Sources say artist Kehinde Wiley — who painted the former president before a background of greenery and flowers — has studios in China and produces most of his work there. "It’s his base of operation," said art critic Charlie Finch, who has known Wiley and appreciated his talent since they were students at Yale. "He has dozens of assistants working for him.... Normally, Wiley sketches out the important parts, and assistants fill out the rest."I went there because I heard Rush Limbaugh was going on about it:
This portrait, this artist outsources portions of every painting. I mean, actual brush strokes are made by outsourced painters? And the guy admits it! He admits it! So I’m wondering who paints the sperm in this guy’s pictures. But it’s true. Obama’s picture, his portrait, was outsourced. Kehinde Wiley outsourced it. I’ve never heard of that. Is nothing real anymore? Does nobody actually do their job? Does everybody have somebody behind the scenes actually doing the work while other people are taking credit for it? It boggles my mind how often I run into this. I can’t keep of any other examples here, but it boggles my mind. Well, news anchors on TV. Somebody else is writing every word they say, and probably making one-twenty-fifth (if that much) of the salary they make.If you don't know what "the sperm" refers to, read this. I want to talk about the practice of artists using assistants. Is it something to get worked up about or perfectly normal? I see that I missed all the discussion of this subject back in 2013 when an assistant to David Hockney died and "Suddenly Hockney's unremarkable seaside house seemed to be an art world Tardis concealing a hitherto ignored workshop of assistants, like Andy Warhol's Factory...." That's from The Guardian, which expanded on the topic:
'It was hard labour by any measure," says Jake Chapman, recalling his and brother Dinos's apprenticeship as assistants to Gilbert and George. "There was absolutely no creative input at all. They were very polite and it was interesting to hear them talking – as we did our daily penance.... We coloured in Gilbert and George's penises for eight hours a day." At least you didn't have to pay, as Rembrandt's assistants did, for the privilege of working in the master's studio. "Oh, we paid," retorts Chapman. "We paid in dignity."The work that you recognize as the work of this artist is work that is done with lots of technical help. He's the face of the operation, and if he did the whole thing himself, it would be very different work. There wouldn't be all those fussy leaves all over the background. It's like the way if the judges didn't have law clerks there wouldn't be all those citations and footnotes and reexplaining of everything over and over again. The badness would be easier to find, but is that what you want? I do, but I think a lot of people prefer slickness and glossy overproduction.
The relationship between artist and artist's assistant is vexed, ripe for oedipal tensions, mutual resentments, or at least spitting in the great master's lapsang souchong. How tired, one suspects, Lucian Freud's assistant (and painter in his own right) David Dawson, got of being called "Dave the Slave" by his late master.*...
Behind every great artist might well be a highly skilled team of assistants, but that truth is suppressed for fear of shattering our illusions: the lone-genius myth helps sales, and is partly what gives an artwork its mystique.... "The idea of the genius struggling in solitude in a cockroached and frozen garret with only a crust of bread and syphilis for company is an historically specific vision no longer, if ever, of relevance," argued Stephen Bayley this week writing about Hockney's studio. "Artists are not solitary. They rely on human support systems, often of a very sophisticated sort."...
What about all those poor saps who paid Rembrandt and then wound up helping him to crank out paintings for which he got the kudos? Chapman is unsentimental: "Does the person who makes the hubcaps or whatever they're called these days – low-profile sports rims – point at a passing Mercedes SLK or whatever it's called, saying, 'I did that?' No. So why should assistants claim possession for their work? It's a job."
"I find cigarette packets folded up under table legs more monumental than a Henry Moore,**" [said Richard Wentworth, professor of sculpture at the Royal College of Art, who worked as Henry Moore's assistant in 1967]. "Five reasons. Firstly, the scale. Secondly, the fingertip manipulation. Thirdly, modesty of both gesture and material. Fourth, its absurdity and fifth, the fact that it works."_____________________
* Take a moment to note the actual slave called Dave the Slave, a much-admired 19th century American potter.
