Beauty and Creativity in Choice and Ranking Experiments

For economists, the job of artists is to embody creativity in their works of art.In fact, a recent handbook on cultural economics states that the concept of creativity seems to be, at the very least, a hallmark or characteristic feature of art generally, if not a necessary condition of artistic practice (Borowiecki, 2020).However, Creativity as Art is more a 20th-century biased definition of Art, because from the ancient Greeks to at least the 19 th century, Art was valued for its Beauty, according to Philosopher's records.This paper carries out several choice and ranking experiments.Experimental subjects are asked to grade and rank paintings according to their perceived Beauty, Creativity, Complexity, Novelty, Interestingness and Expensiveness and then asked to choose among the paintings.The paper finds that the individual's preferences for Art can be represented by a simple linear combination of the individual's perception of Beauty and Creativity in Art.This may potentially explain the shift from Beauty to Creativity in 20 th century Art for the artist's sake of novelty and transcendence in the History of Art.