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The Influence of Norm-Violating Abstract Artists in Modern Day Society

William Caycedo

University of Amsterdam

Bachelor Thesis

Social Psychology

W.M. Caycedo

10196668

20-05-2015

Supervisor: Eftychia Stamkou Abstract

The current research investigated how influential norm violating artists have

been in modern culture. Abstract and figurative artists that were active between 1900

and 1950 were studied to investigate if violating the norm was a determinant for

abstract artists to gain influence. It was hypothesized that artists that have produced abstract in the period of 1900-1950 have been more influential in modern culture than artists that have produced figurative art in the same time period. Based on the theory of idiosyncrasy credits by Hollander (1958), it was also hypothesized that artists that have produced both abstract and figurative art have been more influential than artists that have produced only abstract or figurative art. Artists were found on the Internet and their influence was measured by documenting street names, landmarks, movies and books that were made/named after or in respect to the artists, the amount of Google hits when searching for a certain artist and the amount of works represented in museums around the world. Results show that abstract artists have been somewhat more influential than figurative artists and that artists that have produced both figurative art and have been somewhat more influential than artists that have produced only figurative or abstract art. However, no definitive statements could be made.

The Influence of Norm-Violating Abstract Artists In Modern Day Society

Social norms are crucial to a full understanding of human behavior and are described by Cialdini et al. (1993) as powerful behavioral directives. They are rules and standards that are understood by members of a society and guide or constrain social behavior without the force of laws (Cialdini & Trost, 1998). When a person violates the norm it is described as behavior that infringes one or more principles of behavior that is accepted by the society in which the norm exists (van Kleef et al.,

2011). Many people have witnessed other people violate a norm of some kind such as talking on a cellphone in a study hall or taking something that does not belong to them. Wearing clothes that are not appropriate to a certain situation can also be seen as norm violating, for example wearing gym clothing or red sneakers to a professional setting (Bellezza et al., 2013). Bellezza et al. (2013) in turn found that violating the norm can lead to inferences of enhanced status and competence in the eyes of others.

Findings such as that of Bellezza et al. (2013) have been prevalent in the research into norm-violating behavior and perceived status, power or influence. For instance, research has suggested that norm violators are perceived as more powerful than individuals who live by the rules (Van Kleef et al., 2011). Additionally, Van

Kleef et al. (2012) found that power is afforded to individuals that violate the norm in a pro-social way. Their analyses also revealed that individuals who break the rules to benefit the group are perceived as more deserving of power. These findings are in line with the approach-inhibition theory of power (Keltner et al., 2003), which states that increased power is associated with social freedom and activates approach-related tendencies. Factors such as these may evoke norm-violating behavior. The findings previously mentioned by Van Kleef et al. (2011, 2012) and Bellezza et al. (2013) show that this effect works both ways. This effect is also found in the world of art, where norm violation can be seen as non-conformity. Non-conformity can be effective in differentiating the non- conformists from others (Maslach et al., 1985; Snyder& Fromkin, 1980, in

Griskevicius et al., 2006) and making innovative art (Lena & Patchuki, 2013).

Furthermore, Lena and Patchuki (2013) suggested that, by introducing novel artistic content, innovation is a determinant for an artist to gain status.

Another determinant for an artist to gain status is the repetition of existing practices within their field of art. Through this repetition artists are able to show that they are competent and that they have respect for the existing norms. When one complies with a group norm, one can build up idiosyncrasy credits (Hollander, 1958).

These credits represent an accumulation of positively disposed impressions inferred by the of group members. Each individual within a group has a certain amount of these credits and can symbolically spend them on deviant behavior before implications are felt. An application is given by Inglis (1996), who examined the case of the Beatles, who first built up idiosyncrasy credit by showing competence and compliance with the norms of the popular music industry. After gaining status through credits, the Beatles were able to deviate from the norm and become innovators by spending the earned credits.

In the world of visual popular styles have changed throughout the centuries with figurative art being the norm for the most part since the Renaissance

(Gombrich, 1995). By the end of the 19th century several art movements took flight with works that are now known as abstract art. At the time, these new movements were considered norm violating and movements such as completely rejected the norms set by the Renaissance. By the 1950’s, abstract art was an accepted movement itself and was part of the Modernist movement, which rejected traditional forms of art, architecture, philosophy and other aspects of life (, n.d. In

Wikipedia)

The current research therefore wishes to apply the mechanism of norm violation and perceived power to the time period of 1900 to 1950 and to investigate how influential norm violating painters have been in modern culture. In this research

the term “influential” has substituted “powerful” because it is more applicable to the

question at hand. One of the aspects of power is the ability to influence other people

(Keltner, 2003), so influence is an appropriate construct to investigate.