** Henry Moore was huge in the 1960s, when people enthused over things like this:
IN THE COMMENTS: narayanan said:
President (you did not build that) has Portrait "painted" by Artist (I did not paint that)
Posts
104 comments:
Doesn't really matter who did it....it is a comic for a comic of a president.
I will pretty much take any opportunity to attack the former president and his minions but this is a non-story. Rush is an idiot. IIRC, Michelangelo had people who assisted him in the creation of his frescos. Put up the fresh plaster, put up those outlines. Who is to say they didn't do a bit of brush work while he put in the fine detail?
So this is a nothingburger to me.
I used to work for a guy who had a PhD in Physics from Harvard. He insisted that it was his work that earned his Adviser a Nobel Prize.
Obama still looks like a badly made and badly assembled rag doll in that painting.
Some art may be intentionally drawn badly, but this is just bad.
Barack Obama picked an artist (a) who lives in China and (b) outsources much of his own work. That's a very American way of doing business these days so I don't really see what the fuss is.
Andy Warhol was famous for having other artists do his work for him.
The Supreme Court is famous for falling asleep in public, and watching soap operas, while their clerks do all their work for them.
Nearly every artist has assistants who help. Barack Obama had assistants who did most of his work.
A Chinese guy also made that Chinese-guy-looking MLK statue.
The norm for hundreds of years was apprentices working under masters. In scientific research it still is. That was how people learned the craft. What are those apprentices supposed to produce while they are acquiring experience? Nothing?
Steve Jobs didn't program or build iPhones either.
There's a lot of this about these days, people expressing astonishment that their cartoon notions aren't real. I think it's because too much of us watch too much media. Writers copy other writers, not real life--they're too busy writing to know how anything real works. If you have ever seen your profession depicted in media you know what I mean.
I see. The great artist is like a steakhouse owner who takes the credit for the entire kitchen staff's hard work by going out to take the bow and flinging salt at the dinner table.
But this guy flings his sperm. Or is that the kitchen staff's job too?In either case, it seems sexist to me.
It's kind of like say, a Frank Lloyd Wright building. It takes many craftsmen, but it was Wright's vision, idea, creativity. Without Wright, the thing would not exist. You couldn't say that about any individual craftsman involved.
Craft is the skill set to produce an object, it can be learned and mastered. Art is the originality, the creative aspect that is somehow innate only in a single individual.
Evidently, Chinese are willing to do work that Americans will not do. Big difference than having assistants or apprentices learning a trade.
@traditionalguy:The great artist is like a steakhouse owner who takes the credit for the entire kitchen staff's hard work by going out to take the bow and flinging salt at the dinner table.
Not only is he getting the credit, he's getting most of the money too. Is that more wrong, or less wrong, than taking the credit?
You didn’t build that. Some unknown dudes in China built that.
How delightfully appropriate. And, yes, it matters. It’s not the Sistine Chapel. It’s a simple cartoonish portrait and the artist couldn’t be bothered. But, who knows? Perhaps that’s part of his artistic integrity/authenticity schtick. It’s a plastic world, Maaan!
Need Garden Hoes Ever?
I don't care who painted or helped to paint his portrait. I do care that the mockery of it and its subject has brought me a plethora of chuckles.
President (you did not build that) has Portrait "painted" by Artist (I did not paint that)
About a dozen people made this comment possible. It shows, doesn't it?
Who cares. It still looks like a grade school kid painted it. Not very presidential. But what do you expect, they picked the social justice hip gay painter dude. Classic. Good riddance.
@Cracker Emcee Activist:It’s not the Sistine Chapel.
Neither were Rembrandt's paintings. And some of the work was done by his assistants. Without their helping to produce work that sold under his name, he could not have afforded to teach them anything.
I am really having a hard time understanding why this is controversial. There is almost no one in this world who makes or creates anything without help.
