Big debuts make headlines, sell art, and often change the culture. Michelango sculpted the David before he turned 30, John Keats died at 25, and Mozart was composing by age 5. But creative men and women, from J. M. W. Turner and Paul Cézanne to Philip Roth and George Eliot, often produce their greatest work after middle age. Is experience—in life, in art, in love, and loss—necessary to create works that stand the test of time? Does it take decades for artists’ visions to mature, and does that allow them to see the world in new, even richer, ways? Or, when it comes to creativity and innovation, is age merely a number? As the Getty Museum presents an exhibition of the late work of J. M. W. Turner, muralist Judithe Hernández, painter Charles Garabedian, and musicologist Karen Painter, editor of Late Thoughts: Reflections on Artists and Composers at Work, visit Zócalo to discuss the relationship between age and artistic greatness.

Photo courtesy of freeparking :-I.