art in europe between Realism to
Surrealism
• Evolution of complexity can be explained in terms of number of
components, frequency, hetereogeneity and energy of system.[2, 1].
In biological evolution, the transitions can be explained in these
terms [9]. Also, in the same spirit, transitions can bedescribed as
a rapid interlap between the different paradigms [6] and this idea
of evolution can be extended to other areas [5].
• What happened in modern art history? Avant-Garde movements are
broadly studied in a qualitative way [4, 3, 10]. Also, thethe
development of new techniques, the rise of republics, among other
factors, influenced changes in art production [7, 8, 11].
Inparticular, before these changes, art production was motivated
via patronage and thereafter, art production was more free andfar
from an extremly academicist. The number of artists who criticized
the old way of making art increased, leading a more freeproduction
and probably, leading a more abstract concepts inserted in art
production. These critical variables may explainedthe paradigm
shift in art production of painters.
• This paper focuses in describe the paradigm shift in european
painters production between XIX and XX centuries
consideringcomplexity measures, that is, seeing how community of
painters changed (number and heterogeneity) and how the cultural
traitchange who describe paint production (more realistic paradigm
to a more abstract paradigm)
Methods
Data analysis:
•N = 145 artists, m = 28 art movements. Time-unit: midlife
artist year and decadesof time studied (c.1850 − c.1930). Source:
This sample data comes from a simpleextraction from Wikipedia
website.
•Moving average models on increasing art movements and
specialities in the transition.•Normalized Shannon diversity (N−1
exp(−
∑pi ln pi)) on art movements per decade.
Picture analysis:
• Sample of N = 94 digital paintings, in which year of
production were from c-1850 toc.1940.
•Cultural trait change: Image Content Analysis (ICA) extracting
concepts from pictures& Structural Topic Modeling [12] over
these concepts in order to see change in topics(from more realistic
to more abstract perspective) using a Corpus Topic
Proportionmeasure.
Discussion
Results show how in terms of number and hetereogeneity (focusing
in art movements and artspecialities), the community of painters
changed, showing an increasing in these variablesthat may explained
conditions to break old paradigms. In paralell, the concepts
thatmotivated the paintings changed too, leading from more
mimetic-realistic concepts to moreabstract-free concepts, and this
can be considered as cultural trait change. The worldchanged and
also changed the art which is in esence, a particular human
behavior. The ideasof this research show that we can systematically
describe how the transitions of a particularhuman behavior of a
community are given, which are correlative to how transitions
inbiological and social evolution ocurred.
Special thanks to Ignacio Toledo Román (CICS), Nicolás Barŕıa
González (Universidad de Concepción, Chile) and David Barra
(Consejo Nacional
de la Cultura y las Artes, Chile) and Daniela Li-Jó (Red de
mediación art́ıstica, Galeŕıa de Arte Contemporáneo Gabriela
Mistral, Chile) for their
suggestions and relevant ideas to this project
Results
Figure 2: Art movements according time. Points indicate midlife
of artists belonging these movements andlines represents standar
desviations. This show that art movements quickly increasing
according time in thisperiod.
Figure 3: Number of artists per movement according time. Solid
line is moving average tendence. This showthat the art movements
were more numerous according time increasing.
Figure 4: Number of art specialities per artists according time,
in which x-axis represent midlife of artists.Solid line is moving
average tendence. This show that the painters were more
multi-facetic artists accordingtime.
Figure 5: Normalized Shannon diversity of art movements per
decade. This show that in the first two decadesof c.XX, many
movements and different expressions of art taked part.
Figure 6: Evolution of topics per art period. From the total of
topic, graph is showing how the topicsdistributed among them, in a
particular time. Y -axis indicates the topic proportion of corpus,
that is, howmuch concepts of these topic are relevant in that
particular era. The topics are the following, according tomaximun
probabilities: Topic 1:tree, paint, art, impressionist, water,
tapestry, watercolor-paint; Topic 2:sky, paint, landscap, grass,
ecoregion, visual-art, steppe ;Topic 3: organ, pattern, flower,
yellow, red, font,fictional-character; Topic 4: paint, portrait,
art, watercolor-paint, girl, impressionist, artwork ; Topic
5:paint, art, modern-art, artwork, visual-art, illustration, mural.
Here we show how the green area (topic 3,which is more leading to
”abstract” concepts), and the orange and yellow areas (topics 1 and
2 r., leading tomore ”realistic” concepts) dissapears. Thereafter,
yellow area re-emerges, but may be due to more generalconcepts.
References[1] Arthur, B (1994). On the evolution of
complexity.Complexity:
Metaphors, Models, and Reality, Cowan, GA (ed), pp.
65–81,Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA.
[2] Bonner, J (1988). The Evolution of Complexity by Means
ofNatural Selection, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ
[3] Breton, A. (1924). Manifestoes of Surrealism.
[4] Gombrich E. H.(2006). The Story of Art, London:
PhaidonPress, 978-0-7148-324-70.
[5] Gersick, C. (1991). Revolutionary Change Theories: A
Mul-tilevel Exploration of the Punctuated Equilibrium Paradigm.The
Academy of Management Review, 16(1), 10-36
[6] Gould, S., Eldredge, N. (1977). Punctuated Equilibria:
TheTempo and Mode of Evolution Reconsidered. Paleobiology,Vol. 3,
No. 2 (Spring, 1977), pp. 115-151
[7] Hobsbawm, E. (1975). The Age of Capital: 1848-1875.Lawrence
Hill and Co. ISBN 0-88208-082
[8] Hobsbawm, E. (1987). The Age of Empire: 1875–1914.
Wei-denfeld & Nicolson (First Edition)
[9] Maynard Smith, J., Szathmáry, E. (1995). The major
evolu-tionary transitions. Nature, 374, 227-232.
[10] Micheli, M. d. (2006). Las vanguardias art́ısticas del
siglo XX(The artistic avant-garde of the 20th century). Alianza
Forma,135-137.
[11] Mumrford, L. (1952). Art and Technics. Columbia
UniversityPress.
[12] Roberts, M., Stewart, B., Tingley, D. stm: R Package for
Struc-tural Topic Models. Journal of Statistical Software, vol.
VV,II, http://dx.doi.org/10.18637/jss.v000.i00.
