Innovative Exuberance: Fluctuations in the Painting Production in the 17th-Century Netherlands

Arts

Weixuan Li¹ 

[1] Huygens Institute of Netherlands History, 1001 EW Amsterdam, The Netherlands;

关键词: painting production;    Dutch Golden Age;    social bubble;    data visualization;    big data;    behavioral analysis;    decision-making under risk;    uncertainty;   

DOI  :  10.3390/arts8020072

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

The surprising and rapid flowering of Dutch art and the Dutch art market from the late 16th century to the mid-17th century have propelled scholars to quantify the volume of production and to determine the source of its growth. However, existing studies have not explored the use of known paintings to specify and visualize the fluctuations of painting production in the Dutch Republic. Employing data mining techniques to leverage the most comprehensive datasets of Netherlandish paintings (RKD), this paper visualizes and analyzes the trend of painting production in the Northern Netherlands throughout the 17th-century. The visualizations verify the existing observations on the market saturation and industry stagnation in 1630−1640. In spite of this market condition, the growth of painting production was sustained until the 1660s. This study argues that the irrational risk-taking behavior of painters and the over-enthusiasm for painting in the public created a “social bubble” and the subsequent contraction of the production was a market correction back to a stable state. However, these risk-taking attitudes during the bubble time spurred exuberant artistic innovations that highlight the Dutch contribution to the development of art.

【 授权许可】

Unknown