Inside Out: When Ideas from the Core are Radicalized on the Periphery

Abstract

Conflicting theoretical perspectives present radical innovation as originating either from the core or the periphery of a system. Studies tend to bridge this divide by way of positions or roles. This paper proposes a process interface, where ideas from the core are radicalized on the periphery, inverting the established tendency of "tempering" of innovation. This approach realigns the primacy of the core in diffusing ideas and that of the periphery in reinforcing distinctiveness. Radicalization and tempering are interdependent, to the extent that the realization of one denotes other's termination. Quantitative and qualitative evidence from the history of art lend support to the arguments, including breakthrough paintings, such as The Scream by Munch and Black Square by Malevitch. Radicalization is facilitated by simultaneously increasing differences and exchanges between core and periphery. The mobility of new ideas from the core to the periphery is likely to provoke resistance in a conservative environment. The collision of opposing social forces raises the stakes, making compromise less feasible or desirable.

Full text

19
INSIDE OUT: WHEN IDEAS FROM
THE CORE ARE RADICALIZED ON
THE PERIPHERY
Stoyan V. Sgourev
ABSTRACT
Conicting theoretical perspectives present radical innovation as originating
either from the core or the periphery of a system. Studies tend to bridge this
divide by way of positions or roles. This paper proposes a process interface,
where ideas from the core are radicalized on the periphery, inverting the estab-
lished tendency of “tempering” of innovation. This approach realigns the pri-
macy of the core in diffusing ideas and that of the periphery in reinforcing
distinctiveness. Radicalization and tempering are interdependent, to the extent
that the realization of one denotes other’s termination. Quantitative and quali-
tative evidence from the history of art lend support to the arguments, including
breakthrough paintings, such as The Scream by Munch and Black Square by
Malevitch. Radicalization is facilitated by simultaneously increasing differ-
ences and exchanges between core and periphery. The mobility of new ideas
from the core to the periphery is likely to provoke resistance in a conservative
environment. The collision of opposing social forces raises the stakes, making
compromise less feasible or desirable.
Keywords: Innovation; radicalization; art; social networks; mobility; core
and periphery
Organizing Creativity in the Innovation Journey
Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Volume 75, 19–37
Copyright © 2021 by Emerald Publishing Limited
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved
ISSN: 0733-558X/doi:10.1108/S0733-558X20210000075004

20 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
There is salvation only in the extreme; moderation is mediocre.
Paul Gauguin
The history of art or technology is shot through with breakthroughs that zzled
out in general disregard or even if recognized, failed to lead to more consistent
innovation in their wake. But there are also examples of innovations that trig-
gered signicant follow-up developments. Consider the decade 1905–1915 when
art underwent a cataclysmic change. If the foundations of gurative art were dra-
matically eroded with the rst Cubist experiments in 1907–1908 (Sgourev, 2013),
it took just a few more years until the early abstract paintings of Kandinsky
(1911) and yet few more until the leap into abstraction was complete with
the Black Square of Malevitch (1915). In less than a decade, the main princi-
ples of artistic representation were recongured on a scale unseen before or since
(Roque, 2003).
It is one of the more theoretically challenging characteristics of radical inno-
vation that it is discontinuous by nature, but it simultaneously represents a link in
a chain of related innovations that either lay the groundwork for it or elaborate
on it in subsequent iterations. Such chains present acute difculties in establishing
the degree of discontinuity and radical-ness of the innovation (Dahlin & Behrens,
2005) and its relationship to subsequent innovations. It is recognized that inno-
vations with impact diffuse widely and trigger “wakes” of innovation in a self-
propagating system of trial-and-error experimentation, creating unpredictable
patterns beyond the original novelty (Boland, Lyytinen, & Yoo, 2007). But what
is not as well understood are the conditions under which the original innovation
leads to even more radical developments – what is dened here as the “radicaliza-
tion” of innovation.
In the innovation literature, “radicalization” is far outweighed by the opposite
expectation of “tempering” – innovations reducing their distinctiveness to attain
consecration as legitimate (Haveman & Rao, 1997; Jones, Maoret, Massa, &
Svejenova, 2012). But as recently observed (Delacour & Leca, 2017), this frame-
work ignores cases when success is achieved not by downplaying, but by amplify-
ing the distinctiveness of innovations. Cases of this kind are at the forefront of
a paper that conceptualizes radicalization as a process of escalation of innova-
tion in the form of sequences of ideas that originate at the center of a system
and intensify at the periphery. In this perspective, the conditions favorable to the
emergence of an idea may not be equally favorable to its radicalization, following
a substantively different logic.
The main advantage of this framework is the opportunity it presents to reduce
the persistent tension between conicting theoretical accounts of radical innova-
tion, as emanating either from the “core” of the social system or its “periphery”
(e.g., Becker, 1982; Bourdieu, 1993; Merton, 1968). The paper posits a dynamic
interface between core and periphery, whereby ideas appearing at the core are
amplied on the periphery. The key contribution is in articulating radicalization
as a theoretically important process that is opposite in nature to tempering, but is
intrinsically related to it, as the outset of one process marks the end of the other.
Cycles of tempering and radicalization can be observed in many contexts, from

