THE ARTWORK IS NOT
MADE BY THE ARTIST
A study on outsourced contemporary art
Scriptie MA Kunstgeschiedenis
Student Van Steen, Ilka
Studentnummer 10858040 Datum 24 juni 2016
Eerste lezer Mw. dr. Sophie Berrebi Tweede lezer Mw. dr. Rachel Esner Aantal woorden 18.300
‘To improvise is to follow the ways of the world, as they open up, rather than to recover a chain of connections, from an end-‐point to a starting-‐point, on a route already
travelled.’
Contents
Introduction 4
1. The meaning of making 9
2. Making art: the artist and the makers 14
3. The production system 38
4. The state of the artwork 47 Conclusion 60 Bibliography 61 Image credits 69
Introduction
It’s 1979 and Alighiero Fabrizio Boetti (1940-‐1994) (known as Alighiero e Boetti) produced a series of tapestries called Mappe. To do so, he traced a world map onto canvas and each
country was coloured with the corresponding flag.1 He then gave these Mappe to crafts-‐women
in Afghanistan who weaved the tapestries for him. Boetti was surprised to find one of the maps come back with completely pink oceans. It turned out that the women who embroidered the map had no idea that they were creating an image of the world. They did not recognize the ocean as an ocean so they ended up using the colour of which they had plentiful stock. Boetti turned out to like the element of chance in his work and from that moment onwards decided to give the women freedom in what color to gives the seas.2
The visible influence of the mistake made by the Afghan women is what makes Boetti’s story on the unintended magenta-‐coloured water so interesting. Since it shows that how, but also by whom an artwork is made can have great impact on the final artwork. This correlation between the makers and the final artwork is what interests me. More specifically I am
interested in the practice of outsourcing in all forms of contemporary art, from visual to performance art. Contemporary art I define as art made since 1986 up until the present
moment.3 Outsourcing is understood as the divesting of noncore activities to others suppliers.4
1 Museum of Modern Art, last modified May 15, 2016, http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/boetti/#imgs-‐ 2 Alighiero Boetti Game Plan (London: Tate Modern, 2012).
3 Although the start of contemporary art varies by institution, I have chosen 1986 as used in Suzanne Cotter and Massimiliano Gioni
et al. Defining Contemporary Art. 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks (London/New York: Phaidon, 2011).
4 Claire Bishop, “Delegated Performance: Outsourcing Authenticity,” October 140 (2012): 104.
The reason that I want to understand the impact of outsourcing on contemporary art is firstly a personal one: I often feel dissociated from outsourced artworks. Take for example Vertigo (2008) by Anish Kapoor (1954-‐) that I saw in Museum De Pont in Tilburg in 2016. Anish Kapoor outsources this and other mirror works to mirror-‐makers in Madrid and metalworkers in Finland.5 The bended, sleek, polished mirror of almost five meters wide and three meters
high gives the viewer a disorienting perspective of both themselves and the environment, at one point appearing very small, the other extremely large. The work is very attractive to look at, but at the same time struck me as almost too perfect to generate a deeper understanding of the intended meaning of the work. The only thing I took home from it were the selfies I took of my own distorted reflection.
Image 2. Anish Kapoor. Vertigo. 2008. Stainless steel. 217.8 x 480.1 x 101.6 cm.
What I want to find is if this feeling of detachment can be linked to outsourcing. In other words: if the outsourcing contributes to the way art looks (the aesthetics) and ultimately to what the artwork means. I think it is topic worth researching, as I believe that every aspect of making, from material to economic, has an impact on the artwork. In other words, the making of an artwork is part of the artwork and is in the artwork. In the same way that the nine digits already dialled on the telephone are contained in the tenth. To me, it is thus almost too obvious that the outsourcing of contemporary art must therefore have a large impact on art itself, yet
this is not a topic that has generated much academic interest. Consequently, this will be the topic of my thesis.
