u/boreddatageek

Three years ago, when I started studying for Jeopardy, art history was one of my weaker categories. I found TheArtStory.org where I would read about each artist, search their name in J-archive.com, and make flashcards based on what I found. In the last 40 years, there have been over 9000 clues on art history. That is about 1.5%, which means there is usually one art clue per day or one category in a week. I created graphs that include every artist or artwork mentioned at least 5 times using Excel, Datawrapper, and Affinity Designer. I am sure I missed some, so please let me know! Most of the images are from Wikipedia.

One of the hardest parts about art is classifying it. I split these graphs into eras that roughly matched artistic movements and had about 15 artists in each time period. I know that no artist perfectly fits movement or century, but I hope the chronology is a decent guide. 

The countries were fairly easy to graph, but I also wanted to explore how subjects or themes evolved over time. I came up with the seven categories of art you see here. Because Jeopardy doesn’t ask about a wide variety of artworks, I decided to use two LLMs, asking each one to make a list of the 50 most famous artworks from each era and putting them into one of my categories. I manually checked these, making sure that the most famous artists were well-represented before creating the pie charts. This system is not perfect, but I hope it is also a useful guide for beginners.

• “Biblical” art dominated the Renaissance & Baroque eras, but it suddenly dropped with the French Rococo.
• “Mythology” is almost always Greco-Roman, which was a common subject right up until the 20th century.
• “Landscapes” were mostly in fashion in the 19th century, though Bob Ross did sneak his way onto the last graph
• I came up with the phrase “Everyday Life” to combine the terms “genre painting” (people doing daily things) and “still life”, which I see as fairly similar.
• “Portraits” are a person or group of people posed for the picture, while “History” is an active scene from an important event. 
• “Abstract” was the hardest to categorize, as it didn't become popular until the 20th century. Many surrealists like Dali and Magritte have work that could be classified into abstract or another category, depending on your interpretation.

 

One of the trickiest questions was, “what is art?” While an “artist” could refer to a musician, filmmaker, designer, or any craftsman, when Jeopardy discusses “art history”, they are usually referring to painting and sculpting. Maybe it is because painters and sculptors create work that is purely for looking at, unlike potters, fashion designers, and architects who create products that are meant to be used while also being visually appealing. 

Determining whether something is a sculpture or a building was sometimes harder than I thought, but I checked if the designer was usually referred to as a sculptor or architect to make that call. I found that a solid 20% of art clues tend to be about sculpture. There were also a few artists who are notable for using unique materials: Tussaud, Faberge, Tiffany, and Chihuly. 

Because Jeopardy often asks about American History, you’ll see artists who depicted those events and people represented here more than they would be in a typical art history course, like Trumbull, West, and Leutze. A handful of sculptors have work that is mentioned more than they are, but I gave them credit for that in the graph: Chares’s Colossus, Borglum’s Mt. Rushmore, Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty, and poor Landowski, who is never named in Jeopardy though his Cristo Redentor statue comes up frequently.

As you can tell, this data set is severely lacking in non-European & non-male artists. Only 6 percent of art clues on Jeopardy are about female artists. Hokusai is the only prominent Asian artist here, and Yoko Ono’s number represents the clues specifically about her art, not just her relationship with the Beatles.

There is also a deficit of artists from the 21st century. Koons, Hockney, Hirst, Banksy, and Fairey have been successful in the last 20 years, but they did start their careers in the 20th century. My limit of five mentions excluded a few contemporary artists who have been mentioned 1-4 times: Yayoi Kusama, Kara Walker, Anish Kapoor, & Ai Weiwei. 

When I look to see what art makes the headlines, it is usually auctions (of older work), theft/forgery, vandalism (Just Stop Oil), memes (Cattelan, Beeple) or portraits of the celebrities (Obamas, royalty, and athletes). It will be interesting to see what other artists, if any, become well known in the coming decades. 

I’ve got more specific data on the most mentioned artworks and museums. This post was already massive, but I can do a follow-up on those if anyone is interested.