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

Art in America, Jan, 1993 by Wade Saunders

Some artists help their assistants get shows; they share connections and offer emotional support; they look out for their assistants when on grant panels. Other artists have no interest whatsoever in the assistant's work or life. When artists who themselves have worked as assistants start hiring associates of their own, they often replicate the studio relationship they first experienced. The number of women working as assistants seems to have increased in step with the visibility and financial success of women artists, though women often hire men, and vice versa.

Eventually, usually after working between one and four years, most assistants realize that they've learned as much as they are going to learn and resolve to get on with their own art full-time, a choice which the artist may encourage. Or they may seek employment less compromising to their creative thinking and energy, since working as an assistant can leave one perpetually feeling sucked dry. The extreme example of this might be Diego Giacometti, whose career only took off after Alberto's death. Some assistants choose to leave the field entirely, having seen firsthand what being an artist involves.

Assisting functions different in New York than it does in any other major art-producing city. Outside New York far fewer artists have the money to hire assistants, so younger artists seek employment outside the art world. In some places the practice is rare enough that its participants seem reluctant to speak about it directly.

In New York, which has no first-rate graduate programs in studio art except the one run by the Whitney Museum, assisting fills an educational void. In Los Angeles and London, by contrast, several schools have exceptional studio programs, where young artists are trained and where they acquire a sense of community. In going through school students learn how to find studios, materials, jobs.

Although some artists treat their assistants as salaried employees, or have their gallery do so as part of their stipend, most artists find it much easier, and around 25 percent cheaper, to pay their assistants as though they were independent contractors. This way the artist only writes checks for the actual hours worked and needn't bother with withholding, social-security contributions or unemployment-insurance premiums. Assistants typically earn between $8 and $20 per hour in New York. The artist may or may not carry Workers' Compensation or Disability Insurance, and only in rare cases does the assistant receive health insurance.

As independent contractors, assistants can more readily deduct their own studio expenses on their tax returns and may manage to avoid paying social-security tax. But in the eyes of the Internal Revenue Service most assistants, even those working part-time, are legally employees - they have assigned hours and tasks, report to a supervisor and work in the artist's place of business - and should therefore be subject to withholding and be eligible for unemployment benefits. A couple of artists are presently losing in court to the IRS over this issue. If an accident occurs, one of the first things an insurance company may request is employment records to see how the assistant was being paid. Some assistants have sued their employers for failing to properly withhold taxes, in which case the employer becomes liable for unpaid taxes, social-security contributions, penalties and interest.