I am not the only one who claims that the meaning of the making of art as should be
understood as a part of the artwork itself. According to the art historians Rachel Esner, Sandra Kisters and Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann the ignorance of the way in which art is produced is
something that starts with the artists themselves. In the book Hiding Making -‐ Showing Creation. The Studio from Turner to Tacita Dean (2013) they argue that artists have employed studio topoi as strategies for both showing and hiding certain aspects of their practice. The artists intend to show the notions of originality, autonomy and genius whereas they prefer to hide the true working practices such as improvisation, failure and craft. They thus argue that the artist will mostly reveal only the information on a work in terms of concept or aesthetics, since that is considered most important.6 And this is according to Esner, Kisner and Lehmann
something that we should be cautious about, as understanding making is vital to understanding art.
But it does not end with the artists only, the question ‘who made the artwork?’ is often considered insignificant by art critics, theorists and historians too. The artist, writer and activist Gregory Sholette assumes in his article Dark Matter and Activist Art in the Counter-‐ public sphere (2011) that this is a symptom of an indifference towards the making of a contemporary artwork. Talking about Sarah Lucas (1962-‐ ) Nobby from 2000 he writes:
‘[…] Nobby might just as easily be the work of an anonymous and obsessive smoker or it might be the tedious output of the artist’s assistant, or it may be her own handiwork. The answer is irrelevant.’7
Sholette continues that this apathy towards making eliminates several artistic qualities
including ‘personal expression’, ‘the uniqueness of a particular object’ and ‘any measurement of the artistʼs technical capabilities.’8 Sholette’s observation leads him to ask what exactly defines
artistic value if all these elements are no longer part of the artist’s skill set. Thus Sholette therefore argues that it is anything but irrelevant to ask ‘who made the artwork’? This is exactly what I believe too: by ignoring the circumstances of production you cannot fully understand the artwork. Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann further substantiates my hypothesis in her essay Showing Making: On Visual Documentation and Creative Practice (2012). Here, she argues that it is impossible to truthfully understand art if the process of production is ignored.
6 Rachel Esner, Sandra Kisters and Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann (eds.), Hiding Making -‐ Showing Creation. The Studio from Turner to Tacita
Dean (Amsterdam: Pallas/Amsterdam University Press, 2013), 7.
7 Gregory Sholette, “Dark Matter. Activist Art and the Counter-‐Public Sphere,” (2011), 7. 8 Ibid.
If we want to understand what art means we have to closely examine the complex and dynamic networks in and through which they are ‘created, used, modified, collected, and destroyed.’9
When we choose to ignore the ‘complex interaction between humans, materials, tools, and technologies’ we can never understand the possible meanings and usages of the resulting artefact. 10
But before I start to unravel the meaning of outsourced art, it is important to get one thing out of the way: neither Boetti nor Kapoor were the first or the last artists to use the help of other people. Hardly so, since the fifteenth century up until the present artists have used the help or expertise of others. The history of, what I would like to introduce as the ‘art-‐makers’, goes from guild workers in the Middle Ages, to pupils in seventeenth century to bronze casters and industrial steel manufacturers in the twentieth century. From contemporary onwards, art-‐ makers are not defined easily as they now range from airplane engineers to the audience.11
Moreover, the use of art-‐makers is since contemporary art is far more complex as will be shown in the next chapters.
In the first chapter of this thesis I will start by explaining what the influence of materiality and making is on the artwork. In this chapter, key theories on the meaning of making, medium and material are introduced. These together will make up the foundation on which the next
chapters will be based. It is worth noting that these theories of making do not stand on their own as they can be situated within a field of art historical research that focuses on the process of art. This discourse of artistic process has been researched extensively in recent years with one of the main topics being the artist’s studio.12 By focussing on the ways of production
instead of the space of production I hope to see this thesis as a new (may it be small) addition to this field of research. In the second chapter I will investigate what the role of the art-‐makers was since the guilds of the Middle Ages and how their role has developed over time to finally the art-‐makers in contemporary art. The chief emphasis will be on the change that has occurred considering the intention of the artist to use art-‐makers. The chapter is thus build up according to these different intentions in order to research how the function and contribution of the art-‐ makers has changed accordingly. This chapter is therefore thematically and not necessarily chronologically structured. In the third chapter I will set out how the outsourcing of
contemporary art relates to the production system of the global contemporary economy.
