Making art, making artists - relationship of artists and assistants - includes interviews with 23 artists - Cover Story

In a of recent origin variant on the apprenticeship a whole many artists now employ paid assistants for tasks ranging from menial labor to creative collaboration in the production of their art works. Below, make notess by the author and interviews with 23 artists upon the advantages and problems of this once-again popular studio relationship.

A reader of art magazines might at no time know that artists today regularly hire assistants to help them make their work. single does not see photographs of artists and assistants working together. Pictures of Henry Moore, for example, often show him chopping away at large plaster plastic arts But in fact, for the last 30 years of his life, virtually all of Moore's plasters were enlarged by dint of assistants from his palm-sized maquettes, and then shipped not upon to bronze foundries. Nevertheless, Moore repeatedly pos for photographers and filmmakers in attitudes that perpetuated the myth of the lone-some creator.

Myths notwithstanding, in new decades a change has occurr in the way a number of artists work. This change, admitting obvious from inside the art world, has been little noticed by dint of the public. Since the late '60 artists have revolveed to paid assistants to help with drawings, paintings and statuarys In the last 15 years or in like manner working as an artist's assistant has become the calling of choice for younger artists, particularly those living in of recent origin York City, replacing such traditional secondary piece of works as housepainting, light construction, art moving, framing, restaurant work, hacking, pasteup and window-display design. It used to be that writers wouldn't work as editors, painters wouldn't do commercial illustration and sculptors wouldn't work as industrial designers for fear of misspending their creative efficacy Now young artists seek piece of works in their own discipline, hoping to learn while they earn. They may perceive that success in today's art world hinges as a great deal of on who you know as upon what you do.

As an artist who one time worked as an assistant and who now exercises younger artists as studio assistants, I decided to write this article as a way of throwing a certain number of light on the question of who really makes the art these days. I chose to examine the relationship between artist and assistant by dint of interviewing a broad range of artists, favoring those who either had worked as assistants themselves, or whose studio practice involves a significant use of assistants. I define assistants as clan employed at least half time in an artist's studio. Artists commonly working as assistants, or former assistants who have still to show extensively were not interviewed, nor were younger artists working as artists' office managers or as independent fabricators. Artists' companions show a sort of apprenticeship outside the end of this article. The interviews were taped and edited, then approved by means of the interviewees. Allan McCollum extensively rewrote his text; Richard Artschwager insisted - in part at the urging of his chief assistant - that his interview not be published.

In an effort to procure people to speak frankly, I promised they could erase things they regretted having said. flat with this assurance several painters whom I knew to have had assistants work upon specific canvases declined to be interviewed, or were hopelessly guarded when they did speak. scarcely any painters, I concluded, are willing to talk about the sometimes collaborative nature of studio practice; greatest in quantity prefer to suggest that they make all the decisions and do all the work. They apparently imagine that to admit otherwise is to 1 risk diminishing their work's authenticity and, more immediately, its market value. The situation is a bit different with plastic art since it is common knowledge that a sculptor casting alloy of copper or working at a large scale ofttimes will have professional assistance. Drawings are suppos to be the greatest in quantity personal of all art works, When Robert Longo first showed his "Men in the Cities" drawings,, he provok a stir by the agency of being up-front about having paid an assistant to help do the rendering. Other artists making large-scale drawings took the hint and level now remain discreet about their working methods

I worked full-time as a sculptor's assistant for 18 month in 1971 and '72; I was paid $75 a week before withholding and received a $25 raise after six month My employer not ever acknowledged the fact that 90 percent of the labor his statuarys was done by two co-workers and me thus when I started using assistants in 1977 I determined to give them credit in my exhibitions, For a 1982 present to view I had in New York, single person was identified as having done the wax work, single the bronze chasing, one the patination and single the painting. My dealer complained that collectors would bewilderment what I had done, and asked that the sign he remov or reduc to a list of names. With reluctance I agreed to a simplified list. I've since had the same experience with other dealers.

plane when a dealer consents to an artist's prominently thanking assistants - as oppos to putting a note upon the first page of the visitant book, where it is little noticed - assistants are likely to discover themselves switched aside at any gallery party. Artists find it easier to acknowledge assistants during museum exhibits since the institution is not in the part of a sales agent. Several of the artists greatest in quantity forthcoming in these interviews remain otherwise unwilling to credit their assistants publicly. It is also pure that certain assistants who have their hold careers don't want to be named as assistants, and that, for artists who exercise a large number of race a list may appear self-aggrandizing.