Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity? (2008)
This may be a little off-topic, but as I was reading the article, I started wondering about something.  The author uses examples of genius in art and literature, and noted how Cézanne's early works weren't "very good" and how his later one's were much better, whereas Picasso's early works were considered his best.<p>So I googled paintings of both artists, and I'm perplexed.  I have absolutely no clue what is considered "great".  Obviously this is because my work is in science and I know next to nothing about art, but I'm still kind of curious what makes a work great in art and literature.<p>For instance, there's thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of painters in the world right now.  And if you select the top 100 and showed me their paintings, and then showed me a Picasso, I wouldn't be able to point out why Picasso's is "better".<p>Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening" is also mentioned as one of the best poems of all time.  I'll admit, it's very beautiful, but I just don't understand what makes it <i>that</i> much more amazing than a contemporary poet's work.<p>Imagine if you took the world's population and wiped everyone's memories of great artists, and then asked them to reevaluate which which works are the "greatest".  Would we arrive at the same conclusions?  Without the bias of knowing "this is a famous artist, therefore his work must be good", would the rankings of art remain the same?<p>Unlike my literature teachers in high school, I don't believe in "magical qualities", so there has to be some numeric metric one could use to separate the very best from the "just good".  What is it?  (Perhaps it's not an easily calculable number, but it still must exist; if it didn't, then the whole field of art and literature criticism would be nonsense.)