9 Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann, “Showing making: On Visual Documentation and Creative Practice,” The Journal of Modern Craft 5 (2012):
10.
10 Lehmann, “Showing making,” 10.
11 Germano Celant, “Art & Project,” in: Making art work. Mike Smith Studio, Patsy Craig (London: Trolley Books, 2003), 12. 12 Some other examples of studio studies are Alex Coles, The Transdisciplinary Studio (2012); the already mentioned Hiding making.
Showing Creation (2013) by Rachel Esner, Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann and Sandra Kisters, Amirsadeghi, Hossein’s, Sanctuary. Britain’s Artists and their Studios (2011) and Mary Jane and Michelle Grabner, The Studio reader. On the space of artists (London/Chicago:
In order to do so, labour conditions in the economy will be compared to labour conditions in the art world. The question that will be answered here is what the position of art-‐makers is vis-‐ à-‐vis the production system of today. The last chapter will be devoted to the consequences the changes in art-‐making ultimately have for the way outsourced contemporary art is perceived. The aim is to show in what way the change in making is reflected in the artwork itself. Ultimately these last two chapters will be brought together in order to show how outsourcing has shaped both the aesthetics and meaning of contemporary art from 1986 onwards.
1. The meaning of making
At first it is necessary to deconstruct the relationship between the final artwork and its making. Because even if the materiality and the making of a work of art are sometimes seen as aspects that contribute to its meaning, the relationship between the artist and maker is mostly
perceived as purely instrumental. Read for example the most recent edition of the Venice Biennale guide 56th International Art Exhibition: All the World’s Futures (2015) or the book
Defining Contemporary Art – 25 years in 200 pivotal works (2011) and you will see that in most of the entries the makers are excluded from the description of the artwork. If the makers are mentioned they seem only to function as a springboard for explaining the concept or visuality of the artwork. Read for example the description of Mike Kelley (1954-‐2012) More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid (1987). In there, the critic and curator Bob Nickas mentions that the dolls used for the work by Kelley are ‘handmade’ and bought in thrift stores. Furthermore, Nickas refers to them as ‘women’s work’. Mike Kelley himself explains that his work makes the connection between the dolls and the idea of attention and love that it takes to make these objects:
‘[…] If each of these toys took six hundred hours to make then that’s six hundred hours of love; and if I gave this to you, you owe me six hundred hours of love; and that’s a lot.’13
13 John Miller, Mike Kelley (New York: Art Press 1992), 18.
Image 3. Mike Kelley. More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid. 1987. 244 x 323 x 15 cm. Handmade craft items and afghans sewn onto canvas.
Although Kelley thus refers to the making of the work and to the ‘hours-‐of-‐attention’ that went into the making, nowhere is the fact emphasised that those six hundred hours of love did not come from Kelley himself but from an anonymous crowd of (most likely female) workers. So although the significance of making is one of the key concepts of the work, the makers are not.
In order to emphasise that it is a mistake to separate artist from maker and therefore meaning from making it is useful to look at a few of the key authors in this field. The first academic who proposes different ways of looking at making is philosopher John Dewey. In 1943 he wrote the book Art as Experience in which he argued that we should see making as a way of working in instead of with material. He argues furthermore that instead of seeing humans and materials as two different entities we should see them as one single entity stemming from two different material spheres but operating in the same world. During making, argues Dewey, the ‘inner material’ (concept, idea, vision, creativity) and ‘outer material’ (the material of which the artwork is made) interact.14 As ‘the physical process develops imagination, while imagination is
conceived in terms of concrete material,’ this exchange creates a purposeful back and forth movement, which results in an art object.15 Dewey saw making thus as an exchange between
two different material spheres. 16 The claimed existence of one single entity is nonetheless a
subject that is perhaps too far removed from both the topic of this thesis and the field of art history. However, what should be drawn from Dewey’s convictions is that a strict division of on the one hand the concept in the artist’s mind, and on the other hand of the material production process is not so evident as we (the general audience) are supposed to believe.
