Artist Survey Results
 
A few months ago, I was sitting in class with my friend Jessica, and we had a conversation about some pal of hers who was a 29 year old landscape architect who had never heard of Andy Warhol. I found this absolutely amazing--that anyone, let alone a 29 year old landscape architect, would not know who Andy Warhol is. As the discussion progressed, I surmised that if you asked anyone on the street to name 10 artists, the most common answers would be Pablo Picasso, Vincent Van Gogh, and Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo, and that Andy Warhol would be kind of a second stringer (i.e. he wouldn't be the first one on a list, but he would come up fairly often).
 
Thus, I went out of my way to ask as many people as I could to name 10 artists. I didn't tell anyone why, or what the purpose of the list was--I simply asked them to name 10 artists cold. Between e-mails and actually having people write analog lists for me, I got 60 respondents, and then tabulated the results below. The sample population I used is fairly dubious, as far as legitimate research goes, as the vast bulk of the people surveyed were A) college educated and B) know me, but regardless, I have results.
 
To create my highly scientific list of artists, I tabulated the data using the ever reliable "hash mark" method (ya know--make 4 vertical lines, and then a horizontal hash mark when you hit 5?) and a ball point pen. As a result, I expect that there is a margin of error of some percentage, but what are you going to do? I got a lot more names than represented here, but I figured to be statistically significant a name would have to get at least 2 votes to make it on the list. I lost about half the list that way, and while I am sad that I had to omit Betty Beaumont (my undergrad sculpture teacher), I saved myself a whole bunch of typing.
 
The results (out of 60 people responding):
 
 
Apparently, my theory about who would get named is pretty accurate. Picasso and Van Gogh head the list, both getting votes from over half the respondents. Michelangelo did very well, but I was a little dissapointed by the Leonardo Da Vinci turn out. Warhol came in with a solid 13 votes, anchoring him as a clear second string famous artist--most people know who he is, but he usually isn't the first name that comes to mind. While Monet's strong showing isn't really surprising, I didn't figure that he would be any more recognizable than most of the other second stringers. I guess that gag in that episode of Buffy where there are vampires collecting posters from dead college freshmen, and are having a contest between Monet's Water Lillies and Klimt's The Kiss was dead on.
 
Some interesting statistics about the responses:
 
 
Some of the more entertaining responses:
 
"The kid who played Ernie on My Three Sons, umm, Barry Livingston."
-Ed Pancreas
 
"Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
Betty Beaumont
and that guy who spills the paint"
-Matt Rector
 
"Robert Maplethorpe (Never whip a bull like this)"
-Chris Proper
 
"Peter Bakija
Ben Johnson
Your Momma
Larry Flint"
-Andrew Sackett
 
 
Back to Main Page
 
Go here to read about my two favorite artists who didn't make it on to the list.
 
 
(The first picture on this page is Harlequin and his Companion by Picasso, 1901. The second picture is Landscape at Saint-Remy by Van Gogh, 1889. But then over half of you should be able to identify them anyway.)