ABSTRACT
The Abstract Expressionists and the painters who followed them in New York dominate histories of modern art in the second half of the twentieth century as decisively as the Impressionists and the painters who followed them in Paris dominate histories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This chapter documents and explores a striking fact about the history of modern art that involves a neglected contrast between these two episodes. Specifically, the great American painters of the modern era failed to produce individual paintings as famous as those produced by a number of the great French painters who preceded them. This is not because the American painters are less important than their predecessors; indeed, the same evidence that establishes that the greatest American masterpieces are less famous than their French counterparts reveals that the American masters themselves are at least as important as several of the French painters who produced the most celebrated individual works. The resolution of the puzzle appears to lie instead in a basic difference in practice between the French and American painters, which was a product of a change over time in the market institutions of modern art. Explaining why modern French painters produced more famous paintings than their American successors highlights a very concrete way in which changes in the methods of showing and selling fine art have changed the way artists work.