Inside Out 21
political revolutions to technological innovation. For example, one of the most
powerful waves of innovation in history – the British Industrial Revolution, was
based on the ability to adopt and escalate the innovations of others, more so than
in originating them (Mokyr, 2012).
Pursuing interdependencies between analytical levels in the process of innova-
tion (Cattani, Ferriani, & Lanza, 2017), the paper interrogates the interaction
between mobility and creativity. It proposes as a condition facilitating radicaliza-
tion the simultaneously increasing and decreasing social distance between the core
and periphery. This condition is observed when the growing prominence of the
core accelerates mobility and encourages the diffusion of ideas to the periphery.
The inux of new ideas is likely to provoke resistance in a conservative environ-
ment. The collision of opposing forces raises the stakes, making the achievement
of compromise less feasible or desirable. In this perspective, tensions between
incompatible cultural traditions create preconditions for innovation (Park, 1928).
The proposed framework is illustrated with examples from art history. Modern
art originated in France, but many of its emblematic artworks were created away
from the core of the art world (i.e., Russia, Italy or Norway), marking a notable
shift in the epicenter of artistic innovation (Cooper, 1970). Original work appeared
in places subject to a conservative backlash against the incursions of Modern art.
Opposing cultural forces contributed to the radicalization of innovation in the
form of recognized breakthroughs, such as The Scream (1893) by Edvard Munch
and the Black Square (1915) by Kazimir Malevitch. Munch radicalized a late
nineteenth century introspective idiom, while Malevitch radicalized currents of
formal innovation that originated with Cézanne. The identication of trajectories
of this kind contributes to an account of innovation that is both structural and
dynamic in nature, capable of explaining the occurrence of key breakthroughs at
unexpected locations. This most unsettling of works – the Scream, was Nordic in
appearance, but originated elsewhere and radicalized on its way north.
THEORY
Radical innovation challenges and renders obsolete established technolo-
gies, standards and products (Hill & Rothaermel, 2003). One of the dominant
perspectives in the conceptualization of innovation emphasizes the role of social
networks and interpersonal ties in the creative process (e.g., Burt, 2004; Perry-
Smith & Shalley, 2003). It postulates an underlying “core-periphery” network
structure that is characterized by a hub of dense relationships at the core and
by layers of dispersed relationships at the periphery. The core is the domain of
“stars,” with many relationships to other prominent members, while the periphery
is the habitat of the hoi-polloi, with few relationships of this kind (Collins, 1998).1
Status and power are concentrated at the core, while normative control is weaker
on the periphery (e.g., Bourdieu, 1993).
Scholarship remains polarized on the fundamental question of whether cen-
tral or peripheral actors are better positioned to innovate (Cattani, Colucci, &
Ferriani, 2016). In the “romantic” vision, key creative achievements originate

22 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
from talented individuals at the margins of elds, unencumbered by peer pressure
and binding role expectations (Coser, 1965; Merton, 1968). Marginal actors have
less to lose by developing ideas or products that challenge the status quo. Weaker
embeddedness in the dominant culture enables these actors to cross boundaries
(Meyerson & Scully, 1995) and to import ideas from external domains (Hargadon &
Sutton, 1997).
In the opposing vision, the core of the social structure provides better oppor-
tunities to access and combine external knowledge and ideas (e.g., Burt, 2004;
Collins, 1998). Well-connected actors are more knowledgeable about recent devel-
opments and are better positioned to devise new solutions by recombining ideas
from many sources. Studies document that marginal actors rarely produce ideas
of sequence (Collins, 1998). Those near the systemic core have greater opportuni-
ties to mobilize attention and support for their ideas (Collins, 1998).
The inherent tension between these two perspectives and the inconclusive
empirical evidence have motivated efforts at reconciling the differences. The type
of innovation is an intervening factor – the “coreness” argument appears more
suitable to explaining incremental forms of innovation and less so to radical inno-
vation that derives, for the most part, from the periphery (Cattani et al., 2016;
Phillips, 2011). Marginality is more favorable to the pursuit of exotic innova-
tion that is less likely to achieve mainstream recognition. This tradeoff has led
scholars to propose that an intermediate position – in-between the core and the
periphery, is optimal, as it combines access to diverse ideas and information with
the freedom to experiment necessary for radical innovation (Cattani & Ferriani,
2008). From this angle, the optimal strategy combines embeddedness within an
intellectual eld with the maintenance of distance from its orthodoxies (Cattani
et al., 2016).
Studies have questioned the feasibility and methodological utility of an inter-
mediate position, arguing in favor of the creative potential of an “indeterminate”
position (Phillips, 2011). Indeterminate are those positions displaying high cen-
trality and high marginality at the same time, when individuals maneuver between
the core and periphery or are perceived by some to belong to the core and by
others – to the periphery. This allows them to stay connected, but to weaken con-
straints and maintain leeway for maneuvering and experimentation (Padgett &
Ansell, 1993; Sgourev, 2013).
Other efforts at resolving the substantive inconsistencies are directed toward
the identication of roles, rather than positions, building on Becker’s (1982)
classication of mainstreams, mavericks and mists. Mainstreams are well-
connected among themselves, following conventions and producing incremental
innovations. Mavericks violate selectively conventions, proposing innovations
that are not accepted within the mainstream. The mists are on the outside,
consistently violating conventions and employing their freedom to experiment
in creating products and paradigms that break new ground. They are discon-
nected and exotic (Fine, 2003). To make the classication system more dynamic
and better account for inconsistencies, scholars have recently added the cate-
gory of amphibians (Jones, Svejenova, Strandgaard, & Townley, 2016; Powell &
Sandholtz, 2012). By transiting between core and periphery and between insider

