Recently, I had a long discussion with another artist about artist assistants. She believed that if assistants were doing most of the labor then the final work was a "collaborative" piece. What became obvious after a twenty-five minute (let's agree to disagree) discussion is that this is a major topic within the art world. Apprenticeships or artist assistants has been going on since the 14th century with little fan fare or disapproval. However, today most people are complaining that artists like Damien Hirst, Khinde Wiley and others are having studio assistants preform all the hard labor when it comes to producing their works. How do you generate mass amounts of work without help when you have garnered the attention of the art world, which can be short-lived and fickle? Is this fair?
The notion of assistants will never really be resolved because some artists are going to champion the idea and others are going to view it as cheating. I think it is not fair to criticize artists for getting help with some of the exhausting tasks of building stretchers, priming, gessoing, and laying out preliminary under paintings. (if thats what they are doing) And what about artists who use projectors to get human like portraits? Should artist take advantage of whatever is out there to make their practice better?
In my artistic practice sometimes I get stuck cutting out large amounts of paper over long periods of time. Having clean lines is very important to the final look of the piece and if I could afford to pay someone to do this I would. Contributions from assistants allow artist time to work on the business of being an artist which doesn't get talk about much. The art-world is horribly unbalance, only a few of us are ever given the chance to exhibit in major institutions and blue chip galleries. And if you are lucky enough to have the art world at your feet you should use whatever at your finger tips to get the work out there! It's a resource and if it is good for your practice use them. Clearly, it will not be straighten out in my blog! But remember artist assistants are interwoven within the history of art and art makers. And while, I personally don't know if Wiley and others are not doing their own paintings, I can at least hope they're paying their assistants well, because chances are they are just undiscovered young artists waiting for their own chance to shine!
Check out the debate here:
http://faso.com/fineartviews/38751/artists-debate-over-the-use-of-artist-assistants-where-do-you-stand
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