Is the World Flat or Round

This paper is a preliminary attempt to map the changing tastes for works of art as manifested in the prices of paintings sold at auction. There are two main goals in this work: first, to describe a space in which we can represent the work of different artists; and second, to describe how "cultivated taste" moves around that space. It presents a method of analysing "waves" in popularity, and applies this to data on the prices of works of art during the period 1840-1970. It extends traditional methods of mapping points in n-dimensional constellations onto a plane, showing instead how to locate these points on the surface of a sphere. This can make it easier to explain and interpret some of the observed trends in taste. A result of considerable power and great simplicity is derived: for two products located on the surface of a sphere, the correlation between their prices is equal to the cosine of the angle between them as measured from the centre of the sphere. The paper a companion to Cowan's (2001) paper in this series also draws out some of the relationships between this economic analysis and some leading themes in art history and art theory. 1 Research Unit for Innovative Economics, Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester M15 6PB, UK. Email: [email protected]. I am grateful to participants in the conference on New Frontiers in the Economics of Innovation and New Technology, held in honour of Paul David, Turin, May 2000, at a seminar at London Business School and the International Schumpeter Society Conference in Manchester, June 2000, and also to Catherine Beaudry, John Cantwell, Robin Cowan, Stuart MacDonald, and Jenny Swann for helpful discussion about this paper, but they are not responsible for any errors and idiosyncrasies. Funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (with R. Cowan) is gratefully acknowledged.