An Assistant's Story – Submitted by Monty
I once worked for a fairly well known artist in London whose works were entirely produced by a series of assistants in the form of a production line, the only hand that he laid upon them was to add a signature at the end of the process. Upon my leaving his employment he decided to present me with one of the paintings by way of a thank you for my work there over the last couple of years. In fact the painting that he chose to present me with was one that ironically had actually been largely produced, that is to say painted, by me. When I drew this to his attention he commented that I always was the best one at producing his paintings, that I produced them more neatly and effectively than any of the other assistants, in fact even than him, he joked. Thanking him for his gift I asked him if he might sign the painting, as he did all of the others that left the production line and hence actually imbue his seemingly generous gift with some monetary value. He laughed, he couldn't do that he was afraid. So it was that I left with what could have been a potentially valuable 'original' of this famous artist, that could have been worth multiple thousands of pounds, in fact painted by me and no different from those many others that did sell for big money, aside from the simple fact that it didn't bear his signature and hence was worthless. It was then that the true ridiculousness of this scenario really dawned on me, not necessarily the mass production of art works per se, rather the extraordinary sums that the work of a few big-name artist 'brands' can command when quite literally the same work without the name cannot. It seems like there are two art worlds at work here, those that work for the love of it and those that work for the love of money.
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