To get to the top of the art world, start there in the first place

WELL BEGUN, half done. That proverb, ascribed to Aristotle, seems an apt description of the art market--at least it is if a study of artistic careers, published this week in Science, is to be believed. In this study Albert-László Barabási, a physicist at Northeastern University in Boston, and Samuel Fraiberger, a data scientist at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences, deconstruct almost half a million artistic careers. They conclude that for artists, professional success see...