In Rembrandt's time artists had to make their own paints, brushes and canvas. Artists now don't. Is that cheating too?
Some forms of art, by their nature, require teams to carry out. For example, creating a large bronze, or a large stained glass piece. One person just can't make one of those all by him or herself (unless they're willing to spend months or even years to complete the work; even then, in the case of casting the bronze, I'm not sure how they could pull that off alone).
In other cases, the artist may have physical limitations that prevent them from doing portions of the work. For example, Dale Chihuly lost the sight in his left eye and thus no longer has binocular vision, which makes it difficult to tell what exactly you're doing when you're manipulating hot molten glass in three dimensions. He also suffered a shoulder injury that left him unable to manage the blow-pipe used to blow glass. Therefore he relies on assistants to create his massive works.
I see a sperm in the Snopes logo.
"You didn't paint that painting." -- Elizabeth Warren
Does it matter? No. From a legal copyright standpoint, it all depends. While it may be of interest to know how the artist works, no one really cares.
Jewelry designers don't spend a lot of time cutting every copy of their design for jewelry store chains either.
Did Maplethorpe piss in own jars? I doubt it, but we don't hold that against him.
Bob Boyd, I have a prominent architect friend who studied under Wright (or at least at his school). One of the interesting issues is whether or not something qualifies as a FLW house. If it was done by members of the school based on his design is it still a FLW house?
There's a cool FLW school house on the big island that you can rent for $800/night. https://www.vrbo.com/108255 - called the "only FLW home built in Hawaii."
In fact, it was designed by FLW for a site in Pennsylvania in 1950s, but built in 1992 in HA under supervision of Taliesin architects, who are deemed the "best qualified to interpret Wright's plans in posthumous construction."
My architect friend says it is therefore not really a FLW house. Still pretty damn cool.
A non-story.
The tie-in to You didnt build that is, however, entertaining.
I wish I had a team of underlings to help me write books. Must be nice.
There's an easy solution, as in movies: attach credits. But that would require honesty in art. Better to rely on phony reputations.
The back story makes the O painting even more fitting: a picture of a guy who didn't want to work much by a guy who didn't want to work much.
Bigger problem: compared to all of the other president's portraits, Zero's looks like a cartoon. Foreign. Unamerican. African. Or Chinese, I guess.
They just tore down a Frank Lloyd Wright building in MT about 2 weeks ago. It was called the Frank Lloyd Wright Building.
The building was small and being used for a law offices. Land value increased to the point where the building wasn't practical anymore. Plus it was uglier'n a steakhouse baby.
An empty suit has his portrait painted by another empty suit. Who knew?
The Obama painting sucks. The "how" and "why" it sucks is less important than the fact it sucks.
This is common practice, not just in the art world, no? The named and attributed artist created the work, conceptually at least, so doesn't he get the credit? Architects and Designers, whether for buildings or clothing or whatever, get the credit even though they don't actually build and assemble what they've designed.
Put me with MadisonMan: non-story.
-sw
@ Virgil Hilts
I went to the link. That is pretty damn cool! And what a view.
Damn. Robbed of fame by narayanan. Now I know how the artist’s assistants feel.
Is it the blog post or the comments on that post that give value to the blog?
Obama always seemed more interested in being cool than in being effective. He was not really POTUS. He was a token that relieved a lot of White people of their sense of racial guilt.
He hired a cool, hip artist who didn't really paint that portrait. Perfect fit.
And Obama didn't come up with that quote.
MENDACITY! Long, Hot Summer: Faulkner with a little T Williams.
Painting from behind.
3 wds.
Mapplethorpe wasn't the piss guy. He was BBC and Whip n Ass dude.
Who silently spilled Jackson Pollock's paint?
-6W
@Althouse, the title of your post asks whether it matters. To me it does, because it calls up to my mind the image of the “art by the foot” paintings you can buy at a Starving Artist show. Some of it isn’t bad, but the notion that there might be twenty painters who worked on it, some contributing just one or two brushstrokes, is repulsive.
