Are dead artists’ paintings more lively? – Agency in descriptions of artworks before and after an artist’s death

Abstract

When artists die, their artworks skyrocket in value and prestige, because their deaths ensure no new works will be created. But is this the only reason that artworks become more valuable once their artists pass away? The current study suggests that viewers describe artworks as more agentive once the works’ artists are deceased. The study compares descriptions of a painter’s works before and after her death in 2011, and finds that clauses in the later descriptions assign less agentive thematic roles to the painter (such as a patient role as opposed to an agent role) and more agentive roles to her works. The study poses the question of whether this change in perceived agency might contribute to the greater value and prestige ascribed to works by deceased artists.

Keywords:

• agency
• animacy
• thematic roles
• art history
• Margaret Olley

Notes

1 In which n gives the sample size; p indicates the probability of obtaining a result by chance if the null hypothesis is true and r is the correlation coefficient.