An author that has written many art historical texts on this particular subject of making as part of the artwork’s meaning is the art critic and theorist Rosalind Epstein Krauss (known as Rosalind Krauss). Throughout her career that started in the 1960s Krauss developed a very extensive and diverse discourse on the meaning of the medium. During the writing of her article Voyage on the north sea. Art in the age of post medium condition (1999) Krauss had let go of certain earlier convictions on the ideas of the formal importance of medium that she
borrowed Clement Greenberg. The core issue according to Krauss was that Greenberg
mistakenly reduced and eradicated medium to a mere physical object.17 How Krauss perceives
it instead, is that the medium is not just material but more a carrier and generator of meaning. She understands the layered and complex relationship between material and maker as a
14 John Dewey, Art as experience (London: Penguin, 2005), 78.
15 Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann, “Showing making: On Visual Documentation and Creative Practice,” The Journal of Modern Craft 5 (2012):
11.
16 Dewey, Art as experience, 78.
‘recursive structure’.18 Meaning, that the shape of the parts will recur in the shape of the whole.
Hence, by using this concept Krauss means that some of the elements of the medium will produce the rules that generate the structure itself. Krauss follows her argument by saying that this recursive structure is often wrongly ignored. Furthermore, this recursive structure is something ‘made’ rather than something ‘given’ yet this has been denied in the traditional connection between medium and technique.19 This concept of the recursive structure is the key
to understanding the relationship between the maker and the final artwork: the makers are the agents that work with the material elements. Moreover, they not only work with but also add too the limits and possibilities of the material and the making itself. What can be drawn from Krauss’ idea of the recursive structure is that medium is not something inactive and inert. What this then might suggest is that concept and form are not just imposed on material. Both the material and the makers generate rules as well.
Let us go deeper into the idea that form cannot be directly imposed on material without acknowledging the makers. To make it more tangible we go back to the example of Alghiero Boetti. The model that Boetti used can be named the ‘hylomorphic’ model. This model is introduced by the anthropologist Tim Ingold in his article The textility of making (2009). He based the term hylomorphic on the philosophy of Aristotle who reasoned that to create and object you have to enforce form (morphe) on matter (hyle).20 Ingold argues that in discussions
on art and actual making of art this particular model prevailed and therefore created the underlying assumptions through which art is made and looked at up until our present time. Ingold opposes the hylomorphic model because he argues that forms of things ‘arise within fields of force and flows of material.’21 Making, according to Ingold, is nothing more than
intervening in these force fields through following the lines of flow. In his opinion, making is a practice of weaving, in which practitioners ‘bind their own pathways or lines of becoming into the texture of material flows comprising the life world.’22 Rather than reading making
‘backwards’ or ‘top-‐down’, from an initial intention to a finished object, it should be understood as a recursive, on-‐going generative movement that is at once itinerant, improvisatory and rhythmic.23 What this meant for Boetti’s Mappe is that Mappe did not turn out like he imagined
them to be, the crafts-‐women who weaved the tapestries generated the rules which influenced the final artwork. As we have already seen, this can be easily proved by the mistake of using pink instead of blue for the oceans. The point being is that Boetti’s idea of the form might not be
18 Krauss, A Voyage on the north sea, 6 – 7. 19 Krauss, A Voyage on the north sea, 6. 20 Ingold, “The Textility of Making,” 91. 21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
how the artwork finally worked out. Going back to Ingold’s main point: the limits and
possibilities of material will define not only the process of making but the resulting forms and objects too.24 Art-‐makers thus have to work with materials that have properties of their own