Inside Out 23
and outsider roles amphibians help diffuse practices across domains and organize
creative activity.
In this manner, the core and periphery are bridged by way of a particular
position – i.e., optimal distinctiveness, or a particular role – an amphibious entre-
preneur or broker (Patriotta & Hirsch, 2016). Common to both approaches is
the relatively static interface between core and periphery, constituted by actors
in an intermediary position or role.2 An alternative possibility is that of process,
adopting a dynamic perspective in conceptualizing the interface between core and
periphery by examining how ideas travel between them. Process is typically con-
ceived as the “tempering” of innovations and ideas on their way to the core. For
Bourdieu (1993), the increasing recognition of marginal actors in a given eld is
accompanied by mounting pressure for normative conformity, which constrains
attempts to deviate markedly from expectations. In this way, successful mavericks
become the new mainstreams (Becker, 1982). Scholarship agrees that institutional
resistance tends to blunt the edginess of radical novelty, leading to “soft” radi-
calism (Jones et al., 2016; Meyerson & Scully, 1995). This is echoed in work on
institutional entrepreneurship, documenting how peripheral actors recombine
practices and ideas, building alliances and framing the innovations to appeal to
the main audiences (e.g., Hargrave & Van de Ven, 2006; Haveman & Rao, 1997).
Thus, the expectation is for controversial forms of innovation to tone down their
distinctiveness in order to attain legitimation (Jones et al., 2012; Rao, Monin, &
Durand, 2003).
This paper articulates the opposite trajectory, where controversial ideas that
have received a degree of legitimation are amplied on the margins. Amplication
can be an important mechanism of differentiation and legitimation in the crea-
tive industries (Delacour & Leca, 2017). It is recognized that the core borrows
ideas selectively from the periphery (Becker, 1982), but the periphery borrows
selectively too, improving ideas conceived at the core (Mokyr, 2012). That this
borrowing may amount to radicalizing ideas is implicit in the denition of the
periphery as a site for invention of possibilities, relatively unconstrained by pres-
sures for conformity (Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Merton, 1968).
A radicalization dynamic is also implied in categorization research. One of
the core problems identied in this research is what enables producers to offer
unconventional products, given the strong institutional pressure for categorical
purity – for products to conform to conventions (e.g., Zuckerman, 1999, 2017).
That evaluators tend to screen out unconventional offerings tends to put the pro-
ducers in the position of outsiders. Because of their riskiness, experiments with
unconventional offerings are relatively rare, likely to originate either from candi-
dates of very low status, with little to lose, or from the highest-status candidates
at the core (Phillips & Zuckerman, 2001). But when ideas emanate from the core
they are more likely to be tempered, given the strong pressure for conformity and
the fear of status loss (Bourdieu, 1993). The problem is that most unconventional
approaches do not work and even when they do work, evaluators are reluctant
to appreciate their value if contradicting conventions (Zuckerman, 2017). That
most differentiation is on the margins (Zuckerman, 2017) is due not only to the
intrinsically higher tolerance for risk at more remote social locations, but also to

24 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
social constraints that encourage tempering through rejection or self-censoring
(Becker, 1982; Bourdieu, 1993), thereby pushing unconventional ideas onto the
margins and facilitating their radicalization.
The argument that tempering and radicalization are opposite, but interwoven
processes, is well established in political science. Scholarship recognizes that the
understanding of one process cannot be divorced from the other, as the occur-
rence of radicalization denotes the failure of tempering. Work on the French
Revolution shows that the radicalization of political contestation was not inevi-
table. The popular action began as non-violent demonstrations that turned
physically violent only in the face of attempted repression (Alpaugh, 2009,
2014). In this logic, radicalization reects the inability of attempts at tempering
to preclude escalation. Each process creates the preconditions for the other, with
the outcome hinging on situational factors, such as the degree of competition.
The exclusion of more radical elements may serve to smother radicalization,
but can also stoke it by creating possibilities for successful differentiation. In
a highly competitive context, tempering carries the risk of facilitating, rather
than preventing radicalization, as competition fosters the instrumental use of
difference.
Recent work (e.g., Cattani et al., 2017) emphasizes the need to better inte-
grate interactions between different analytical levels in innovation accounts.
One of the ways in which this can be achieved is by examining how structural
developments create preconditions for reinforcement of attitudes conducive to
radicalization. My argument is that radicalization is facilitated by conditions of
simultaneous increase and reduction of social distance – of increasing differences
and exchanges between core and periphery.
The degree of inequality in a system increases when the social distance
between the periphery and the core is becoming larger, as was the case, for exam-
ple, when Paris asserted itself as the center of the art world in the late nine-
teenth century (White & White, 1965). One of the consequences of the rising
prominence of Paris was encouraging mobility from peripheral regions (Joyeux-
Prunel, 2015). Some of the incoming artists would remain in Paris, but others
would return to their home countries or move to other places, motivated by
desire to avoid intense competition at the core or to implement new ideas in
places that lacked exposure to them. It is recognized that mobility inuences
positively knowledge spillovers and the dispersion of information in a eld (e.g.,
Rosenkopf & Almeida, 2003), but what is less recognized is that by facilitating
the circulation of ideas on a broader scale, mobility also creates preconditions
for radicalization. There are two key reasons for that. The core is dominated
by elites pursuing commercial success and peer recognition by way of strate-
gies of tempering and reproduction, pushing nonconventional or uncompro-
mising ideas to the margins (e.g., Bourdieu, 1993; Collins, 1998). At the same
time, when new ideas originating from the core penetrate the periphery, they are
likely to provoke resistance in a conservative environment, raising the stakes in
a polarization process familiar from sociological work (Collins, 2009; Gould,
2003). The collision of contradictory social forces makes the achievement of
compromise less feasible or desirable.

