Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Made by a Real Artist?


I just finished watching the South Bank show featuring Brit artist Damien Hirst and found myself wondering how many of today's more famous artists actually make any of their own work. The show featured interviews with Damien at several of his studios, in each of which, numerous assistants were working on different projects, sometimes it seemed that he didn't know exactly what it was that they were doing. Jeff Koons was also interviewed in his studios and he seemed to have hundreds of staff who were working on massive paintings and sculptures.


I know that artists throughout history have used assistants but I can't help thinking that I have missed the boat. I have tons of art ideas and I make some of them, but I am often limited by time, space and skill. how great it would be to do the preliminary sketches and have someone else to help me realise the dream. Really famous artists seem to go one step further though and produce some canvasses that they have not even touched with a paint brush themselves. is this making a nonsense of the art world? If you were to buy a work of art by a particular artist, wouldn't you want to know that they had at least done some of the work on it?

6 comments:

Beaman said...

I would say the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin have little artistic talent to begin with. Provocative, outlandish and overly simple pieces of work are fine as a one off but not if it ends up being their sole form of art. I don't even know if Hirst can draw, never seen anything along those lines from him.

Sonia Sherrod said...

Wish I had some art elves to help carry out my ideas... or at least clean up after me, or re-organize my studio.... Thanks for commenting on my blog. Would love to start that ATC group.

Anonymous said...

They have found the great secret behind being "great" in today's art society - which is to have lots of friends in the right places. Then why not take it a step further: Let them do your work also.

theprovocativecynic said...

How fab to be sufficiently famous to get others to realise one's vision regardless of one's own technical skill or lack of it. I would so love to be able to build a giant Spiromatic machine........

RichM said...

The next step has one neither producing the art nor having the ideas for the art, but just having an acquaintance with artists. Those people are critics.

Anonymous said...

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