Having a Team of People Paint Your Artwork for You is Not Art.
I will never forget the day I found out that a particular famous artist, who I had previously liked, has other people paint his paintings and make his sculptures for him. It was a day of extreme disappointment for me as an artist. I was so disheartened. That’s not artwork, that’s plagiarism. I couldn’t believe it; my idealistic and naive views of art were crushed. It wasn’t much later that I found out that another famous artist does the same thing. They both have teams of people producing their work. One could argue that the idea still belongs to the artist. However, I would respond that having an artistic idea and paying someone else to carry it out is like having a sewing machine, paying someone else to sew, and calling yourself a seamstress.
Yet, recently I heard an artist speak about some of his recent photography work and listened to him give partial credit to both his nude model and printing company, stating that artwork is a collaborative process, and I had no moral disparity with that process. Nevertheless the question was asked of him that if these other people were so influential to his work, why didn’t he go as far as giving them co-ownership of the work. This was the moment that sparked my interest. I had felt so strongly against the idea of having a team of artists paint work or build sculptures while a single artist takes the credit, yet I felt just as strongly against the idea that this artist be required to give co-ownership to the printing company and model he hired. What is the difference? I found myself wanting to ask the questioner if he believed that every artist should make his own paint unless he wants to give co-ownership to the factory that makes his paint. Where does one draw the line?
This is not a legal issue, for I’m sure that these artists were intelligent enough to have their workers sign wavers allowing them sole ownership rights to these pieces, and therefore it is difficult for me to feel too sorry for these workers who knowingly signed the wavers. However, it’s the collectors to whom I give my sympathy. For they believe they are buying a work of art done by a particular famous painter, when in fact much of it was done by a “nobody”, who will probably move on to a different job within a matter of a couple of years.
This brings me to where my moral line is drawn. The public, the collectors, the viewers, and other artists assume, for the most part, that an artist does not make his or her own paint, model for all his or her own paintings, or print all of his or her own prints. They are made aware that the signature and ownership of the piece does not mean that an artist has personally mined his or her own metals to make the cadmium yellow oil paint that covers the canvas. However, most of the general public is not made aware that the signature on a painting does not guarantee that that artist actually painted it. I as an artist have no difficulty admitting that I do not personally make the charcoal that I use in my drawings, so if these artists feel no moral apprehension not painting their own work, why do they work so hard to hide the fact that they don’t?
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