Inside Out 25
Research tends to portray peripheral actors as mere recipients of ideas from
the core (Collins, 1998) or alternatively, as agents of change, whose disconnected-
ness allows to conceive new ideas in relative freedom of constraints (Coser, 1965;
Merton, 1968). The proposed framework highlights the role of mobility in con-
stituting marginal social locations that are sufciently disconnected from the core
to encourage exploration, but sufciently connected to it to reduce the cultural t
with the local context. This echoes classic sociological arguments. For example,
Park (1928) drew attention to how mobility leads to cultural hybridity: a state of
partaking in two distinct traditions that never completely interpenetrate or fuse.
This state potentially provides an impetus to creative activity. Similarly, Veblen
(1919) argued that the experience of conict between cultures imbues skepticism
toward conventions. The argument has resurfaced in recent network scholarship,
showing how the positional ambivalence between contrasting imperatives or at
the “structural fold” between networks (Vedres & Stark, 2010) can be conducive
to innovation practices (Padgett & Ansell, 1993). Radicalization embodies the
idea that innovation emanates from the tensions between cultures with discordant
principles of evaluation.
The next sections document the pertinence of this framework in explain-
ing seeming paradoxes in the history of art, such as how locations lacking an
established tradition and demand for Modern art incubated some of its dening
achievements. Less visible in scholarship than the process of tempering, radicali-
zation manifests itself in innovation bursts that punctuate incremental periods.
Upon presenting basic quantitative evidence, I recount two trajectories of radi-
calization to illustrate the framework.
INITIAL EVIDENCE FOR RADICALIZATION
Any artistic movement or style is encapsulated by a few highly inuential works.
What earns this status is not just their popularity or the fact that they are readily
recognizable. Rather, their principal merit is their foresight, anticipating develop-
ments that would unfold years or decades later. What at the time appeared as
strange, awkward or scandalous, turned out to presage developments that would
constitute new movements and paradigms. Works of this kind “radicalized” art
by opening up new possibilities for expression. While emanating from past devel-
opments, they constitute a break with them. Their role and signicance in art
history is attested to by reproductions in textbooks or by the volume of scholarly
research dedicated to them (e.g., Galenson, 2009).
These works are distributed unevenly across the history of art. If we take as a
starting point the century encompassing the rise of Modern Art (1850–1950), two
major breakthroughs tend to stand out – Impressionism in the late nineteenth
century (Delacour & Leca, 2017; White & White, 1965) and Cubism in the early
twentieth century (Sgourev, 2013). An overview of art historical research yields
a list of artists active in this period that tend to be considered as outstandingly
original or “radical,” such as Pablo Picasso, Edvard Munch, Vincent Van Gogh,
Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Kazimir Malevitch Piet Mondrian and Wassily

26 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
Kandinsky. Lists of this kind are subjective and open to interpretation or to con-
testation. However, recent developments in computational esthetics have allowed
to empirically verify the validity of these lists and the underlying judgments about
the degree of originality or impact of artists.
Currently, the most comprehensive quantitative study of innovation in art is
by Elgammal and Saleh (2015). These authors developed a method to classify
images by the visual concepts (classemes) they contain. These include objects,
such as a house or a church, simple features, such as color and texture, or complex
features, such as walking or turning. This approach allows the development of an
algorithm to analyze a picture by producing a list of classemes that dene it. This
list is then used to compare any picture against others, identifying paintings that
are highly original compared to others. In this manner, art history is analyzed as
a network of interlinked paintings. The problem of nding hotbeds of originality
is a variant of the network centrality problem – of nding the most inuential
person in a social network. The algorithm establishes links between paintings
over time, allowing to identify when certain patterns appear for the rst time and
how they will be elaborated in the future.
Applying this algorithm to 62,000 digital reproductions of paintings from
the Wikiart dataset yields intriguing results. The artistic creativity scores for
the period 1850 to 1950 (Elgammal & Saleh, 2015, p. 14) reveal a pattern that
agrees with research in art history (Joyeux-Prunel, 2015) – originality rises in the
1860s and 1870s (early Impressionism), then markedly decreases in the next three
decades, before exploding in the second decade of the twentieth century, with
Cubism, Futurism and Abstraction. The authors nd that the watershed year
is 1912, when the originality scores undergo a sudden jump, remaining consist-
ently elevated thereafter. What is captured here is the radicalization of Modern
art upon the early success and wide diffusion of Cubism (Sgourev, 2013). The
originality of Picasso is conrmed, but what is particularly remarkable is that
in the period after 1912, it is not Picasso, but Mondrian and Malevitch that dis-
play the highest scores. This attests that the most radical developments in the
wake of Cubism occurred not in Paris, but in peripheral countries, such as Russia
and the Netherlands. A similar trend emerges in the years following the rise of
Impressionism, when the highest originality score is obtained not by a painter in
Paris, but by the Scream by Munch.
The pattern identied in the quantitative analysis is corroborated by recent
evidence provided by art historians. Joyeux-Prunel (2015, p. 501) compiled a list
of important international exhibitions of Modern art over the period 1910–1914.
Of the 25 exhibitions, 8 were in Germany, 4 in Russia, 4 in England, 3 in the
Netherlands, 2 in Czechoslovakia, 2 in France and 1 in the United States. These
data illustrate the shifting center of gravity in art, away from France and onto
Russia, the Netherlands and Germany. Note also that the number of exhibitions
goes up signicantly from 2 in 1910 and 1911 to 9 in 1912 and 8 in 1913. This
conrms the identication of 1912 as a watershed year for Modern art.
These results are important in two respects. They lend quantitative evidence in
support of the discussed mechanism of radicalization, where ideas that emanate
from the center of the art world (i.e., Paris) reverberate out and are amplied on

