HSE Economists Find That Auction Prices Depend on Artist’s Life Story

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Researchers from the Centre for Big Data in Economics and Finance at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences have found that facts from an artist’s life are statistically significant in pricing a painting, alongside such traditional characteristics as the material, the size of the canvas, or the presence of the artist’s signature. This conclusion is based on an analysis of prices for 15,000 works by 158 artists sold since 1999 by the major auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s. The article has been published in the journal Empirical Studies of the Arts.

In his essay ‘The Death of the Author: The Case of Art Market,’ Roland Barthes, one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century, criticised the biographical approach to the interpretation of art. In his view, a work should be perceived primarily as an independent text, rather than as a reflection of its creator’s life. Researchers Valeria Kolycheva and Dmitry Grigoriev from the Centre for Big Data in Economics and Finance at the HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences, together with colleagues from HSE University in St Petersburg and the University of Florida (USA), decided to test this idea empirically using data from the art market. If the ‘death of the author’ has indeed occurred, the price of a painting should not depend on details of the artist’s life.

The researchers analysed the prices of around 15,000 paintings by 158 artists sold since 1999 by the leading auction houses Sotheby’s and Christie’s. They examined how characteristics of the artwork—such as material, technique, size, the presence of a signature, exhibition history, and the number of references in the literature—as well as information about the artist (gender, nationality, affiliation with a particular school, and biographical facts) affect the value of a painting. The sample was divided into four groups by artistic styles with historically established time frames: pre-nineteenth century, the nineteenth century, and the first and second halves of the twentieth century.

For each group, two models were constructed: a full model, including variables describing both the artist and the artwork, and a restricted model, which included only the characteristics of the painting itself. The models were compared using an F-test, which shows how the explanatory power of a model changes after variables are removed. The ‘death of the author’ hypothesis implied that removing all artist-related variables would not reduce the quality of the model.

However, the analysis showed that in every group, once artist characteristics were removed, the F-statistic exceeded the critical value. This means that the full model describes the real data better. In determining the value of paintings from the Renaissance, the Baroque, and other classical periods alike, the artist remains one of the key factors. In the modern period, the role of biographical characteristics is even more pronounced: for the nineteenth century, the F-statistic was 9.36 with a critical value of 1.35; for the first half of the twentieth century, 45.40 with a critical value of 1.53; and for the second half of the twentieth century, a striking 77.62 with a critical value of around 2.25.

The researchers also assessed the specific contribution of biographical facts to the price of a painting. For example, for works from the period before the nineteenth century, an artist being of Italian origin increases the price by almost fifteen times. In the nineteenth century, paintings by French and Russian artists were worth four times more. If an artist was self-taught, the value of the canvas rose by 50%. In the second half of the twentieth century, the American school became dominant, and prices for paintings from the United States increased more than twentyfold. During this period, biographical facts became even more important: paintings by artists who had emigrated to other countries were worth six times more than average. A tragic fate, such as death in war, consistently raised prices by a factor of 2.7 to 3.

Valeria Kolycheva

‘One of the revolutions of twentieth-century art lies in the fact that it became personal and author-driven. Artists chose independence, even if this meant paying for it with poverty and a lack of public understanding. The artist brings their inner world into the open, onto the canvas. Gradually, the commissioning viewer is replaced by a new type of viewer—one who explores and is ready to respond. In the twentieth century, both the creator and the viewer change,’ explained Valeria Kolycheva, Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Big Data in Economics and Finance, HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences.

Economists believe that the ‘death of the author’ has not occurred: a painting not only lives its own life as an independent object, but also serves as a bearer of its creator’s biography, and it is precisely the combination of these two factors that determines its price. The researchers have translated a philosophical idea into the language of the economics of art, offering art-market participants a testable hypothesis instead of abstract reflections on meaning and interpretation.