Perhaps you are a late bloomer

Human beings love to divide the world up into discrete categories, often by twos.

For example, the French anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss divided societies into what he called the Raw and the Cooked. Neighbourhood gangs and tribal cultures carve up their worlds into enemy and friend. Modern digital technology is based on the binary dance of two numbers, 1 and 0, to power the yes-no of our computerized existence.

I have another of these pairings and it dovetails with one of the great obsessions of modern culture — success.

It is not the matter of whether you are successful or not, on your terms or anyone else's. Simply put (and I love to read about this type of research) it is: Are you an early or late bloomer?

Bill Gates, a Harvard dropout and the richest man in the world, hatched Microsoft in his parents' garage in his 20s. You can call him an early bloomer.

Grandma Moses, everybody's favourite late bloomer, started painting in her 70s.

David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, has developed a new theory about early and late bloomers among artists, which also has implications for the rest of us.

He divides artists into what he calls either "conceptual" or "experimental" innovators. His most recent book on the subject is Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity.

Art for the ages

Galenson started collecting and studying art seriously a decade ago, which was when his statistical tools also kicked in. He noticed that auction prices for art works could be plotted on a graph according to the age of the artist.

The value of certain artists such as Andy Warhol, Frank Stella and Jasper Johns peaked early, when they were in their 20s and early 30s. The prices of their work dropped as they grew older.

Others produced their most valued work when they were getting longer in the tooth. For example, Mark Rothko's most prized canvases were painted when he was in his mid-50s; Robert Motherwell's when he was a ripe 72.

But Galenson's best example of late and early bloomers was not these Americans but Picasso and his predecessor, Paul Cezanne, the Frenchman who helped lay the groundwork for what became known as modern art.

Picasso was, in Galenson's term, the "conceptual innovator." He was an art revolutionary, the leading figure in cubism where representational figures were fractured — eyes, teeth and body parts all scattered on canvas. Picasso heralded the cubist revolution with his Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, which he completed at 26.

Cezanne, on the other hand, was what Galenson calls an "experimental innovator." His most significant paintings were produced later in life, in particular when he was 67, the year he died.

No Grandma Moses

Here is the crucial difference, according to Galenson. Conceptual innovators make bold, sweeping moves and do it early in their careers. Picasso did many preparatory drawings, yes, but he always knew what he wanted. As Galenson says, conceptual innovators don't seek, they find.

Experimental innovators, on the other hand, endlessly seek. They experiment, tinker and progress in fits and starts. Cezanne was no Grandma Moses, he painted for years before he did his best work. If Picasso was blessed with certainty and a staggering confidence, Cezanne was more the plodder.

Yet, as Galenson argues, Picasso depended on Cezanne's experimentation to make his conceptual breakthrough. Artists, like scientists, stand on the shoulders of giants, even if those older giants take their time to rise up.

Cezanne would probably have hated Picasso's jumbled-up cubism, says Galenson. But that is another matter.

Galenson also applies his theory to literature. You have the conceptualizers, the big breakthrough writers such as the poet T.S. Eliot who wrote The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and The Wasteland while a young man.

Then, there were the lit-tinkers: Robert Frost wrote most of his anthologized poems after the age of 40. Two of the giants of modern American poetry, Wallace Stevens and William Carlos Williams, took years to mature.

The weight of convention

Now, this is not a foolproof theory. It is based on statistics. And you can argue that there are plenty of exceptions.

Picasso, as we know, kept painting and producing great works throughout his long life, including the celebrated anti-war painting Guernica. Some artists, such as Philip Roth, the American novelist, enjoyed sparkling, early success and just kept getting better and better.

The same holds true in other fields. Apple founder Steve Jobs keeps coming out with new innovations such as the iPod and iPhone. And Bill Gates hasn't exactly gone to sleep, either.

As far as scientists and especially mathematicians go, their groundbreaking work is more often done when they are young. For example, Einstein was in his early 20s, working in the Swiss patent office, when he developed his first breakthroughs in physics. (Actually, he started imagining the concept of relativity while he was daydreaming in high school).

Galenson has a theory why conceptual artists peak early in their careers. It is that they have a simple, revolutionary idea and, in its pursuit, are not weighed down by habit and convention — the curse of those who have been around for a while.

As far as art critics, they do not appear to like Galenson or his theory very much. In an interview I heard recently, a very irritated Galenson said that he had sent his work to dozens of art historians and never heard back from any of them, except for put-downs in newspapers.

Hares and tortoises

Clearly, art historians would also appear to divide the world into twos — us and them. And Galenson, the economist, is poaching on their territory.

But what does his theory mean for the rest of us who are neither Picassos nor Cezannes? I think a lot.

In the magazine Wired, the writer Daniel H. Pink, picks up on Galenson by saying that creativity comes in two types: "Quick and dramatic, or careful and quiet." The dramatic types are like hares. The careful ones are the tortoises.

Of course that is where the analogy ends because neither early nor late bloomers win the race, as the tortoise does in the old fable. They just have different styles and temperaments.

The tortoise theory is no justification for laziness, mind you. Passion, hard work and persistence are the keys for successful people, as the business consultant Richard St. John points out in his giddy, three-minute internet synopsis on how to succeed. Oh yes, and it helps to have a pushy mother, he adds.

But if you haven't peaked yet, these theories can be consoling. There are more plodders in the world than there are grandstanders. People like Galenson give us plodders hope (yes, I identify). The best lies ahead, after all the tinkering that has been going on for years.