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

Art in America, Jan, 1993 by Wade Saunders

I am involved in various large outdoor works where I'm more like an architect. In that context I'll hire engineers or fabricators or foundries as I need them. But I don't have any need for a group of people in my studio. More assistants wouldn't make the work go any faster.

Gary Stephan

Born 1942, Brooklyn. Studied at Parsons School of Design, New York, 1960-61; Art Students League, New York, 1961; Pratt Institute, New York, 1960-61 ; San Francisco Art Institute, MFA 1967. Currently lives in New York. Most recent solo exhibition at Baumgartner Gaulleries, Washington, D.C., October 1992. Forthcoming installation al Mary Boone Gallery, New York, spring 1993.

Working for someone very good scared he shit out of me. I was afraid I could fall under their spell, and my own work would never recover. I had seen it happen.

Jasper Johns met John Duff at a party and they got to talking. Jasper needed an assistant; John said he didn't need a job but he knew someone who did. So the next day I went over, and Jasper asked me what hours I wanted to work and what money I wanted to earn. Ten A.M. to 3 P.M. seemed good to me, and I quoted the money from the last job I had had. He said, "Fine, I'll see you tomorrow." There was no comment. It was very much the character of the relationship all along that he wouldn't commit himself to telling me how I was doing, whether he thought something was too much or too little. He let people live their lives. He must have given me a set of keys that day, because it seems to me that the next morning I let myself in and found the mail on the floor. I picked it up and sorted it commercial/personal and put it on the table. I saw a coffee pot so I made coffee; I emptied the ashtrays. He came downstairs, sat right down, reached for the two piles of mail and went through them, drank the coffee, got up and went to work as though we had always done it this way. He didn't comment on liking or disliking having the mail sorted, didn't comment on the coffee, just took it and went about his business. That was the way most of my job was structured.

I worked for him for about a year and a half. Things would just happen: the phone would ring, and I would answer it. I began to take messages. Someone would come over, they would sit around talking, then Jasper would say, "I think we should go to lunch." So I'd ask them where, I'd make a reservation, I'd run outside and get a cab, and then I'd say to them, "I have a cab for you," and they would come out, and we would all go to lunch. One of the nicest things was that when lunch wasn't taken out Jasper would prepare lunch for whoever was coming. I got a crash course in the best and brightest in the art world - John Cage was at lunch, Cy Twombly was at lunch, Leo Castelli was at lunch. I got to be the fly on the wall. In some ways I was invisible, and in other ways I was given extraordinary access. One of my few regrets is that I didn't realize at the time - having no basis for comparison - that I wouldn't always have the opportunity to have Jasper visit my studio or sit around drinking wine for an hour getting his point of view on things. I thought this was what life was going to be like; only in retrospect did I realize how incredibly lucky and special this moment was.