Renaissance artist’s workshops

It is in recent times that artists have been more inclined to value individuality and therefore work alone. This was not

always the case

For Master painters during the Renaissance period (14th – 17th centuries), art was a trade as well as a calling and they

expected to earn a wage from their work just like any other professional. To achieve this they employed other

people to help them to make art in their studio.

The master directed the work of assistants and apprentices which could be identified by the application of the

master’s style. Larger workshops were even like factories in some ways. The production would be divided so that

one assistant might lay out the basic composition, another might do the background figures, and another might do

the landscape and so on. This allowed artists to get more work done and to work on more than one object at a time.

v

Phillippe Galle, The Invention of Oil Paint, engraving, ca 1600.

During the Renaissance when people ordered a

painting by the master Giotto, they knew they were

not getting something personally painted by Giotto

himself. Their understanding of what they were

buying was more like ours in regard to a design

product today. When we buy a Mambo T-shirt we

don’t expect it to have been made personally by the

head of Mambo. We expect that the head designer

supervises the work so that it keeps the trademark

style and quality of the brand. So a Giotto signature

on an artwork worked the same way as a trademark.

Mambo designs by Travis Price

Master painter

at work

Senior

assistant

painting a

portrait

Junior

apprentices

learn the

principles of

drawing and

painting

Assistant

crushes oyster

shell to make

white pigment.

Another

assistant mixes

the pigment

with an oil

medium to

make white

paint.

Third assistant

creating the

colours

required by

the master

painter.

Jeff Koons Ottmann: How far are you involved in the actual production of your work?

Koons: I’m basically the idea person. I’m not physically involved in the production. I don’t have the necessary

abilities, so I go to the top people, whether I’m working with my foundry — Tallix — or in physics.

http://www.jca-online.com/koons.html

Left: Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Magenta), 1994–2000. Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent colour coating.

307.3 x 363.2 x 114.3 cm. One of five unique versions. Collection Pinault. © Jeff Koons. Eright: Jeff Koons, Popeye,

2009–2011. Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent colour coating. 198.1 x 131.4 x 71.8 cm. Edition no. 1/3.

Gagosian Gallery. © Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988. Porcelain. 106.7 x 179.1 x 82.6 cm. Edition no. 1/3. Private Collection

© Jeff Koons

Andy Warhol

As an advertisement illustrator in the 1950s, Warhol used assistants to increase his productivity. Collaboration would

remain a defining (and controversial) aspect of his working methods throughout his career; this was particularly true

in the 1960s. One of the most important collaborators during this period was Gerard Malanga. Malanga assisted the

artist with the production of silkscreens, films, sculpture, and other works at "The Factory", Warhol's aluminum foil-

and-silver-paint-lined studio on 47th Street (later moved to Broadway).

“He loved celebrities, so he painted them as well. From these beginnings he developed his later style and subjects.

Instead of working on a signature subject matter, as he started out to do, he worked more and more on a signature

style, slowly eliminating the handmade from the artistic process. Warhol frequently used silk-screening; his later

drawings were traced from slide projections. At the height of his fame as a painter, Warhol had several assistants

who produced his silk-screen multiples, following his directions to make different versions and variations.”

Colacello, Bob (1990), p.28

Patricia Piccinini

Sky whale, 2013

The Carrier, 2012

The Stags, 2009

Phillip, 2005

Piccinini works with professional crafts people such as upholsterers, film makers, sculptors, panel beaters, audio

technicians to create her work. They follow her direction. They will often be guided by her drawings.

Marcel Duchamp

In 1977, evaluating the influence of such works by Marcel Duchamp as a bicycle wheel mounted on a stool and a urinal signed ‘R. Mutt’ and captioned ‘Fountain’, author and art critic Calvin Tomkins declared that Duchamp had “quietly undermined several centuries of Western art with his readymades.”

Left: Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917, 61cm x 36cm x 48cm, glazed ceramic, ceramic. Right: Marcel Ducahmp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913 reconstructed 1964

Tomkin’s further remarked that “Duchamp seemed to be implying that... the artist was merely someone who signed things” (The World of Marcel Duchamp, 1966).

If a urinal appeared in a collection of art objects, is it now an art object ? – despite the fact that it

possessed no such status outside of the gallery. As Nigel Warburton puts it, “The idea that all works of

art must be the product of the artist’s hand, or that they must be aesthetically beautiful or emotionally

profound, is hard to sustain once works like Fountain have been accepted into the mainstream” (The

Art Question, 2003).

Geoff Newton

Geoff Newton in front of one of his paintings from The Scene series. 2014

From the Mail Times Newspaper insert:

KD: So are you somehow just finding time to paint all these?

GN: No, I’m not. The thing about these is, I had them made in China…

KD: Oh my gosh, is that one of them? That’s amazing.

GN: Pretty good hey?

IS: How big are they?

GN: So they are 90 x 60cm’s. They’re little. But it’s the same company that paints advertisements for Walmart. They’re like a multi-national Chinese company. And I think, at the time I was like “Well you know if you got to get your car fixed you’re not going to work out how to do it” I kind of took that route to trying to, not defend myself, but just to go look I don’t have the technical aptitude to do this…..

IS: But you also said a good thing to me a while ago about the history of patronage in landscape painting and about commissioning the view.

….

IS: That is what’s interesting about this too! Which is that you’ve given this image to someone who’s never

seen Horsham and they’ve stylized them in their own way.

GN: Mmm. I like the bit, how the asphalt is so economic. What you do is you send them the image and they grade it out of ten according to the difficulty and them you pay them according to that. So two people painted these ones.

…

IS: So you think you’re like Rembrandt with this workshop behind you.

…

GN: But I think I just wanted it to be so that the audience looks and goes, “Oh, that’s blah blah”.

KD: yeah so there is a recognition factor. They’re just going to love these, and then they’re going to look at them and think “Oh gosh, they’re made in China”. Like everything we do is outsourced to China, even our art!

…

KD: So are you going to have any text accompanying them?

GN: Just the title.

KD: And what about author?

GN: Just me.

KD: So are you going to reveal that they were painted overseas?

GN: Well if people want to know, yeah, I’m not going to hide the fact that I didn’t physically paint them. To me that just opens up this whole other line of it being about something that it is not. It’s kind of not meant to open up questions about economy and authorship. I got them outsourced, and this is what they are.

…

IS: Why don’t you want to open up questions about economy?

GN: Well I want this image to be the stand in for the photographic documentation of looking. And I think it allows a distance between the maker and the work, which allows me to talk about it in a different way, to be subjective.