Making art, making artists - relationship of artists and assistants - includes interviews with 23 artists - Cover Story

Art in America, Jan, 1993 by Wade Saunders

In a new variant on the apprenticeship system, many artists now employ paid assistants for tasks ranging from menial labor to creative collaboration in the production of their art works. Below, comments by the author and interviews with 23 artists on the advantages and problems of this once-again popular studio relationship.

A reader of art magazines might never know that artists today regularly hire assistants to help them make their work. One does not see photographs of artists and assistants working together. Pictures of Henry Moore, for example, frequently show him chopping away at large plaster sculptures. But in fact, for the last 30 years of his life, virtually all of Moore's plasters were enlarged by assistants from his palm-sized maquettes, and then shipped off to bronze foundries. Nevertheless, Moore repeatedly posed for photographers and filmmakers in attitudes that perpetuated the myth of the lonely creator.

Myths notwithstanding, in recent decades a change has occurred in the way a number of artists work. This change, though obvious from inside the art world, has been little noticed by the public. Since the late '60s artists have turned to paid assistants to help with drawings, paintings and sculptures. In the last 15 years or so working as an artist's assistant has become the employment of choice for younger artists, particularly those living in New York City, replacing such traditional secondary jobs as housepainting, light construction, art moving, framing, restaurant work, hacking, pasteup and window-display design. It used to be that writers wouldn't work as editors, painters wouldn't do commercial illustration and sculptors wouldn't work as industrial designers for fear of misspending their creative energy. Now young artists seek jobs in their own discipline, hoping to learn while they earn. They may feel that success in today's art world hinges as much on who you know as on what you do.

As an artist who once worked as an assistant and who now employs younger artists as studio assistants, I decided to write this article as a way of throwing some light on the question of who really makes the art these days. I chose to examine the relationship between artist and assistant by interviewing a broad range of artists, favoring those who either had worked as assistants themselves, or whose studio practice involves a significant use of assistants. I define assistants as people employed at least half time in an artist's studio. Artists currently working as assistants, or former assistants who have yet to show extensively were not interviewed, nor were younger artists working as artists' office managers or as independent fabricators. Artists' companions represent a sort of apprenticeship outside the scope of this article. The interviews were taped and edited, then approved by the interviewees. Allan McCollum extensively rewrote his text; Richard Artschwager insisted - in part at the urging of his chief assistant - that his interview not be published.

In an effort to get people to speak frankly, I promised they could delete things they regretted having said. Even with this assurance several painters whom I knew to have had assistants work on specific canvases declined to be interviewed, or were hopelessly guarded when they did speak. Few painters, I concluded, are willing to talk about the sometimes collaborative nature of studio practice; most prefer to suggest that they make all the decisions and do all the work. They apparently imagine that to admit otherwise is to 1 risk diminishing their work's authenticity and, more immediately, its market value. The situation is a bit different with sculpture, since it is common knowledge that a sculptor casting bronze or working at a large scale often will have professional assistance. Drawings are supposed to be the most personal of all art works, When Robert Longo first showed his "Men in the Cities" drawings,, he provoked a stir by being up-front about having paid an assistant to help do the rendering. Other artists making large-scale drawings took the hint and even now remain discreet about their working methods.

I worked full-time as a sculptor's assistant for 18 months in 1971 and '72; I was paid $75 a week before withholding and received a $2.5 raise after six months. My employer never acknowledged the fact that 90 percent of the labor his sculptures was done by two co-workers and me. So, when I started using assistants in 1977, I determined to give them credit in my exhibitions, For a 1982 show I had in New York, one person was identified as having done the wax work, one the bronze chasing, one the patination and one the painting. My dealer complained that collectors would wonder what I had done, and asked that the sign he removed or reduced to a list of names. With reluctance I agreed to a simplified list. I've since had the same experience with other dealers.

Even when a dealer consents to an artist's prominently thanking assistants - as opposed to putting a note on the first page of the guest book, where it is little noticed - assistants are likely to discover themselves shunted aside at any gallery party. Artists find it easier to acknowledge assistants during museum shows, since the institution is not in the role of a sales agent. Several of the artists most forthcoming in these interviews remain otherwise unwilling to credit their assistants publicly. It is also true that certain assistants who have their own careers don't want to be named as assistants, and that, for artists who employ a large number of people, a list may appear self-aggrandizing.