Damn it, we’re talking the President of the United States here! I never much respected the man, but there needs to be respect for the office. Neither the painter, nor Obama, is showing much respect for the office. If Obama respected the office he held, previously held by the likes of Washington, and Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts, then he’d have doused the portrait with kerosene and burned it, and told them to get a new artist.
Plagiar never gets any credit for his work.
I've been looking at the Obama portraits from time to time over the past few days, and I'm coming around to the view that the Barack portrait is conceptually weak, but executed well (I don't really care about the hand thing), and the Michelle portrait is conceptually strong, but executed badly. Wiley's assistants probably deserve the credit for the portrait more than he does.
Behind Oz's green curtain: munchkins, brushes.
-6W
Jackson Pollack manages to create fractal designs (same statistics at any scale).
Ann reads the New York Times for its restaurant coverage and gossip and relies on Page Six and Rush Limbaugh for the news. I thought she was a lawyer? Any views about legal news? Does it matter who painted Obama's portrait? No. Is it worth asking why Rush Limbaugh and Ann have some sick fascination in repeating their view that the picture shows Obama with cum on his face? Anything that demeans or coarsens Obama is an A-1 winner for Ann, Rush, and the tribe. Well done Ann, lovely dog-whistling this morning.
I wonder if he cut off the white-woman heads that graced his previous portraits, or did he do the beheading himself?
I'm guessing that only the top tier prostitutes have assistants who do much of the work.
Maya Angelou did her own poems. At least I expect she did.
A facsimile of authenticity: sign here.
-6W
Somewhere I saw a photo of his factory. Two long rows of easels with identical unfinished paintings as far as the eye could see.
Just more "fake but accurate", right?
@ Ralph L
Thanks. You're right, of course.
But I'm thinking a guy smart enough to make money taking pictures of pee isn't going to be getting the stuff all over his fingers filling his own jars and I'm still willing to give him full credit.
"That's a beautiful portrait of you, President Obama. Who painted it?"
"Some people in China."
One vision, many hands. Hand job?
-6W
Jeselnik says the Obama painting shows his favorite things about Obama: he puts furniture anywhere, and has no allergies.
Never mind the Pollacks. Here's the Sex Pistols.
"has studios in China " an interesting way to spell sweatshops
I Me Mine: Harrison, other Beatles.
-6W
Many hands improve the broth.
If you want artisanal art you need to go to Portland, or Brooklyn, but be prepared to pay a premium. On the whole, the art market supports collaborative work with assistants.
Had to delete and re-post to correct an unforgivable typo.
How quintessentially liberal this is! It takes a villiage...to paint Obama. The assistants get participation trophies. Where's Waldo? He's in the White House. Look for him amongst the flowers.
Studio musicians, Campbell's Soup: Warhol Karaoke.
-6W
"Many hands improve the broth."
That's what Serrano said.
"Is it the blog post or the comments on that post that give value to the blog?"
Pitchers make a lot more money than catchers. Mostly anyway. In baseball I mean.
I've seen better velvet Elvis pictures than that Obama portrait.
"uglier'n a steakhouse baby"
I'm stealing that.
This is a great post. So many tangents of thought:
Beyond the fine arts world, Politicals as front men for others is a long held idea.
There are Two sides to that: its not the person, its the idea that counts. "Its amazing what you can do if you dont care who gets the credit"
Also as others said: It takes a village. You didnt build that. Nice factory, good for you.
Sometimes you want to pull back the curtain on the Wizard. Other times, human nature being what it is, you dont.
Back to Art: The Stars of Hollywood. And all the behind the scenes stuff for a star to make $20M. Its seemingly accepted as long as they dont talk about the injustice of their plight when others got $25M
The unheralded "Behind the scenes" people leads one to the idea of there being "enablers"
Who are now considered as villians - eg Weinstein.
"Enablers" leads one to think of accountability.