Based on previous findings that norm-violating individuals are perceived as more powerful and therefore influential, it is possible that artists that have produced abstract art in the period of 1900-1950 have been more influential in modern culture than artists that have produced figurative art (Hypothesis 1). Furthermore, based on the theory of idiosyncrasy credits by Hollander (1958), it can be assumed that artists that have produced both abstract and figurative art have been more influential than artists that have produced only abstract or figurative art (Hypothesis 2).

Earlier research has focused on experimental research into the effect of norm- violating behavior on perceived power. By using archival data this research

distinguishes itself from previous research on the subject at hand. Furthermore, the

usage of and a specific time period will also shed new light on how

influential an artist may be when he or she produces norm-violating or norm- conforming art.

Method

Materials

The present day influence from artists that produced art between 1900 and

1950 will be examined using archival data. A total of 310 artists will be examined in this research; 10 representatives from 31 European countries. The 10 artists will be split into primarily three categories of figurative art, abstract art and both, coded as 1,

2 and 3, respectively. A focus will be put on European artists because Europe has many different countries to research, which are all relatively close to each other. This way it will be possible to investigate how much influence a certain artist had in his or her country as well as other neighboring countries. Adding to the documentation of each artist’s general style, his or her specific style will also be taken into account.

This is important, because within a certain style, for example, there may be different levels of abstraction and therefore norm-violation. The date of the artist’s birth and death will be documented, to ensure the artist was active during the time period relevant to this research.

The variables that will be used to determine the influence of each artist are: street names that have been named after the artists, landmarks that have been made with respect to the artists, movies and/or documentaries that have been made in the artists name or in which an artist is mentioned or featured, the amount of Google hits when searching for a certain artist, the amount of works represented in museums around the world and books written about artists or mentioning them. The countries and the amount of artists per country that were taken into the research are shown in

Table 1.

Procedure

First, for each country ten artists will be searched with the help of the Internet.

Wikipedia and Wikiart are two websites that contain enough information to do so.

Artists will be selected based on their date of birth and death first. Then they will be selected based on their featured works and their style, which is reported by the aforementioned website. Once all 310 artists have been selected the second part of the examination will commence. First, the amount of Google hits will be documented.

By typing each artists name into the search bar followed by “artist”, the amount of hits should be an accurate number of Internet pages that mention the searched artist.

Using Google and Google maps, street names and landmarks will be searched by typing each artists name in the search bar. This way a list will appear with all possible streets and/or landmarks. Movies and documentaries will be searched with the Google search engine again and with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB).

Artcyclopedia.com is a database that provides lists of museums that exhibit of specific artists. Therefore, this website will be used to search the amount of works represented in museums around the world.

Results

Of the 301 proposed artists, 251 were used in the analysis. The proposed amount was unattainable because for some countries no suitable cases could be found.

To create a clearer view of the data, the specific style for each artist was placed in a separate variable. Then, 18 variables of different art styles were created, based on the art styles of all artists combined. All the art styles found and the recoded art style variables are shown in Table 2. For each style a artist had, a figure 1 was added to the specific variable. These variables were then recoded into another variable specifying the number of styles for each artist, 3 being the maximum amount of styles found.

Each of these recoded styles was then placed in the Figurative or Abstract group, based on their description on wikiart.org and Wikipedia. Some of these variables combined art styles to make them easier to analyze. Abstract , Abstract

Impressionism, , , Neo-, Nieuwe Haagse School and

OP Art were placed in the Abstract Art variable. and Cubo-Futurism were both placed in the Futurism variable. , Magic Realism, Naturalism,

Metaphysical Art, , Idealism, and War Art were placed in the Realism variable. An Other Styles variable was created for Art Brut, Avant-

Garde, Concrete Art and . Finally, Leids Impressionisme and

Impressionism were both placed in the Impressionism variable. Then, the artists who had produced both abstract and figurative art were placed in the Both group. Using this method, 101 artists were placed in the Figurative category, 117 artists were placed in the Abstract category and 33 artists were placed in the Both category.

To test whether the age of the artists were in line with the selected time period, the means for each birth and death year of artists in each category (Figurative,

Abstract and Both) were compared. A one-way ANOVA was conducted investigate whether the means of the birth and death years between the 3 groups differed. The means and standard deviations of this test are shown in Table 3. A significant result was found for both birth years and death years, meaning that the means of the groups differed significantly from each other.