and are not necessarily predisposed to fall into the shapes required by the artist, let alone to stay in them indefinitely. What should be drawn from Ingold’s research is that the hylomorphic model makes the outsourcing of art-‐making complicated as the idea in the mind of the artist will never be how the final artwork will turn out. For example, this model makes art-‐making into something strict and controlled and therefore excludes the importance of both mistakes and serendipity. Ingold illustrates this with a quote from a building contractor who is tasked with the implementation of architectural design. Despite the example being from a different field it is a useful illustration of the consequences of outsourcing making. Building contractor Matisse Enzer explains:
‘Architects think of a building as a complete thing, while builders think of it and know it as a sequence—hole, then foundation, framing, roof, etc. The separation of design from making has resulted in a built environment that has no “flow” to it. You simply cannot design an improvisation or an adaptation. It’s dead.’25
What is key here is that a building, but also an artwork, should be seen as a sequence of which improvisation or adaption are as much a part as the initial design or concept. This takes us back to Rosalind Krauss who argues too that essence of art lies partly in the importance of the concept of improvisation and of the need to ‘take chances in the face of a medium.’26
The ideas of ‘flow’ and ‘taking chances’ show a resemblance to the viewpoints of the last key author on the subject, labour and culture sociologist Richard Sennett. Sennett explored over various decades ‘how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts.’27
It is worth mentioning that his ideas are partly based on the ideas of John Dewey. In 2008 he completed the book The Craftsman in which his ‘guiding intuition’ is that ‘making is thinking’.28
Throughout this book, Sennett seeks to prove that history has drawn fault lines that divide practice from theory, technique from expression and craftsman from artist.29 His aim is to
prove that the working human can be enriched by the skills of craftsmanship. Yet many of Sennett’s findings on the meaning of making seem somewhat far-‐fetched. Example is his
24 Ingold, “The Textility of Making,” 94. 25 Ingold, “The Textility of Making,” 91 -‐ 94. 26 Krauss, A Voyage on the north sea, 5.
27 Richard Sennett biography, last accessed June 22, 2016,
http://www.richardsennett.com/site/senn/templates/general.aspx?pageid=8&cc=gb.
28 Krauss, A Voyage on the north sea, 5.
conviction that through learning how to make things well we can also shape our dealings with others.30 Nevertheless, there is a useful lesson to be drawn from his ideas on art-‐making as
Sennett understands the element of play to be at the core of art-‐making. Play, claims Sennett, is the only way that people are free enough to truly test the limits of material and making.31
Makers, argues Sennett, above all know how to play, and it is in play that the origin of the dialogue with materials like glass and clay is conducted.32 Consequently, play could be lost
during outsourcing, when the makers have to work within a strict framework constructed by the artist. It is thus safe to say that any description of an artwork that fails to mention that it is outsourced, also fails to understand the importance of material, improvisation and play to the outcome of the artwork. However, in outsourced art, the elements of making are not always lost in its entirety. In the next chapter we will see exactly if and how these elements are a part of art production from the Middle Ages up until contemporary art.
30 Sennett, The Craftsman, 289. 31 Sennett, The Craftsman, 271. 32 Ibid.
2. The artist and the makers
2.1 The artist as maker
It is by no means uncommon that people outside the art world are startled when they realise that in contemporary art, the artist is often not the person who actually makes the artwork him/herself.33 But even from inside the art world the connection between the contemporary
artist and his or her ways of production is often wilfully ignored. Michelle Kuo, editor-‐in-‐chief at Artforum calls this the ‘cult of authorship’.34 According to Kuo, collectors, traders, artists,
curators and historians are squeamish when it comes to terms as ‘collaboration’ and
‘handwriting’ and prefer to address the artists as an individual.35 As a consequence they choose
(fictional) singular authorship over the actual process of making art.36 It seems that in this
particular frame of reference, or ‘cult’ to use Kuo’s words, the artist is inseparable to a singular way of production.
