The impact of color palettes on the prices of paintings (2017) | Hacker News Reader

The impact of color palettes on the prices of paintings (2017)

link.springer.com

40 pointsprismatic8 comments

> Our main finding is the existence of a strong positive correlation between the price of a work and its surface occupied by colors from the blue-teal and orange clusters.

The orange/blue contrast again: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContra...

https://sci-hub.tw/10.1007/s00181-017-1413-4

Abstract: We emphasize that color composition is an important characteristic of a painting. It impacts the auction price of a painting, but it has never been considered in previous studies on art markets. By using Picasso’s paintings and paintings of Color Field Abstract Expressionists sold in Chrisite’s and Sotheby’s auctions in New York between 1998 and 2016, we demonstrate the method to analyze color compositions: How to extract color palettes from a painting image and how to measure color characteristics. We propose two measures: (1) the surface occupied by specific colors, (2) color diversity of a painting composition. Controlling for all conventional painting and sale characteristics, our empirical results find significant evidence of contrastive paintings, i.e., paintings with high diversity of colors, carrying a premium than equivalent artworks which are performed in monochromatic style. In the case of Picasso’s paintings, our econometric analysis shows that some colors are associated with high prices.

[My comment] The ability to extract the colour palette seems much more interesting than the observation that some palettes were correlated with higher auction prices.

> The ability to extract the colour palette seems much more interesting

It's trivial to extract colors from images.

The biggest challenge might be lighting conditions affecting the hues, but if you have standard lighting or even close to it it's pretty easy.

Nice little touch in Fig.7 (actually, all of their visualizations) is that it uses the Orange/Blue contrast they identified!

I just gotta say it - I'm disappointed that a Springer publication got to the main page of HN.

Huh? Care to elaborate?

The article is paywalled, unless you have access through a university or other library.

The high price you'd pay for paywalled papers goes in large part to the publisher for no real tangible benefit. Most research, and likely the linked article, are funded either directly or indirectly through public funds like taxes. So it is especially obnoxious to see an interesting article like the one linked be locked down.

As for why it's bad etiquette on the front page of HN, the free-and-open ethos common among hackers (at least, old school ones...) would usually see someone link directly to a pdf, instead of this.

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