Another test was conducted to explore whether the variables Streets,

Landmarks, Movies, Google Hits, Museums and Books were distributed normally.

This test revealed that all variables, Streets (M=1.49, SD=2.79), Landmarks (M=0.41,

SD=0.85), Movies (M=0.22, SD=0.58), Google Hits (M=52632.25, SD=135693.09), Museums (M=6.59, SD=12.21) and Books (M=22.17, SD=58.56), were positively skewed to the right. A skewness of .240 and a kurtosis of .476 were for the Figurative group. For the Abstract group a skewness of .224 and a kurtosis of .444 were found, and for a skewness of .414 and a kurtosis of .809 were found for the Both group, indicating that the variables were not normally distributed.

To test the first hypothesis, a multivariate analysis of variances (ANOVA) was conducted with Figurative and Abstract as independent variables, and Streets,

Landmarks, Movies, Google Hits, Museums and Books as dependent variables. The results of this analysis are presented in Table 5.

A significant effect was found for Books F(1, 216) = 5.54, p = 0.020, indicating that Amazon has more books that mention or are about Abstract artists

(M=31, SD=71.83) than Figurative artists (M=12, SD=41.29). A marginal effect was found for Museums F(1, 216) = 3.14, p = 0.078, which can be interpreted as Abstract artists (M=7.56, SD=12.81) having marginally more paintings in museums according to artcyclopdia.com than Figurative artists (M=4.75, SD=10.14). Another marginal effect was found for Google Hits F(1, 216) = 2.80, p = 0.096. This effect is extremely marginal, however when the means of this variable are taken into account. For figurative (M=37288, SD=79654.29) vs. Abstract (M=69702, SD=179881.53), it is clear that Abstract artists are represented more in the Google search engine. No significant effects were found for Streets, Landmarks or Movies.

To test the second hypothesis a similar test was conducted, with the Both category added as an independent variable. This test revealed no significant effects.

The results of this test are presented in Table 6.

Discussion

The aim of this study was to research whether the norm-violation effect was applicable to the world of visual arts and how influential norm-violating artists have been during the first half of the 20th century. It was expected that abstract artists,

therefore norm-violating, have been more influential than figurative artists. This was the case for some variables. Abstract artists were represented more in museums and books than figurative artists and showed more results on the Google search engine.

Furthermore, based on the idiosyncrasy credits theory (Hollander, 1958), it was expected that artists who produced both figurative and abstract art have been more influential than artists who produced only figurative or abstract art. Again, this was the case for only a few variables; artists who produced both figurative and abstract art were represented more in museums and in movies than artists who produced only one of each style.

This study contains a few points of discussion, the first one being how artists were categorized. Suitable artists were searched on the Internet and subjectively placed in one of the three main categories. Their specific styles were also catalogued.

To objectively group the artists, their specific styles were connected to the main categories. This however could not always have been accurate because the history for many artists was unknown, meaning they could have been in the Both category instead of Abstract or Figurative. This was notable in the eventual sample sizes. To counter this issue more artists and their history should be researched. This way a more accurate categorization would be possible, and with larger samples to compare more definitive statements could be made of the results.

Another point of discussion is the normal distribution of the independent variables. As can be seen in Figure 2, the distribution of all independent variables is skewed to the right. This occurred because for most artists no information was found for the variables, giving them a score of 0. Due to these insufficient findings it was not possible to compare many artists, leading to questions unanswered. To counter this, future studies should include more variables that measure influence to research.

A third point of discussion is the variation of fame the artists accumulated in their lifetime. This adds to the second point of discussion. Because only 10 artists per country were included in this research, other artists from the same country were left out. This was not the case for some countries, for which less than 10 artists were found, but for the larger countries it is possible that just those artists who were less famous were chosen. Or, the more famous artists were chosen. Because of this disparity, it is not possible to make definitive statements. It is necessary for future studies to include all suitable artists per country, so that the possibility of equal groups becomes larger.

A last point of discussion is the method of researching the variables that were used to determine the influence of each artist. In this research only a few websites were used on the Internet. Also, all websites used were English websites. This could have led to insufficient data because other websites, for example websites in the native language of specific countries, may have information included that the current researched websites do not. This is a difficult point to improve, but it is possible given enough time is put into future research.