Was it the hand that rocks the cradle that helped create the gunman, or was it the NRA marketing manager?
If you are not responsible for your actions, who is?
What people feel they "deserve" in this life vs what other people "deserve" It appears a lot of people self-identify that they are entitled to more than what is in hand, and someone else should hand some of theirs over. Is wants / material / consumption more relevant than your mental satisfaction with what you already have / get? Maybe if there wasnt so much that "the world" owed you (the world meaning government I guess) you'd note better what you have, what you give, and what you need.
If I wrote something for someone higher up the food chain in my firm / employ, and they then made a decision to do X with it, do I get to claim the possible profit? Am I also on the hook for possible loss? Companies make decisions based on inputs from many monkeys. Arent I doing my job?
I know a real life artist. He doesn't have an assistant. Maybe not doing your own art is a perk of being famous. Interesting that the less famous a person is, the more likely they will actually do the work you're paying for.
Sally327 said...
"Is it the blog post or the comments on that post that give value to the blog?"
Pitchers make a lot more money than catchers. Mostly anyway. In baseball I mean.
2/16/18, 9:35 AM
I saw what you did there, not that there is anything wrong with that...
Blogger D said...
What people feel they "deserve" in this life vs what other people "deserve" It appears a lot of people self-identify that they are entitled to more than what is in hand, and someone else should hand some of theirs over. Is wants / material / consumption more relevant than your mental satisfaction with what you already have / get? Maybe if there wasnt so much that "the world" owed you (the world meaning government I guess) you'd note better what you have, what you give, and what you need.
2/16/18, 9:49 AM
Envy isn't listed as one of the "7 deadly" just for shits n grins...
John Pickering: "Ann reads the New York Times for its restaurant coverage and gossip and relies on Page Six and Rush Limbaugh for the news. I thought she was a lawyer? Any views about legal news? Does it matter who painted Obama's portrait? No. Is it worth asking why Rush Limbaugh and Ann have some sick fascination in repeating their view that the picture shows Obama with cum on his face? Anything that demeans or coarsens Obama is an A-1 winner for Ann, Rush, and the tribe. Well done Ann, lovely dog-whistling this morning."
Giving off a powerful LLR Chuck vibe with that posting.......
I don't think it's possible to demean or coarsen Obama.
It was a bad portrait, executed poorly.
There is nothing else to say.
Meade said...
""uglier'n a steakhouse baby"
I'm stealing that."
My Chinese assistant says, "I knew Mistah Meade rika that one. He no say nothing about my apostlophe. Well..he busy man."
"There's a cool FLW school house on the big island that you can rent for $800/night. https://www.vrbo.com/108255 - called the "only FLW home built in Hawaii." In fact, it was designed by FLW for a site in Pennsylvania in 1950s, but built in 1992 in HA under supervision of Taliesin architects, who are deemed the "best qualified to interpret Wright's plans in posthumous construction."
My architect friend says it is therefore not really a FLW house. Still pretty damn cool."
This was a big topic in Madison in the 1980s when the phrase "That ain't Wright" was used in opposition to the Monona Terrace project.
They really changed the design a lot, but it's got Wright in its heritage.
"uglier'n a steakhouse baby"
Still laughing here and will laugh again if I hear it again.
Funniest phrase I've heard since "Professor Suing Nyu."
"Thanks!"
You got your "thanks" in just as I was correcting my typo.
Sorry for the confusion.
Reminds me of the controversies over how much of a Ruben's painting was done by him and not his many assistants. The modern day artist Murakami has a factory of workers to help him produce his art, which sold out in the recent Chicago show he had.The devil, or the artist?, is in the details.
"Sorry for the confusion."
No confusion. I appreciate you telling me you thought it was funny.
Commenting is sometimes like putting a message in a bottle. You never know if anyone ever even reads it.
Great doc on this subject, I think I first heard about it here.
The Wrecking Crew.