These specific ideas can be grouped together and referred to as the ‘romantic concept’.37 The key notion to this romantic idea of how an artist should work is originality.
Original is understood as ‘the earliest form of something’.38 And to create the earliest form of
something is exactly what, since the Renaissance, is connected to art. The Renaissance artist was namely perceived as an individual with God-‐given talents through which he had an exalted understanding of our world. The artist was seen, as someone with capacities that go beyond anything the ‘common’ human being could understand. Exemplary for this belief is the famous dictum of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) claiming that form already exists in the material but can only be understood and extracted through the intellect of the artist.39 Another
important aspect of the romantic idea of the artist is that the artist cannot avoid his calling; creating art is the only true life for him. More importantly, this believe in the life mission of the artist is that the work must therefore be a direct representation of the artistic soul.40 The
artwork and the artist are one, the artist’s soul flows seamlessly into the artwork. It is this theory on which the assumption was founded that if someone else but the artist makes the artwork, the artist’s soul is not directly connected to the artwork, and therefore meaning of the
33 See for example the critique that artist Daan Roosegaarde befell in the program College Tour for outsourcing work and
borrowing ideas of others. Twan Huis interviews Daan Roosegaarde, “College Tour: Daan Roosegaarde,” College Tour, NTR, Hilversum, February 2, 2016.
34 Michelle Kuo, “The Producers,” Artforum 46 (2007): 357. 35 Ibid.
36 See: Jack Stillinger, Multiple authorship and the myth of solitary genius (New York / Oxford: The Oxford University Press, 1991).
Stillinger argues that singular authorship never truly existed.
37 Camiel van Winkel, De mythe van het kunstenaarschap (Amsterdam: Fonds voor de beeldende kunsten, 2007), 23 – 24. 38 “Oxford dictionary,” last accessed June 15, 2016, http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/original.
39 Gilbert Creighton and Robert N. Linscott, Complete Poems and selected Letters of Michelangelo (New Jersey: Princeton UP 1980),
100. As cited by Lehmann in “Wedging, Throwing, Dipping and Dragging,” 43.
artwork could be lost. This meant that originality developed into something much more than merely creating the earliest form of something: it came to stand for terms as inspiration, autonomy, creativity and innovation.41
The characteristics of this romantic artistry commence in the Renaissance and they run through the Romantic movement into the nineteenth century. They again gained strength during Abstract Expressionism in the 20th century.42 Art historian Caroline A. Jones devotes a
chapter to the idea of the romantic artist during Abstract Expressionism in her book Machine in the Studio from 1996.43 Focussing on the artist’s studio Jones describes the reigning image of
the studio as a sacred place, an ivory tower, where the artist lived and worked in solitude on his masterworks.44 Jones emphasises that the image of the studio that of an individual place,
the domain of one single artist, one author, without assistants:
‘The romance of the studio is enacted in a private space that gives capacious breadth only to one mind and provides room for only one pair of hands. Both mind and hands of the individual in the studio participate in the creation of the work of art as a statement of autonomous genius.’45
The perfect artist thus worked secluded from the world as a hermit on his or her life work. Interestingly enough, we are seemingly still captivated by the idea of the authentic, original artwork in the twenty-‐first century.46 And it is this idea of the artist as an autonomous, genius
individual whose artworks are original and created by him/herself still persists today in popular culture and artistic practice.47
However, there are forms of art where the artist as single creator is not a topoi but essential to the artistic practice or the concept of the artwork. Take the example of Marina Abramović’s (1947-‐) early performance Rhythm 5 from 1974. Abramović used her body as both subject and medium in order to test her corporeal and cerebral limits. From the moment onwards that Abramović realised she could use her own body as medium she knew that this was the only way to truly communicate with her audience: ‘the only way of expression is to perform.’48 Her
claimed intention was to reach intensified presence, transcendence and transformation. Rythm 5 was characterized by endurance and pain, as Abramović lied down in a large petroleum-‐
41 Rosalind E. Krauss, The Originality of the Avant-‐Garde and Other Modernist myths (Cambridge MA/London: MIT Press, 1985), 7. 42 Camiel van Winkel, De mythe van het kunstenaarschap, 23 – 24.
