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Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

independent.co.uk

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Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#81

Post by duxup »

This seems like one of those severts revealed to stories where it is only a "secret" to people who don't think about the topic, aren't paying attention, and for whom it doesn't matter...

I'm by no means an art expert, but I'm surprised that people would be surprised.

The local TV show that covers artists always shows their assistants and such working with them and outright producing the art.

When I've gone on visits to artists studios often the assistants are there, they are all upfront about what they do, and / or the artist talks about who else they work with (send the concept to others to produce) to make larger size and quantity pieces depending on the project.

I have never felt there was any attempt to hide any of it...

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#82

Post by kevin_b_er »

This has a parallel to startups. You want to make a startup as a technical co-founder, but you are not the "idea man". Does the "idea man" get all the credit? Someone else conceptualizes the art and someone else, or many others, do all the work. Who gets the credit?

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#83

Post by ms013 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #32

Sounds a lot like academia really and the open secret in many fields that the graduate "coauthors" were really the ones who did the work and the "main author" was the do nothing but compensated and credited more professor who hypocritically starts off every course stating plagiarism will not be tolerated. The lack of transparency is what makes both of them bad. It would be one thing if an established member vouched f…

That comment about academia is not universally true at all. Grad students frequently get first author status on papers they do the bulk of the work on. The typical abuse that is more commonplace is the inclusion of advisors as last authors on papers that they didn’t contribute to at all (other than writing the proposal that won the funding that supported it). That’s why journals began adopting a requirement that the contribution of each author be made clear in the paper (usually a section near the end).

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#84

Post by mc32 »

TinyPants wrote: post #80
pdpi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except we attribute the product to the company, not the CEO. Wouldn't the equivalent be "This is a MyArtStudio piece of art", rather than "this is a piece of art by pdpi"?

We identify and categorize products through branding, which often has very little to do with their corporate origin. The artist's name (and their story) is a brand.

But, I wonder, once the “artist” dies, can the brand continue to produce with the same or better renown?

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#85

Post by pbhjpbhj »

trocadero wrote: post #70
ballenf wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a strong point, but I would argue there's more subtlety than you acknowledge. At least there are other metaphors that might shed light on the idea of agency. For one, there's the coach of a team sport. We don't say that the coach played the game, but we do credit them with being a vital part of the team's success or failure. These artists seem more like coaches than CEOs to me. One big difference between art…

A coach is different because the players get one chance to play the game. Art can be redone as many times as you have the time and resources for. When doing that directing the iterations and making the final selection becomes the important thing. For example, take this piece from the GP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly#/media/File:Chihu... How much credit Chihuly deserves varies wildly with how that piece…

A common idiom on HN is that "ideas are cheap". The artist has the ideas, we often naively credit then with the implementation too; the implementation isn't 'the easy bit', it's an essential part of creating an artistic work.

Duchamp's fountain is a fine idea that continues to inspire newcomers to that age-old what-is-art question; but truly the material science and manufacturing process and craftsmanship that went in to that urinals design and production are a cause celebre - greater than Duchamp's idea by far IMO.

Now reflect on Warhol's prints; derivative instead of visual design rather than artefact production. But Warhol designed and created the works.

IMO: commissioning art doesn't make you the artist of a final work that required artistic and crafting input from others. Warhol is the artist of his self-made silk prints; Duchamp's input to Fountain is curating, or social commentary.

The same is true in architecture,"Wren's" St. Paul's Cathedral would be nothing without the skilled masons. There's a line there somewhere though -- I wouldn't include the sandwich makers, the steeplejacks, et al., A amongst the creators of that work, ...

(This all brings to mind Gaia Hypothesis.)

Ah, says the modern artist, but the art I create is the image/idea in your mind and the medium I use is other artists and craftsmen ...

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#86

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Balero wrote: post #37
sageabilly wrote: post #30

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly ), the renown glass sculptor. Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hir…

The music industry seems to have a pretty good solution for this. The performer gets a cut. The lyrics writer gets a cut. The melody writer gets a cut. I'm sure something similar could work. I'm also recovering from just finding out that the process I thought happened behind artwork was largely false, and has more in common with renaissance painting businesses than the title artists work.

And the people who only contributed financing gets a bigger cut just for already being rich.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#87

Post by MrLeap »

mc32 wrote: post #84
TinyPants wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We identify and categorize products through branding, which often has very little to do with their corporate origin. The artist's name (and their story) is a brand.

But, I wonder, once the “artist” dies, can the brand continue to produce with the same or better renown?

Once most movies have digital reconstructions of dead actors, identity will lose meaning and I think we'll start seeing new works by picasso.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#88

Post by totalperspectiv »

sageabilly wrote: post #30

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly ), the renown glass sculptor. Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hir…

I feel like the more apt analogy would be that of a movie director, since we hold movies to be art of a sort already, but accept the fact that it's just an implementation of an idea.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#89

Post by pbhjpbhj »

emodendroket wrote: post #49
sageabilly wrote: post #30

One of the longstanding examples of this that immediately sprung to mind is Dale Chihuly ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dale_Chihuly ), the renown glass sculptor. Except Chihuly has not physically produced ANY of the glass sculptures attributed to him since 1979: "...he continued to blow glass until he dislocated his right shoulder in a 1979 bodysurfing accident. No longer able to hold the glass blowing pipe, he hir…

I'd say in both cases it's pretty much a no. To take another example, producers have input into a movie but nobody would credit them as the sole or even primary movers.

You do get movies that are credited mainly to one person, primarily as a marketing thing, but still.

(In showing my age here, but first movie examples that spring to mind) Steven King's ..., Steven Spielberg's ..., I'm not sure if they're all called Steven though.

Some artists get credit akin to celebrity authors on books a ghost-writer wrote.

Re: Art technicians: The industry’s dirty secret, or all part of the process?

#90

Post by pbhjpbhj »

mrob wrote: post #59
lizardskull wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Very little is actually about execution, because the execution's primary purpose is to represent the idea. It's the actual idea that contains the values.” This quote from the article is a strange reflection of what the world of software development teaches.

The difference is that software has to be functional. You can literally call a urinal or a can of soup "art", and if your "idea" (i.e. social status) is good enough then people will believe you.

Emin's "Unmade Bed" - pretty sure that, eg from the title, was cocking-a-snook at the establishment in a "let's see what crap I can make them buy". Though it does have a place in an area of art that intrigues me, that of "uncreated" or "unconsciously created" works.

If you think Duchamp was pulling a fast one you'll probably think Emin to be some sort of queen of hustlers.

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