Inside Out 27
the periphery by artists that are exposed simultaneously to avant-garde inuence
and a conservative cultural milieu. They also corroborate the choice of painters
and works used to illustrate the argument (Munch, Malevitch). Both the Black
Square and the Scream prove to be highly inuential and highly dissimilar to
paintings that had appeared before.
The next section illustrates radicalization through an overview of artists’
careers and seminal works. The purpose of zooming in on individual cases is to
delineate the trajectories of radicalization as embedded in a social context. The
key objective is not to produce universally generalizable results, but to demon-
strate the potential of the theoretical approach (Siggelkow, 2007). The histori-
cal narrative is based on art historical expertise and a comprehensive survey of
scholarship on art, using multiple sources to cross-validate observations. It is not
intended to present an exhaustive account of careers or innovations, but to illus-
trate the workings of the mechanisms and the posited interdependence between
individual and structural factors. The emphasis is on developments within the
period of interest (1850–1950), but I also mention in the Discussion cases of radi-
calization from prior centuries. Radicalization is a relatively rare occurrence that
is, however, highly clustered in time.
Fig. 1.1. Edvard Munch, The Scream (1893).

28 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
TRAJECTORIES OF RADICALIZATION: EDVARD
MUNCH AND THE SCREAM
The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944) has long been considered a
veritable mystery in the history of art. His psychologically intense style, full of
images of death, anguish and suffering, developed at a time when art was domi-
nated by the resplendent visual idiom of Impressionism. Years before Freud’s
psychoanalysis started to plumb the depths of human psychology, the paintings
of Munch depicted an unusually intense subjective reality, anchored in individual
experiences of longing, pain and loss. In contrast to the dictums of academic art,
emphasizing the reproduction of established concepts and techniques (White &
White, 1965), Munch understood painting as an opportunity to stake a unique
esthetic claim. His art was self-referential in nature, representing not what was
real, such as scenes of daily activity, but the inner truth of people, who are feeling,
suffering and loving.
Derived from currents of thought that emerged in Germany and France in the
late nineteenth century, the distinctive style of Munch features scenes of solitude
and melancholy, of eerie gures consumed with unfullled desire. Representations
of torment are conveyed through reinforced contrast of colors, such as blue and
orange. Simplication of forms is obtained through strict, geometric composi-
tion (Bischoff, 2011). The narrow space in his paintings invokes allusions to inte-
rior prison, while themes of loneliness are articulated through isolated gures,
perched against clamorous crowds. Life and death, love and suffering, solitude
and tumult are interwoven in a way that had no equivalent in art at the time. No
one else mined with such resolve the depths of the human soul (Shiff, 2017).
Recent scholarship has debunked the popular perception of Munch as an iso-
lated, detached gure, positioning him in relation to both the French avant-garde
and the Norwegian art scene. A key source of early inuence was the tradition
of “blue mood” paintings in Norwegian art, exemplied by the work of Eilif
Peterssen or Frits Thaulow. The blue tonality was associated with the long sum-
mer nights when the sky never loses its blue tinge (Clark, 2009). Traditionally
Norwegian, folk-inspired elements are easily recognized in his work (Prideaux,
2005), such as the solitary human gure lost in thoughts in a serene landscape. But
his most important source of inuence was the avant-garde art that he observed
during his residence in France (1889–1891), including work by Manet, Monet,
Pissarro, Gauguin, van Gogh, and Vuillard, among others (Bischoff, 2011).
Munch’s style changed decisively at that time, articulating a new visual lan-
guage that went beyond existing developments in tangible ways (Bischoff, 2011;
Clark, 2009). Dissatisfaction with the ruling esthetic dogmas reinforced his pur-
suit of a distinct visual idiom. His core themes – of sorrow, loss and isolation,
were rarely addressed in the late nineteenth century, but were not unprecedented.
What set Munch apart was the determination to develop radically expressive ways
of rendering these themes (Shiff, 2017, p. 65) by reinforcing the internal tension
of the paintings.
Similar to painters who returned home after spells in Germany or France,
Munch pursued to liberate art from naturalistic representation, subordinating it

Inside Out 29
to personal impressions. In this, he proved more radical than other painters, who
were still concerned with how the personal experiences on the canvass resonated
with viewers (Eggum, 1998). This detachment is reected in the self-sufciency and
ambiguity of his works, displayed nowhere better than in his signature painting –
The Scream (Fig. 1.1). It is considered the second most iconic painting in the
history of art after the Mona Lisa, and is the most-reproduced one in the twen-
tieth century (Johnson, 2003). The tortured, shivering gure in the middle, the
swirling colors in the background and the route disappearing into distance have
become landmark expressions of existential pain. Recognized as a dening image
of modern life, this is a painting of pain and solitude experienced amidst nature
that does not console. The way in which the external world is recongured into
the forms and colors of a suffering inner self is an unprecedented esthetic and
philosophical statement. The ability to take common motives and radicalize them
by accentuating the expressivity of the composition and reinforcing the internal
tension is the reason why Munch is recognized as a founder of Expressionism,3
even if he took no part in organized activities (Heller, 2016). As Bischoff (2011, p.
56) notes, Munch’s main characteristic was the capacity to “know how to radical-
ize his compositions and pictorial techniques,” as manifested in The Scream – the
way in which pure, raw emotion is portrayed denotes a radical shift from domi-
nant idioms at the time (Heller, 2016).
The genesis of this painting is easier to understand in light not only of the tor-
mented personal history of its author, but also as a reection of the convoluted
psychological state of a society that was on the edge of implosion. The difculty
of reconciling the conservative orientation of an agricultural country with pro-
gressive social and political ideas, articulated in narrow circles in the capital was
not uncommon in Europe at the time, but was particularly intense in Norway
(Prideaux, 2005). The progressive circles militated against the rigid conventions,
advocating individualism and intellectual freedom. Prohibitions of books that
violated the moral codes were commonplace, while advocates of intellectual free-
dom were sporadically jailed. As Hodin (1948) observes, nowhere else in Europe
was the struggle in favor of new ideas conducted with such vehemence as in 1880s
Christiania (Oslo).
In these circumstances, Munch was compelled, like others in these circles, to
navigate between conicting ideologies in trying to achieve professional recogni-
tion. Unsurprisingly, his bolder work was met with hostility by the public. The
antagonism to which he was confronted started to relent only with favorable
critical reviews in Germany. The exhibition that launched him internationally
opened in late 1892 at the Verein Berliner Künstler, the conservative art society of
Prussia. Unsurprisingly, the exhibition was canceled shortly after its opening, but
the scandal turned Munch into a cause célèbre.
The radicalization discernible in Munch’s career is not easily reducible to a
core-periphery conguration. His position is difcult to pin down – primarily
residing in Norway, he traveled to France and Germany and was familiar with
local art. When creating his boldest work, his position was that of a marginal art-
ist, but one that was responsive to ideas from the core, embracing ideas as fodder
for experimentation. As shocking as it still appears, the Scream becomes more