43 Caroline A. Jones, Machine in the studio. Constructing the postwar American Artist (Chicago: MIT Press, 1996), 16. 44 Ibid.
45 Ibid.
46 Kuo, “The Producers,” 357.
47 Jacob and Grabner, The Studio reader. 4.
48 “Museum of Modern Art,” last modified May 15, 2016, http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/boetti/#imgs-‐
drenched star, which she lit on fire at the start of the performance. The importance of her own person as the subject of the artwork is seen in the way Abramović uses the first noun in her description of the work:
‘I set fire to the star. I walk around it. I cut my hair and throw the clumps into each point of the star. I cut my toe-‐nails and throw the clippings into each point of the star. I walk into the star and lie down on the empty surface.’49
Another example of an artist who uses her body, yet not as medium but as a tool is Janine Antoni (1964-‐). Although her work looks simple and minimal the opposite can be said of its making.50 Her main tool for sculpting has continuously been her own body whilst her acts of
making are plainspoken gestures: gnawing, licking, mopping, weaving and washing. She converts ordinary activities such as eating, washing, and sleeping into ways making her art. In her work Gnaw (1992) she has carved two 272 kg cubes of both lard and chocolate with her teeth.
49 “Medien Kunst Netz,” last accessed May 2, 2016, http://www.medienkunstnetz.de/works/rhythm-‐5/. 50 Suzanne Cotter and Massimiliano Gioni, Defining Contemporary Art. 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks, 133.
In other works such as Lick and Lather (1993) she filled a mould of her own likeness with both chocolate and soap. These moulds then hardened into a bust similar to a classical marble bust. Antoni then slowly erased her own image by licking the chocolate or in the case of the soap busts by washing away the soap.51 Other works involve using brainwave signals recorded while
she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning.52 Additional
examples (amongst many others) are Vito Acconci, Chris Burden and Gina Pane who all in their own way generated immediacy through their own body.
51 Cotter and Gioni, Defining Contemporary Art. 25 years in 200 pivotal artworks, 133.
2.2 In the manner of the artist
With the exception of those artists who (through the use of their own body) are the sole creator of their work, the large majority of artists have never completely worked alone.53 Artists have
always had help of artisans and other material experts, from cabinet-‐maker to goldsmith, marble-‐cutter to engraver and mason to mathematician.
In the Middle Ages there where large guilds and craft workshops were goldsmiths, embroiders worked together. The set of skills that these craftsmen learned through working in the
workshops is what will be referred to as ‘artistic knowledge’. This knowledge is described by Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann in her article Wedging, Throwing, Dipping and Dragging—How Motions, Tools and Materials Make Art (2011) as the ‘knowledge embodied by the object made.’54 The
transferral of artistic knowledge was essential for the functioning of the workshop, as they could be seen as training schools. Important here is that there was no question in the medieval guilds and workshops of working as an individual. The only distinction that was made was where the objects were made instead of who made them.55
But this changed with the beginning of the sixteenth century when the guild workshop
transformed into the artist’s studio filled with pupils and assistants such as the studio of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-‐1640).56 Art historian John Roberts, who published widely on artistic
labour, argues that this changed due to the new system of patronage and the idea of the artist as genius and autonomous author. According to Roberts, this influenced the perception of the co-‐operative character of the workshop.57 Yet what Roberts does not mention is that in these
studios the core of the relationship between master and assistant was still the transferral of artistic knowledge. What did change however was the emphasis one the master’s distinctive style. Thus the assistant’s gained artistic knowledge through learning the specific tricks and mimicking the qualities of the master.58 This made it important to create face-‐to-‐face relations
within the workshop. The artist’s assistants had to remain in close proximity to the master, since personal style and vision are hard to write down into a manual.59 Not rarely pupils
became artists in their own right. In the case of Rubens his assistants were (amongst others)
Justus van Egmont (1602-‐1674) and Anthony Van Dyck (1599-‐1640).
