Are you a Picasso or a Cézanne?

I just read an interesting article in the July issue of Wired magazine about an economist named David Galenson who has proposed an unified theory of creativity that groups creativity into two distinct forms -- "quick and dramatic" or "slow and quiet" -- which are expressed by two types of people.

The first character type - the "conceptual innovator" - is someone who does breakthrough work early in life. Conceptual innovators make "bold, dramatic leaps in their disciplines" and know exactly what they want and know when they've achieved it. Examples of such innovators include Edvard Munch, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Wolfgang Mozart, and Orson Welles.

The second character type - the "experimental innovator" - is someone who labors and plods along through a lifetime of trial and error, and thus, peaks later in life. Experimentalists never know when their work is finished. Examples of this type of innovator include Mark Twain, Paul Cézanne, Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Ludwig van Beethoven.

Seurat was 25 when he painted Sunday on La Grande Jatte. Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at the tender age of 26. Makes you wonder what you've accomplished lately, doesn't it?

Call me ambitious, but if I can just learn to look to my right before I cross the street here in Australia and not get myself killed, that would be a pretty big accomplishment for me these days. For me, great achievement comes in baby steps.

So, What Kind of Genius Are You?

Side note: A great majority of creative geniuses described in the article are white males. Sylvia Plath and Maya Lin were the only women and person of color mentioned. What's up with that? Wired needs to get a clue that geeky white men are the not only people who read their magazine. For reals.