30 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
comprehensible in light of his position in the European avant-garde and of the
opposition of forces within Norwegian society (Fig. 1.2).
KAZIMIR MALEVITCH AND THE BLACK SQUARE
Kazimir Malevitch (1878–1935) was born to Polish parents in Ukraine. He is
best known as one of the pioneers of abstract art (together with Kandinsky and
Mondrian). He became involved in avant-garde circles in Moscow around 1910,
absorbing inuences from movements, such as Fauvism and Cubism. In 1913,
he designed the sets and costumes for the legendary “Cubo-Futurist” opera –
“Victory Over the Sun.” In 1914, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants
in Paris. By that time, he had asserted himself as a pivotal gure in the Russian
avant-garde and the founder of the “Suprematist” movement, striving to liber-
ate art from the constraints of imitation. His most famous painting – of a black
square against a white background, was exhibited in Petrograd in 1915. The
“Black Square” is arguably the rst fully non-representational painting, manifest-
ing the pursuit of a pure and simplied understanding of reality (Fig. 1.2). For
a few years, Malevitch proved to be the most radical member of the European
avant-garde, developing a language of blunt simplicity that made other artists
appear meek in comparison. The minimalistic style provoked vigorous criticism,
denying its recognition as a work of art.
The Black Square was an extreme statement, and has remained such for dec-
ades. Some have called it the “most famous, most enigmatic, and most frightening
painting known to man.”4 Indeed, its consequences were dramatic – it marked the
“zero point of painting,” the point of no-return for art as known for centuries.
Fig. 1.2. Kazimir Malevitch, The Black Square (1915).

Inside Out 31
Many artists at the time experimented with early abstract forms, but they lacked
the directness of Malevitch or were apprehensive about extending the process to
its logical end – pure, geometrical forms, celebrating the break between represen-
tational and abstract painting (Roque, 2003).
The radicalization of the ideas leading to abstraction was abetted by two prin-
cipal factors. The rst is that, alone in his generation, Malevitch looked both
backward and forward in the history of art (Nakov, 2007). He acknowledged
having been inspired by the compactness of Russian Orthodox icons. When the
“Black Square” was rst shown, it was hung in the angle of two walls, a sacred
spot in the Russian tradition where icons are usually placed. Abstraction for
Malevitch was a way of renewing art, of re-sacralizing it by reducing it to basic
forms. Enveloped in religious overtures, the new forms of art combined avant-
garde ideas with a folkloric heritage (Sgourev, 2015).
The second factor was the effervescence of the local artistic scene, which rein-
forced the quest for radical innovation. The outset of this process was marked by
the First Russian Revolution in 1905, which unleashed tremendous energy in the
cultural domain. If the academic style was still dominant, young artists started
experimenting with new methods for representing reality. Their pursuits were nur-
tured by visits to Paris and Berlin, and by the personal collections of wealthy
Russian merchants, which brought artistic developments in Europe within eye-
sight. The ferment of activity gave rise to several movements, such as Rayonism
(Larionov and Gontcharova), Futurism (David Bourliouk), Constructivism
(Tatlin) and Suprematism (Malevitch). Russian artists caught up with and sur-
passed the European avant-garde in terms of the radicalism of experiments
(Nakov, 2007; Sgourev, 2015).
The political turmoil in Tsarist Russia encouraged the expectation of an
impending change, an approaching watershed in history. At the same time, the
habitual repression of new ideas by state institutions radicalized talented artists
by denying them opportunities for expression and advancement. Revolutionary
ideas had been stirring in Russia for years and were inltrating art (Macdonald,
1975). The transposition of radical ideas from the political to the artistic domain
catalyzed innovation in art. Marcadé (1995) has compiled a long list of provoca-
tive acts by Russian artists in the pre-1914 period, intended to deride the estab-
lishment and contest conventions. The Russian avant-garde set itself apart from
its European counterparts by the rmness with which it claimed independence of
the public and the market, and its self-sufciency (Joyeux-Prunel, 2015; Marcadé,
1995). It is not surprising that the decisive step to abstraction would occur in
Russia at a time of violent conict, of institutional rigidity and accelerating
contestation.
DISCUSSION
Pursuing to reconcile contradictory accounts of radical innovation, the paper
conceptualized a process of radicalization, whereby ideas from the core escalate
on the periphery. This approach realigns the primacy of the core in shaping the

