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?
