Famous artist didn't do his own painting?

[wowfudge]

Just heard the new children's laureate being interviewed on the radio and she used to work for Damien Hurst. She said she mixed colours and had to paint lots of little circles. If that's the Hirst work I'm thinking of, does that mean he comes up with ideas but doesn't execute them himself? A bit like a couture designer I suppose. I always thought artists did their own art.

brokenshoes, the Impressionists worked in rather different ways: they tended to do their own brushwork more. It's a different type of art. Usually small scale and individual brushwork essential. In a Rubens it doesn't matter so much who has painted the small dog in the corner: the Master would have done the central bits. In an Impressionist painting, in a sense, all the bits are central.

Otoh Dumas had a consortium of people helping out on his books- they're still bloody brilliant!

I think this goes on in quite a few types of work. There's a quilter who designs the quilts, chooses the pattern and colour of the fabric and thread but someone else does the actual sewing. Still calls himself a quilter.

Wow i never knew this...mind completely blown

Tracey Emin probably does have people working with her under a studio system, but she's very talented at actual drawing - she was the Royal Academy's Professor of Drawing for a couple of years recently.

I think any artist that does anything installationy or sculpture will have people to help, though, large scale stuff just isn't doable on one's own.

Entirely normal.

I heard that too halfshell (but, shamefully, added to the erasing of women from art history by using Duchamp's name as it is more recognisable than the Baroness's. mea culpa)

I also heard Last Word on David Shepherd, who was scorned by critics because he did his own, figurative art.

I only read the title of the thread and immediately thought "like Damien Hirst". He's the first one that springs to mind who is known for doing this.

Thanks Cory.

I met someone who was an assistant to Damien Hirst: the assistant said he worked on the art which was all credited to Hirst.

The superb Renaissance artists used processes that were very time-consuming including grinding pigments and making up colours from source materials. So they had apprentices who learnt the various skills. I think the practices varied but the more established artists eg ones who had patrons could afford assistants to perhaps paint part of a tree. However the preliminary sketches, most of the talent and hard work, main composition and effect was one by the painter herself/himself.
Such Renaissance artists had years of training and hard work. Also post-Renaissance in abundance.
Enjoy!

I love Tracy Emin and I think she surely does her own paintings and drawings, they are incredible. I bet she has a team to do the embroidery though.

Yup. Not a secret.

Gentlygrowingoldermale, the named artist of Angel of the North, Anthony Gormley, agrees with you.

"I think that’s why the Angel worked: it was an extraordinary collective effort, requiring thousands of conversations. As it went on, I had less and less to do with it. The Angel was made by the skills of the north-east."
How we made The Angel of the North

There are loads of different kinds of collaboration in the art world. It's the same in architecture, right? Norman Foster doesn't do every single thing on a Norman Foster building - he has staff, and works in partnership with a range of other professions, like structural engineers.

Even something as apparently individual as writing can be quite collaborative - a lot of people (including the authors themselves) underestimate the impact of a good editor on a book. And then there are those like James Patterson who have a factory system going under their own "brand".

It's common for artists to do this but Damien Hirst is a twat of the highest order. He underpays people, has them working on what are effectively zero hour contracts and is a megalomaniac.

Bridget Riley has assistants that have painted her works since 1961. I remember being shocked by that years ago when I read about it so wasn't a few years back when I read the same about Hirst. I read that Hirst only lets his "assistants" do a small amount on each work so that no one can claim they produced the substantive amount of the work.

It's a curious thing that the most popular view of art and artists is the idea of the lone skilful genius creator doing everything themselves.

It isn't and never has been the whole truth. Surel there's the odd artist that works this way, but art has always been about collaboration and commerce as much as it's about anything else.

Wow

Admittedly I know not a jot about 'proper' art, but I am amazed at this being a thing

@2014newme - that's the beauty of predictive text. It does the work for me and see what you get!

The examples of a jar of Jamie Oliver product and a Vivienne Westwood dress from a high street shop are not comparable imo because they are mass produced retail goods. A meal in a Michelin starred restaurant or a proper couture dress are better examples of something similar to an artist getting his minions to do the graft.

So reading the posts on this thread, we should perhaps make a distinction between artists who do their own work from concept to finished item and those who have the idea then put their name to the piece, having had their studio staff do the work?

My friend is an industrial designer and sculptor and the most work he does with his sculpture, is to come up with the concept. Then he pays other people to actually put it together!

I didn't know that happened. I knew Old Master's had pupils but didn't know they actually did any of the painting.

Can't bear Damien Hirst - I think he is like the King's New Clothes.

I was going to ask how much of the million pounds DH gets for his pieces actually ends up in the hands of his assistants who seem to be doing all the work.

This is like booking John Torode* to cook you a personal meal and then he sends along a few other chefs and swans in at the end to receive payment.

*or other random celebrity chefs

I wonder what some of these artists get from putting their name to what is ostensibly someone else's work. Apart from vast sums of money, obviously.

Senua Duchamp just took the pee!

But when you go to Raymond Blanc's restaurant, he doesn't cook everything on your plate, right? I mean, he couldn't actually get through that much work in the course of a day, with so many complicated dishes and so many elements! His "name" is on the restaurant, and he will make the final decisions, but he'll have development chefs working on new recipes, and a host of kitchen staff to help out.

Similarly, Capability Brown didn't dig every lake with a spade by himself, and Grayson Perry didn't weave every thread of the carpets he produces. Art is really often about an idea - not just execution. And even that idea isn't developed in some kind of hermetically sealed chamber away from society: it emerges out of dialogue, out of a particular convergence of the collective at a particular time. Really, it's the whole concept of the individual, isolated creative genius (an invention of the Romantic era) that we should be questioning.