What's the role of the artist today? Does he have to go through all the process himself? I mean, work from conception to completion on his own? If you would buy a painting, what would you think if you knew that the artist from whom you bought it didn't paint the image himself? Well, some artist actually work this way.
Jeff Koons http://hypebeast.com/2009/04/a-tour-inside-the-jeff-koons-studio/ is an artist based in New York. According to culturekiosque.com, he had set a record at auction for selling the ''Hanging Heart'' for 23,6 million US dollars. However, Jeff Koons doesn't work alone. His studio, also based in New Work, employs many employees who work for him. Indeed, Jeff Koons has a workshop.
So, what is a workshop?
At the beginning of the Renaissance, there were trade organizations called Guilds for different fields of work. Artists, doctors, bakers and many other professions had guilds. They would set the standards and establish the rules of quality for their members. The artists, named artisans, were considered as skilled labourers available for hire. They were hired by Patrons, mostly members of rich families in order to create a specific piece of work for them. Artists were required to produce exactly what the patron wanted them to. They were, then, not considered as they are today. An artist could not create their own work. He was part of a workshop lead by a master. At young age, an artist would start as apprentice working hard to achieve a certain amount of knowledge and then become an assistant. If he showed great skills he could maybe eventually become a master who would then create his own workshop and hire assistants and apprentices of his own. The master was paid by the patron to deliver the work. He would design the piece and his workshop would work on it. The patron could also ask the master to produce the piece by himself for an appropriate increase in the artworks price of course.
As an example, I guess you all know Michelangelo and his work in the Sistine Chapel. He was also a master of a workshop. There were assistants and apprentices helping him. Michelangelo wasn't working alone! He designed the work and many people within the workshop worked on it. His assistants, learned to paint exactly like the master, so you could not make any difference between them. Now, Michelangelo’s work can be seen from different perspective. Not only Michelangelo was working this way, but every artist was.
So, going back to Jeff Koons. He has a workshop. He is the master who designs the pieces on which his assistants will work on. He still remains the one who gets all the credit for the work, as Michelangelo got the only credit for his work as well. It may seem unfair to the others today, because we are used to see the artist as the creator and the producer of his pieces. But what if it takes just too many hours to complete one piece of work? An artist alone would have to spend a life-time working on it in order to complete the piece. Going back to Koons’s Hanging Heart, we can see, following the link, http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/artmrkt/koons_hangingheart.html it took Jeff Koons and his workshop 10 years, i.e. 6000 man hours, to produce this sculpture.
From this point of view, it is indeed useful, even mandatory to work with a workshop.
I'll make a parallel with the publicity industry. Many of you have watched the Dove Publicity showing how edited and distorted an image on a billboard can be. Here is the link if you haven't seen it yet, or if you just want to refresh your memory
As you can see, many people are working on this image, such as the model, makeup artist, hair stylist, photographers, retouchers, artistic director (who we can't see, but he is there), etc. One single person could not possibly do that on his own. It would take ages to achieve this result. Also, one person is usually specialized in one specific work field only. To obtain a professional outcome, they have to hire many people with many different skills. This is the creative team. I’m not saying it is a workshop, as everyone in the crew has their own specific ability which sometimes do not connect with each other. A makeup artist is far from being a photographer. Creative teams are actually better adapted for today’s society than the workshops. Maybe they are some kind of evolution of the workshop. But I guess we can see the purpose of having both.
It may seem, weird, but yes, I would say that the workshop today can still be usefull. It isn't the same as in the Renaissance, but considering the time it actually takes to produce some piece of art, it is obvious that its still needed.
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