The Old-Age Style and its Artists

Abstract

The old-age style is well-known among art historians, but has rarely been recognized by psychologists despite its bearing on late-life creativity. Untrained subjects' ability to perceive an old-age style, and indirectly, the identification of its artists, were investigated in five separate studies. One hundred subjects judged twenty-four pairs of young-old art on five aspects of the old-age style. Fifteen pairs (63%) differed from one another across the tasks, and suggested that the following historical artists have an old-age style: Bellows, Cole, Eakins, Goya, Guardi, Innes, Kirchner, Klee, Mondrian, Monet, Picasso, Pissaro, Reynolds, Sargent, and Tobey. In contrast, young-old pairs by nine artists did not sufficiently differ, suggesting they did not have an old-age style: Copley, Corinth, Hoffman, Kline, Leger, Manet, Marin, Stuart, and Tiepolo. Several other measures on which young-old art were compared, except for canvas size, did not differentiate the pairs. The applicability of the old-age style to non-artists, whether creative or not, and to late-life cognitive development in general, were discussed.