This study was the first archival study in a long line of experimental studies that researched the norm-violation effect. Lena and Patchuki (2013) did research into innovative art and found evidence for the norm violation effect, in the sense that norm violation, or innovation, is a determinant for artists to gain status. The main goal of this study was to research whether that norm violation also applied to artists who produced abstract art in a time when it was truly innovative and whether that status is measurable through modern conventions. Furthermore, this study attempted to expand on the idiosyncrasy credits theory by Hollander (1958), by comparing artists that produced both figurative and abstract art, compared to artists that have produced only figurative or abstract art. Evidence was found to support the norm violation effect in some cases, however due to the lack of significant results, no definitive statements could be made.

It is important to realize that the norm violation effect is applicable to different levels of human interaction, including the creation and of art. However, in order to gain more knowledge of this phenomenon in the art world, more research is necessary. With this knowledge and understanding of this phenomenon through previous and future studies, artists may be able to use this knowledge to gain status if that is their goal. Reflecting upon this phenomenon may also help people acknowledging false perceptions of power or influence, and help them in creating their own judgments.

References

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Table 1.

Number of Artists used in each Country

Country Artists Country Artists

Russia 10 Portugal 10

Germany 11 Hungary 10

Turkey 2 Sweden 10

UK 10 Azerbaijan 0

France 10 Belarus 6

Italy 10 Austria 9

Spain 10 Switzerland 10

Ukraine 10 Bulgaria 7

Poland 10 Serbia 8

Romania 9 Denmark 10

Kazakhstan 0 Finland 10

NL 10 Slovakia 3

Belgium 10 Norway 9

Greece 8 Ireland 10

Czech Republic 6 Georgia 4

9 Croatia

Table 2.

All Art Styles found and Recoded Art Styles into Figurative and Abstract Groups

All Art Styles Recoded Art Styles

Figurative Abstract

Abstract Neo- Impressionism Abstract Art

Abstract Neo-Plasticism Realism

Expressionism New Objectivity Cubism

Abstract Orphism

Impressionism Post-Impressionism Expressionism

Art Brut Realism

Avant-Garde Romanticism Futurism

Concrete Art Neo-Romanticism

Constructivism Post-Impressionism

Cubism Romanticism

Cubo-Fuurism Symbolism Neo-Plasticism

Dada Expressionism Tachism Suprematism

Fauvism Vorticism Surrealism

Futurism Academic Art Tachism

Impressionism Idealism Other Styles

Leids Impressionisme Neo-Primitivism

Magic Realism Nieuwe Haagse School

Metaphysical Art Op Art

Modernism War Art

Naturalism

Table 3.

Means and Standard Deviations for Dates of Birth and Death.

Style N Birth Year Death Year

Figurative 101 M = 1873 M = 1944

SD = 20 SD = 20

Abstract 117 M = 1894 M = 1958

SD = 19 SD = 21

Both 33 M = 1883 M = 1951

SD = 22 SD = 22

Table 5.

Effect of Art Style on Streets, Landmarks, Movies, Google Hits, Museums, and Books

Art Style

Figurative Abstract

2 Variable M (SD) M (SD) F (df1, df2) η Sig. (p)

Streets 1.46 (3.00) 1.45 (2.52) (1, 217) .000 .995

Landmarks .35 (.92) .49 (.83) (1, 217) .006 .236

Movies .18 (.57) .20 (.48) (1, 217) .000 .797

Google Hits 37287.71 (79654.29) 69701.61 (179881.53) (1, 217) .013 .096

Museums 4.75 (10.14) 7.56 (12.81) (1, 217) .014 .078

Books 12 (41.29) 31 (71.83) (1, 217) .025 .020

Table 6.

Effect of Art Style on Streets, Landmarks, Movies, Google Hits, Museums, and Books

Art Style

Figurative Abstract Both

2 Variable M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) F (df1, df2) η Sig. (p)

Streets 1.46 (3.00) 1.45 (2.52) 1.72 (3.11) (1, 249) .001 .883

Landmarks .35 (.92) .49 (.83) .31 (.64) (1, 249) .008 .376

Movies .18 (0.57) .20 (.48) .44 (.88) (1, 249) .021 .076

Google Hits 37287.71 (79654.29) 69701.61 (179881.53) 38653.59 (65422.45) (1, 249) .012 .176

Museums 4.75 (10.14) 7.56 (12.81) 11.47 (26.62) (1, 249) .024 .060

Books 12 (41.29) 31 (71.83) 21.75 (45.88) (1, 249) .023 .056

Figure 1. Histograms of Normality for the Dependent Variables