32 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
ow of ideas (Collins, 1998) and the crucial role of marginality in reinforcing
their “edginess” – the aspects lacking mainstream appeal (Phillips, 2011). The
paper posits that the established tendency of tempering of ideas through fram-
ing (Haveman & Rao, 1997) needs to be complemented by greater attention to
the proclivity to escalate and to instances of “hard” versus “soft” radicalism
(Meyerson & Scully, 1995). These processes are interdependent, as radicalization
results from the inability of tempering to preclude escalation. Historical devel-
opments can be driven as much by the conuence of enabling factors as by the
failure of retaining forces (Alpaugh, 2009, 2014).
Radicalization is facilitated by the simultaneous increase and reduction of
social distance – of increasing differences and exchanges between the core and
periphery. The growing prominence of the core encourages mobility, which con-
tributes to the wider circulation of ideas and to the appearance of locations on
the periphery that are exposed to ideas from the core, but are sufciently removed
from it to resist pressures for tempering. The radicalization of Modern art
occurred in peripheral locations with limited market demand, facilitated by the
international mobility of artists, by the wide circulation of journals and catalogs,
and the personal collections of wealthy patrons that exposed local artists to the
latest trends (Cottington, 2004).5
These arguments attribute greater theoretical weight than heretofore accepted
to mobility out of core regions and into peripheral ones. This pattern of mobility
fosters radicalization by generating cultural contradictions, planting new ideas in
unhospitable soil. This is consistent with the paradigm of cultural marginality –
the experience of conict between opposing cultures, as a factor of innovation
(Park, 1928; Veblen, 1919). In this logic, novelty emerges from the positional
ambivalence of actors (Padgett & Ansell, 1993; Vedres & Stark, 2010) and from
tension and contradictions (George, 2007). As Storr (1972, p. 191) contends,
the motive power of much creative activity is emotional tension in the creat-
ing personality. The returning artist experiences psychological tension between
familiarity with the local culture and allegiance to a global culture. Sentiments
of estrangement from the local context despite physical presence in it can be a
powerful motivator for self-realization by pursuing originality (Storr, 1989).
Peripheral locations may encourage innovation not because of the freedom of
constraints (Coser, 1965; Merton, 1968), but of the cultural tensions and relative
solitude associated with mobility.
The plausibility of the radicalization process was illustrated with quantitative
and qualitative evidence from the history of art. The Scream was the result of res-
olute unwillingness to compromise that was unusual at the time. The last decade
of the nineteenth century was dominated by visual idioms that made references
to suffering only obliquely, lacking the directedness of Munch (Heller, 2016). His
work is easier to comprehend in the context of the violent conict in a society
teetering on the edge of implosion (Prideaux, 2005). Likewise, the Black Square
emerged at the juncture of opposing forces in pre-revolutionary Russia, where the
repression of dissent radicalized talented artists (Sgourev, 2015).
Such trajectories of radicalization are woven into the history of art. Consider
another pioneer of abstraction – Piet Mondrian (1872–1944), hailing from a

Inside Out 33
country on the periphery of the art world, steeped in an entrenched classical tradi-
tion of gurative art. Because the Netherlands remained neutral in World War I,
Dutch artists were unable to travel to Paris or Germany. Their isolation is likely
to have contributed to the radicalization of their pursuits. Van Doesburg founded
the movement De Stijl (The Style) in 1915, which featured Mondrian, compelled
by the war to leave Paris and return to his home country. De Stijl advocated pure
abstraction, reducing compositions to vertical and horizontal lines, squares and
rectangles, and using only black, white and primary colors. It was with De Stijl
that the emerging abstract art developed a formal language (White, 2003).
Radicalization is not exclusive to Modern art; it inhabits the history of art.
Consider the starkly expressive art of El Greco (1541–1614) that deed conven-
tions of naturalistic representation in favor of elongated, tortured gures, a-
grant colors and narrow spaces. With El Greco one observes similar interweaving
of traditional and experimental ideas to the artists discussed. Born in Crete, he
moved to Venice and Rome, before settling down in Toledo, Spain. His art dis-
played strikingly unconventional rendering of conventional religious themes, as
promulgated by the Counter-Reformation. Drawing on common Byzantine and
Venetian sources, El Greco developed a new, radical expressive style that had no
clear followers for the next three centuries (Meier-Graefe, 1962[1910]) and that
was rediscovered only in the early twentieth century.
There is disproportionately greater attention in organizational scholarship to
compromise and the ways in which “tempered radicals” broker between radical
change and the status quo (Meyerson & Scully, 1995), than to the conditions
under which a compromise is not achieved or is not pursued. A potential source
of bias in our accounts is underrepresenting cases where the distinctiveness of
the innovation is not downplayed, but is amplied (Delacour & Leca, 2017). A
related danger is that of typecasting the periphery as a mere receiver of novelty
rather than its creator. Core and periphery are relationally constituted and func-
tionally interconnected, irreducible to a static dualism (Hautala & Ibert, 2018).
The radicalization framework allows to maintain the idea of the periphery as an
area of detachedness and autonomy, capable of both asborbing and developing
ideas. As Grabher (2018) reminds us, the position of self-chosen marginality and
deliberate rejection of the mainstream allows to funnel ideas in both directions
from core to periphery. The dynamic component of the interplay between core
and periphery is due to the abilities of creative outsiders to transit between center
and periphery (Powell & Sandholtz, 2012), but also to absorb and then radicalize
external inuence. As shown, such developments dene the history of art just as
much as revolutions dene political history.
Another potential blind spot results from the tendency in both art history and
social science to anticipate mobility from the periphery to the core, based on the
pulling power of the center. However, the opposite ow is essential in the innova-
tion process. It includes two types of trajectories – of artists visiting the center
and returning to the periphery (e.g., Munch) or of ideas from the center penetrat-
ing the periphery, radicalizing local artists (e.g., Malevitch). Integrating deeper
these trajectories in our accounts would allow for greater theoretical richness,
eliminating lurking biases in historical research.

