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

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

#121

Post by filleokus » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:06 PM UTC

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?

I haven't read a Tom Clancy book in ages, but it was just very recently I learned that he had died, and that the books with Tom Clancy written all over them in the airports in fact were not written by him.

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

#122

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #93

nailer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. What specifically don't you understand? Leonardo being the most famous and still using craftspeople was my point.

Can you point out an artefact that he instructed someone to make and then labelled as his own artwork? Or indeed a piece still called a DaVinci that it's accepted he has no hands-on input to. FWIW we're not taking about apprentices doing blocking-in, backgrounds, or minor characters.

[deleted]

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

#123

Post by davegauer » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #111

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…

Hmm. If a composer can't personally play or direct his/her piece (e.g. a symphony), is it still composer's art? The generally accepted answer is "yes, this is composer's art". But it's also generally accepted that those who render the piece also take part in the art, in a different way. The bigger the influence, the more noticeable part it is. You don't normally ask who plays particular violins in an orchestra string…

I think this is a really strong analogy. I would love to see a truthful gallery label such as "_Red Ruby_ by The Washington State Glassblowers, Designed and Conducted by Dale Chihuly".

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

#124

Post by davegauer » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #114

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 don't think this is an interesting thought experiment. You need not fully create a work of art to be an artist. Do you care that a photographer used a Canon DSLR, translated the sensor data to a JPEG using Adobe RAW, and printed using an Epson printer? No. The art is the photograph and the non-artistic tasks were farmed out to Canon, Adobe, and Epson.

Surely we don't credit the canvas and brush for a painting?

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

#125

Post by jaclaz » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

s3m4j wrote: post #4

jdietrich wrote: post #3

For as long as there have been artists, there have been apprentices. Sometimes those apprentices went on to become renowned masters, sometimes they languished in obscurity.

It's not about apprentices, it's about people, technicians, actually making the 'objects' for and in place of the artist whose name is linked to the 'objects'. Because often those artist don't have the technical know-how or tools to make something. So they pay someone to make it. Hence the problematic question.

I was a teen when my father did most of the technical work (of course the actual building was done by construction firms and carpenters) for this (1978) exhibition in Florence by Dani Karavan:

http://www.danikaravan.com/portfolio-item/two-environments-f...

The artist actually sculpted everything in clay (in scale models) or made rather accurate sketches on paper, then they were adapted/modified slightly (and interactively with the artist) to make them actually "buildable" (either in wood or in pre-cast concrete) and transportable to the exhibition site.

It never came to our minds that the "art" in the scupltures was not entirely by the artist, my father considered himself an artisan, and simply executed (well and in practice) what the artist view was.

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

#126

Post by sageabilly » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:20 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #111

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…

Hmm. If a composer can't personally play or direct his/her piece (e.g. a symphony), is it still composer's art? The generally accepted answer is "yes, this is composer's art". But it's also generally accepted that those who render the piece also take part in the art, in a different way. The bigger the influence, the more noticeable part it is. You don't normally ask who plays particular violins in an orchestra string…

Extremely well put. Part of the reason I wrote my original comment was to see what the HN collective thought about my reasoning- as I have personally struggled to think of Dale Chihuly as being an artist once I found out that he does not actually create the works that bear his name.

Likening him to a composer directing his own symphony makes a lot more sense- no one would argue that Mozart wasn't a great artist just because he couldn't play the whole symphony by himself.

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

#127

Post by sageabilly » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:27 PM UTC

acomjean wrote: post #116

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…

Some art is just too big for a single artist. A lot of renisance artists had many apprentices helping out, so this goes back a ways. Chihuly has litigated and been litigated against by his helpers. His “ paintings” aren’t done by him either. It’s almost like he is a brand. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.seattlepi.com/entertainment...

Wow, that article led me to the artist Bob Kuster (http://bellemeadhotglass.com/gallery/glass-chandeliers/), "who's making chandeliers so closely related to Chihuly's that Chihuly frowned when he saw them in black-and-white, photocopied reproduction and asked, 'Are those mine?'"

That opens up another interesting thought process of which is more art, the chandeliers created by Chihuly's hired glassblowers directed by Chihuly himself, or the chandeliers inspired by Chihuly designs which are physically created by Kuster? What imbues a Chihuly design with "art"-ness? The fact that Chihuly signed off on it personally? The fact it was created in his studio and received his blessing?

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

#128

Post by sageabilly » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:29 PM UTC

pasbesoin wrote: post #119

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…

Funny this comes up. I've recently become friends with someone who worked for Chihuly, doing precisely this. They have commented on how the "technicians" put a lot of effort and research into turning Chihuly's designs into a piece of glass. They aren't just "cranking it out"; they're figuring out how the pieces can be made, in the first place. This is without getting into personalties, beyond this rhetorical tease of…

Exactly! So if all Chihuly does is take a crayon to a piece of paper and say "Make this thing!", but your friend and others like your friend do the heavy lifting to bring the idea to life, is Chihuly that great of an artist after all?

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

#129

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

Modern art is simply the craft of creating financial instruments, the only reason it's imbued with all of the imagery of sophistication and insight is because the people who buy expensive financial instruments like to think of themselves as sophisticated and insightful.

There's no difference between collecting fine art and collecting stamps. A stamp may be pretty, but its purpose is to be scarce, difficult to copy, and to have a clear provenance from a known issuer.

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

#130

Post by rewgs » Thu, Jul 19, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

nine_k wrote: post #111

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…

Hmm. If a composer can't personally play or direct his/her piece (e.g. a symphony), is it still composer's art? The generally accepted answer is "yes, this is composer's art". But it's also generally accepted that those who render the piece also take part in the art, in a different way. The bigger the influence, the more noticeable part it is. You don't normally ask who plays particular violins in an orchestra string…

Composer here. This is a terrible analogy. Whether or not a composer can/does perform a piece has absolutely nothing to do with authorship -- do we expect a writer to read aloud their novel?

A better question to ask is, "If the composer merely told others what to write, is it actually the composer's music?" This is an unbelievably common practice, and IMO, the answer to the question is no.