53 Celant, “Art & Project,” 14.
54 Ann-‐Sophie Lehmann, “Wedging, Throwing, Dipping and Dragging—How Motions, Tools and Materials Make Art,” In Barbara
Baert and Trees de Mits (eds), Folded Stones (2009): 45.
55 Sennett, The Craftsman, 68.
56 “The National Gallery London,” accessed June 6, 2016, https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/peter-‐paul-‐rubens. 57 John Roberts, “Art After Deskilling,” Historical Materialism 18 (2010): 77 – 96.
58 John Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form. Skill and Deskilling in Art After the Readymade (London / New York: Verso, 2007), 140. 59 Sennett, The Craftsman, 68.
The assistants were first trained in the basic skills of how to mix the paint and prepare the canvas. In one of the rare sixteenth century workshop manuals that was saved, Cennino d’Andrea Cennini (1360-‐ before 1427) describes the tasks of an assistant in detail. The assistant was amongst many other things expected to be sufficient in:
‘Drawing on paper with charcoal, making brushes, painting beards, hair and plants in fresco, painting faces, dead bodies, and wounds in tempera on panels, making goat’s glue, making cement for mending stones, making gesso, gilding a panel, grinding pigments for colours […].’60
The more advanced and skilled pupils were allowed to start imitating the master in his style. They were often instructed to create the final work from a base drawing and colour indication. Pupils have produced completely finished and sellable etchings and paintings in the master’s style. Although the apprentices had some artistic input of their own, the aim was to produce in the style of the master and consequently it is difficult to distinguish a master’s work from that of his assistants. An example of this is from the seventeenth century workshop of Peter Paul Rubens (1577-‐1640). The sketch for the painting Meleager and Atlanta and the hunt of the Calidonian boar (1618-‐19) was from Rubens himself. The final work was executed by his disciples and resulted in the Torre de La Parada in the hunting lodge of Philip IV in Pardo. The final painting differs in composition, details and colour from the original sketch. This illustrates the artistic input that was often required from the disciples, as long as it was done in the master’s original style.
60 Roberts, The Intangibilities of Form, 139 – 141.
Image 5. Peter Paul Rubens, Sketch for Meleager and
Atlanta and the hunt on the Calidonian boar. 1618-‐19.
Oil on panel. 47.6 x 74 cm.
Image 6. Peter Paul Rubens. Meleager and Atlanta and
the hunt on the Calidonian boar. 1618-‐19. Oil on panel.
Important aspect of the workshop system is that the use of apprentices was clear to whoever bought an artwork. This can be read in the correspondence between Rubens and the English diplomat Sir Dudley Carleton.61 When Carleton decided to buy a painting from Rubens he was
presented with an accurate list that exactly stated which works where (partly) made by disciples and which works were ‘originals’. The distinction between these works resulted in a significant difference in price: 50 florin for The twelve Apostles made by assistants and 600 florin for Leda with the swan and a cupid that was ‘original, by my hand.’ The difference between these works of art was not conceived lightly in the eyes of Carleton; he returned a hunting scene because he was convinced that the master himself did not make it. Rubens tried to make clear that there was hardly a difference in quality: ‘[...] for they [the works made by assistants] are so well retouched by my hand that they are hardly to be distinguished from originals.’62 What needs to be added as a concluding remark is that although the educative
character of the workshop is indeed essential to explain the existence of the workshops another important reason is a commercial one. A large workshop enabled masters to take up more and larger orders. The commercial purpose of the art-‐maker is the topic of the next section.
61 Ruth Saunders Magurn (red.), The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 60-‐61. 62 Saunders, The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens, 60-‐61.
