Koons is the prototypical example of delegation (to carefully selected artisans), but many less notable contemporary artists delegate realisation to fabricators (I have seen this first hand only in sculpture.) I think the fact that this is now acceptable has something to do with the decoupling of visual art-as-concept from art-as-object that has occurred over the past 150 years. The rise of CAD also makes it easier to design a work and delegate fabrication. Of course Music and Theatre have been delegating realisation pretty-much forever.
Money laundering itself in the art market is duller, by design, it trades on lesser regulation and inspection of the funds bought to sales and auctions and often uses decoupling mechanisms, illegal funds -> art -> inflated values -> legitimate money via loans backed by art as collateral, etc.
Searching a bit I found two articles that seem okay on quick skim reading:
* https://alessa.com/blog/art-money-laundering-explained/
* https://www.dentons.com/en/insights/articles/2024/march/11/t...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_You_Look:_A_True_Story_Ab...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exit_Through_the_Gift_Shop
Freeport facilities are part and parcel to enabling these complex businesses arrangements, and they are mentioned in an aside in the documentary Made You Look; the Geneva Freeport being one of, of not the, world’s oldest and most important such facility is called out specifically if I remember correctly, or maybe one in Antwerp.
Actual pills would rot too quickly — which makes sense as they are digestible, and therefore in the same category as food, ish — so he had a team of assistants making caplets, tablets, lozenges, pills etc. in a studio out of resin and plastic.
https://d7hftxdivxxvm.cloudfront.net/?height=1600&quality=50...
One of those things that seems so obvious now, but at the time I had assumed he was just displaying existing medicines in ironic packaging.
I have worked in the capacity of a [Production Software Developer]. I am an [architect] myself but am also good with [writing shipping software]. Working for someone who knows what they want and can clearly express it can be rewarding. Less rewarding is working for someone who doesn't. One young [founder] i worked for asked me to [develop an app] to a set of [requirements] she was to supply. She got these [requirements] wrong at least four times. Worst still was that she seemed to think her ineptitude was charming... laughing at my increasing desperation. I could fill a book with such stories.
I suspect many folks on this site can relate.
Studios:
- AB Fine Art Foundry LDN: https://www.abfineart.com/
- Factum Arte: https://www.factum-arte.com/
- Cerámica Suro: https://gazemag.com.mx/ceramica-suro/
- Stephens Tapestry Studio: https://stephenstapestrystudio.com/
Individuals:
- Billy Teasdale: https://glasgowinternational.org/artists/billy-teasdale/
- Natalie Bradwell: https://bradwellblacksmiths.com/
- Nick Brandon: https://www.inthebandstudio.com/about
I once visited one of these studios, Kunstgiesserei St. Gallen[0], and these were just the nicest people and were producing works for big names like Urs Fischer, Paul McCarthy etc.
During my studies I was fortunate to help out fellow students (and visiting artists) myself, even wrote a master thesis for one. I remember the worst work to take on was such kind, where the artist tried something on their own, then that didn't work, so you just receive this mixed pile and "just need to make it work" - that's quite a learning experience. I still hold artists that are interested in the craft process and seek help early in high regard.
I was always fascinated how these studios/individuals are given titles like "fabricators", "inventors", "scientists" or "technicians", but just not "artists". There's a huge legacy when it comes the title "artist" and the funny bit is that, yes, even you can just start calling yourself one. On the other hand, a software engineer has no problem to hire another software engineer, whatever the work might end up to be.
Shouldn't they write their own master thesis?
EDIT: I wouldn't do it again though.
You often lack the resources/skill thus you subcontract. Nothing wrong nor surprising with that.
Artworks are often 100% prototypes so it's already challenging finding subcontractors that understand the work and are willing to take the risk of producing the work.
-Did you sketch something out and then have an architect and engineer create architectural and structural plans? Plus landscape plans for the plants, I’m guessing.
-Did you have the architect lead the project? By this I mean have them ultimately handle payments and hiring the GC and so on.
-Contract terms, since this was not your typical job, were the contractors OK providing a fixed price or did you work out a T&M or cost plus type of arrangement?
-If it was fixed price, how much did the contract go up due to change orders?
If you have photos of the sculpture, I’d be interested to see it too, no worries if you don’t want to share due to it revealing who you are.
This article is an "AI" advertisement. Take the worst "artists" who no one has ever heard about and who produce physical slop and thereby excuse "AI" usage and theft.
Not all artists are like that.
The word "art" etymologically derives from older words meaning "skill" or "craft." Doing stuff that doesn't require skill or craft is not art by definition, even if it looks like it.
You're not an artist if you do this. But it's okay. Artists throughout history have always lived with the rest of the world being apathetic to art and confusing making copies of things with the artistic process. This age is no different, except copies can be made easier and faster.
That being said, it sounds like we're really close to me being able to type in a description of something and receive an AI-generated sculpture of it, hopefully with a 3D preview. Awesome, but we're also seeing some really disturbing authoritarian trends lately, and we're likely going to see a lot of ideas get labelled as harmful and blocked from being used by AI tools. So I don't see this leading to any type of utopia for anyone other than the owners of these technologies.
But most people can’t do everything. How would you view art where the artist relies on AI for the pieces they can’t do? If I play guitar but an ai wrote the drum part, is that art? What if I write the book but ai made the illustrations?
If, for example:
- an artist creates an image,
- 40% of the image is the work of the artist,
- 60% of the image is from an AI
then:
- the image is 40% a work of art.
- the art resides in the 40% of the work that the artist did.
- the majority of the image (51%) is not art.
Drumming presents an interesting perspective because we've had mechanical/synthesized drum sounds in pop and other music for a few decades now. But you can still tell when tracks have a lazy drum programmer that programmed one 16-step pattern in a drum machine (or worse used a stock pattern) and kept it repeating through the whole song. That is less art than the intricate DnB or breakcore tracks with lots of changes and interaction with other layers of the song.
bookofjoe•4mo ago