34 STOYAN V. SGOUREV
These biases resurface when considering artists that are overlooked in art
history as a result of unique styles or career trajectories. An example is Carlo
Crivelli (1435–1495) – an obscure artist who developed an idiosyncratic style of
microscopic accuracy, rich ornamentation and perspectival illusion. Recent stud-
ies suggest that Crivelli fell victim to the tendency to valorize artistic production
in Renaissance centers, such as Florence or Venice, at the expense of local cur-
rents in more peripheral regions (Campbell, 2015). The fact that Crivelli moved
from Venice to Ancona and Ascoli contributed to his exclusion from historical
narratives, as it signied downward mobility. His trajectory reminds of that of El
Greco – settling down in a small market upon a stint in a central location, produc-
ing highly idiosyncratic works for conservative clients. This is also the career tra-
jectory of another obscure artist, Federico Barocci (1535–1612), who returned to
his native Urbino after leaving Rome. He developed an unusual, innovative style
that presaged the Baroque. As Christensen (2005, p. 25) remarks, “there really
was nothing like it” in the 1580s, well beyond the relatively detached regional
center of Urbino.
In methodological terms, the analysis recommends an approach that is not
conned to actors or movements, but that investigates trajectories of radicaliza-
tion of styles or historical periods. This requires the identication of the trajec-
tories and their analysis as embedded in a social context. The cyclical nature of
the process is particularly promising for future research. As scholarship observes,
the tempering of a movement often leads to the rise of a contesting movement
(Alpaugh, 2009, 2014). Thus, the growing visibility of the Fauvist movement (e.g.,
Matisse) was a key factor in the explosion of Cubism, dening itself in opposition
to the “diluted” radicalism of Fauvism (Joyeux-Prunel, 2015).
This paper conceptualized a mechanism of radicalization that needs to be
tested with greater analytical rigor, in the art domain and beyond it. A key obsta-
cle to this end is the need for empirically measuring radicalization. Very promis-
ing in this regard is the edgling computational approach to esthetics, permitting
the comparison of thousands of paintings and the identication of trajectories
of tempering and radicalization from the data. Combining quantitative and
qualitative methods would provide new insights into the ways in which ideas
radicalize in time and space. Radicalization is an irregular occurrence, whose fre-
quency can be established in comparative studies of peripheral social locations.
Such studies would also shed light on the primacy of the featured mechanism
of cultural marginality over alternative explanations. It should also be noted
that radicalization is irreducible to a single causal mechanism – further evidence
is needed on the interplay of underlying psychological, economic and cultural
factors.
The concept of radicalization helps to realign the idea of radical innovation
as disruption and as a link within a chain of related innovations that elaborate
on it in later iterations. These iterations are typically thought of as an echo of the
original one (Boland et al., 2007), but as demonstrated, they may prove decidedly
more radical than that. More scholarly attention is warranted to understand-
ing the complex interplay between the core and periphery of a social system,
and the pathways of social inuence. This objective is relevant not only to the

Inside Out 35
organizational eld, but to art history too, where scholars continue to debate the
origin and trajectory of key conceptual and technical breakthroughs.
NOTES
1. This is a classic sociological denition of “core-periphery” in terms of social distance,
articulated in relational terms (Collins, 2011). The “core” of the art world is character-
ized by numerous artistic activities coordinated by well-connected actors (Bourdieu, 1993).
Other streams of innovation scholarship use instead geographical space (e.g., Hautala &
Ibert, 2018), which is related to social distance, but is substantively distinct. In this paper,
“core” refers to established artists in Paris or Berlin in the early twentieth century, “periph-
eral” are artists in locations with little exposure to Modern art (i.e., Ukraine, Norway,
Romania), while artists in an “intermediate” position would be those living in Montmartre
in Paris, or in countries such as Hungary and Switzerland. Of course, the elevated mobility
of artists at the time makes such distinctions conditional, as many factors affected one’s
social position.
2. Both frameworks assume that actors occupy different positions or roles sequentially,
but this poses an empirical problem of differentiating precisely these roles in a dense social
context and the theoretical problem of assuming linearity of movement – such as from
the periphery to the core. However, it is not unusual that social actors play multiple roles
simultaneously and not sequentially (Padgett & Ansell, 1993). The careers of some of the
artists featured here are ill-dened by a single role, oscillating between roles or positions
(e.g., Sgourev, 2013).
3. Expressionism is a cultural and artistic movement that developed in the last decade
of the nineteenth century, until around 1925. It is characterized by the dominance of the
subject (the interior state) over the object (the world surrounding us), thereby proceeding in
reverse manner to Impressionism – i.e., from the interior to the exterior.
4. Tatyana Tolstaya, “The Square,” the New Yorker, June 12, 2015.
5. The role of mobility is emphasized by the fact that during the First World War
(1914–1918), when mobility was severely restricted, the one movement of enduring his-
torical importance (“Dada”) was founded in 1916 in Zurich, in neutral Switzerland, where
mobility was elevated relative to war-active countries. The founding of Dada conrms the
established pattern of a peripheral location radicalizing ideas from more central locations
(i.e., Cubism and Futurism) via itinerant artists acquainted with prior developments in
France and Germany.
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