Sole Authorship in the Visual Arts—Fact or Fiction?

Article by Roy Ananda

While a contemporary visual art-savvy audience might cringe at the romantic notion of ‘artist as solitary genius’, it’s an idea that remains deeply entrenched in the popular imagination. The conception of artist as sole author and creator is one of incredible seductive power. There is something deeply gratifying about imagining Michelangelo furiously chiselling away at blocks of marble by himself, but of course we know this was not the case. In fact, for hundreds of years, Western art was the joint creation of masters, apprentices, assistants and pupils; in other words, the creation of studios or workshops rather than the individual. While contemporary artists working in the wake of Romanticism and Modernism are arguably given to more individualistic tendencies than their medieval counterparts, the employment of studio assistants and the outsourcing of fabrication of artworks remains a common practice.

We live in an era of unprecedented variety when it comes to artists’ working methods. Contemporary visual artists are utilising the skills of all kinds of external parties across all kinds of disciplines and with this diversity of practice comes a range of questions concerning authorship, acknowledgement and attribution.

When and how should a visual artist acknowledge craftspeople, tradespeople or fellow visual artists involved in the making process? Is crediting these people a question of courtesy or should it be seen as something more urgent—a moral, ethical or even legal responsibility? When an artist utilises the skills of others, at what point is the artist no longer the sole author of the work? Put more succinctly, when does outsourcing end and collaboration begin?

Clearly, involving external parties in the making process is very different to collaborating or sharing authorship. It would be ludicrous to claim, for example, that the wall drawings of Sol LeWitt are collaborations between the artist and the gallery staff that execute them. The conditions under which these drawings are made are so strict as to preclude any invention or aesthetic decision-making on the part of those who carry them out. In allowing no room for interpretation, LeWitt reduces the assistant’s role to something purely mechanical and he remains the sole author of the work. Frequently however, the contribution made by assistants (be they visual artists, craftspeople, tradespeople or gallery staff) is much more nuanced and substantial. In these cases, the issue of authorship may not be as clear cut.

How are we to gauge the weight or influence of these contributions? A reasonable starting point might be a consideration of all the decisions that go into making a given work of art—decisions about subject matter, scale, materials, aesthetics, processes and so on. When an artist is in control of (the significant majority of) these decisions, this would seem to characterise sole authorship. Arguably, when there is the opportunity or necessity for someone else (such as the fabricator) to make decisions in these areas, they begin to contribute something more than fabrication. Once the quantity and quality of aesthetic decisions made by the fabricator reaches a certain point, is there a case for co-authorship? This gives rise to a number of related questions. When outsourcing to someone with expert knowledge in a particular field, it is highly likely that this person may suggest an alternative approach (that is better, cheaper or more effective) to the one initially commissioned by the artist.

Could this level of input be enough for us to regard the process as somehow collaborative and thereby deserving of acknowledgement? Is fabrication outsourced to a creative field more deserving of recognition than when it is outsourced to a tradesperson or to an industrial source? After all, a sculptor outsourcing fabrication of a Minimalist work to an industrial metalworker seems less fraught with issues of attribution than, say, Jeff Koons famously (or infamously) employing the remarkable skills of European woodcarvers in the creation of his uber-kitsch sculptures. What if transposing a work or an idea through someone else’s skills is a deliberate strategy on the part of the artist? Consider Johnnie Dady’s Construction Drawings, in which the artist translated architectural CAD drawings into beautifully realised scaffold structures at actual building scale. These works hinged on the translation of the original CAD drawings into a new, and very specific, material language, one that the artist himself was not fluent in. In this case, Dady used the skills of an expert scaffolder (who was in fact clearly credited as a contributor), very purposefully and deliberately, as a filter through which his original idea passed. The slippages and transformations that occurred as the drawings moved from one state to another became an integral part of the work, as did Dady’s surrendering of control.

One might argue there is a stronger case for acknowledgement when an artist employs someone with skills not possessed by the artist themselves. An artist employing assistants with the same skills as him or herself could be said to be merely being economical with time. In such a case, the creation of the work does not hinge on the expert skills of another person. This is not to say that an artist can endlessly delegate to assistants without impacting on the integrity of the work. Frequently, the investment of time and labour on the part of a single individual is what charges a work of art with meaning. Consider the devotional works of Wolfgang Laib (in which the artist painstakingly gathers huge quantities of pollen for use in ephemeral installations), 1000 Hours of Staring by Tom Friedman (a piece of paper which the artist has stared at for a thousand hours) or the documented works of Richard Long. Works such as these absolutely require execution by the primary artist, lest they become meaningless or, at the very least, greatly diminished.

Artists working with found objects or images also frequently implicate other artists or craftspeople. In cases like this, acknowledgement and attribution is usually impossible, since the original maker is probably anonymous. Nonetheless, the work of someone like Penny Byrne (who puts her skills as a ceramics conservator to work modifying found china figurines), relies very heavily on the aesthetic qualities of the original, highly crafted object. Similarly, while we admire Max Ernst’s collages for their strangeness and sheer invention, we can’t help being seduced by the craft of the original engravings that he has appropriated. The skill, craft and aesthetic decisions of these anonymous draftsmen is intricately tied up in our response to Ernst’s work.

Thinking more broadly about the issue of (co)authorship, we soon realise that it is not only fabricators who become involved in the art-making process. Indeed, several artists spring to mind who could be seen to be outsourcing the content of their work, rather than the form. Consider Komar and Melamid’s Painting By Numbers, where extensive international surveys yielded the statistical information needed to generate the most and least wanted paintings of various nations, or the video works of Gillian Wearing, where the artist acts as a sort of ‘curator’ of other people’s thoughts and feelings. When practice of this sort is taken into account, the artist as sole author becomes an even more ill-defined position.

So how far should an artist go in crediting those who have contributed to their work? If an artist works in a group studio, it is very likely that they will discuss work in progress with colleagues and that these discussions will inform the direction of the work. If an artist’s practice extends concerns and approaches arrived at in art school, then they are of course incorporating influences from lecturers and fellow students. Taken to an absurd limit, artists would have to credit an endless chain of influences and stimuli as co-authors of their work, from their kindergarten art teacher to the paper manufacturer.

So while we should be cautious not to underestimate contributions to the creative process made by external parties, we should be just as wary of overstating said contributions, lest the primacy and authority of the artist becomes utterly dissolved. While an ambitious large-scale work may involve many hands (the lavish, ‘high production value’ video works of Matthew Barney or Bill Viola, for example), we should not lose sight of the primary artist and the scope of their original vision. Perhaps to better articulate the artist’s position in all of this, we need to look to other creative disciplines, outside of the visual arts and crafts. It has been suggested that the contemporary artist is just as likely to be a producer in a filmic or theatrical sense, instead of a sole producer of objects; that is to say, defining their role as a ‘creative director’ rather than a maker as such. Indeed, the position of many contemporary artists is perhaps more analogous to that of composers or architects — each are independent creators, who still have claim to the authorship of their respective works, despite not necessarily playing the instruments or laying the bricks.

Roy Ananda is a South Australian artist and writer.

Johnnie Dady, Construction Drawings 01:2001, Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, 2001. Primary sponsor for this project was Boral Formwork and Scaffolding. Computer design was sponsored by S.P.U.D (Special Projects Under Development). Support was also provided by Solver Paints. Scaffolding realisation, James Neisler; colour consultant, Michael Kutschbach; paint team coordinator, Naomi Williamson.

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