"I want to talk about the practice of artists using assistants"
Apparently he used his assistants as models for the severed heads in his charming images of black women decapitating white women. Where does that fit in the MeToo spectrum?
Sure sure. Many of the background elements are sub-contracted out.
But obama personally selected this artist for all the cool whitey beheadings that the artist does personally.
Ann reads the New York Times for its restaurant coverage and gossip and relies on Page Six and Rush Limbaugh for the news. I thought she was a lawyer? Any views about legal news? Does it matter who painted Obama's portrait? No. Is it worth asking why Rush Limbaugh and Ann have some sick fascination in repeating their view that the picture shows Obama with cum on his face? Anything that demeans or coarsens Obama is an A-1 winner for Ann, Rush, and the tribe. Well done Ann, lovely dog-whistling this morning.
Pickering is going full Margaret Dumont on this blog.
Never go full Margaret Dumont.
When you commission/buy a painting, you expect that the guy taking the credit for the painting actually painted it. Their work is in the actual selection and placement of paint (of whatever medium it is).
The paintings are actually pretty horrible. The only notable thing about it that it’s Obama. So this makes it newsworthy: a horrible painting of the previous president.
I think the week started off slow with news. No one cares about the Olympics, and the school shooting happened days after the unveiling. The portraits just aren't that interesting other than childish jokes. Yeah, they look different, so what. That's what the Obama's wanted, and critiquing them simply for being different just serves their purpose. Better to just say "yeah, yeah, they unveiled their portraits, just like every other first couple, boring stuff really".
@stlcdr:When you commission/buy a painting, you expect that the guy taking the credit for the painting actually painted it.
I felt so ripped off when I found out Steve Jobs didn't make my iPhone. Which was nothing compared to learning that McDonald's belonged to some guy named Kroc and that the Colonel never made any of my chicken.
You can't discuss this subject without mentioning Jeff Koons:
"To achieve his vision, Koons employs 128 people at his studio: 64 in the painting department, 44 in the sculpture department, 10 in the digital department, and 10 in administration. That’s to say nothing of the specialists, fabricators, and institutions he consults, including most recently M.I.T.’s Center for Bits and Atoms, led by Neil Gershenfeld.
"A few examples of his auction sales prices, totaling $177 million over the past year: $28.2 million for the mirror-polished stainless-steel Popeye, 2009–11; $33.8 million for the stainless-steel Jim Beam-J.B. Turner Train, 1986; $58.4 million for Balloon Dog (Orange), 1994–2000, the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist."
Defeat may be an orphan but a crappy painting has a thousand fathers.
I felt so ripped off when I found out Steve Jobs didn't make my iPhone. Which was nothing compared to learning that McDonald's belonged to some guy named Kroc and that the Colonel never made any of my chicken.
I'm guessing you either don't drive a post-1947 Ford, or you're good with zombie labor...
A Presidential portrait is important enough for the key artist to draw it all, rather than farm it out to the in-betweeners. "Sakuga" that stuff. (To borrow terms from the animation industry's workflow).
A good portrait is supposed to give some insight into the subject. But in this picture that norm has been fundamentally transformed. Into what though? That is always the question with Obama. No one knows what the thing means or why Obama wanted it but it's showy, fits in with prevailing PC norms and no one is taking responsibility for any actual work done or errors made. Like the rollout of Obamacare - or even the whole of Obamacare. So perhaps it is a good portrait in that the medium is the message about the man.
Doesn't really matter who did it....it is a comic for a comic of a president.
Yeah. Pretty much.
Garbage in. Garbage out.
Dale Chihuly makes almost none of his own work after injury, yet all of it is named after him. If I make an idea or style and other people run with it, do I get to name everything they produce?
Serious question: what's the difference between having assistants paint in the leaves, and having the painter make one or two leaves, have a computer take an image of them, and then have teh computer direct a printer to "paint" in all the other leaves?
Would that second painting be a "Painting by Kehinde Wiley"? Or would it be a "Computer aided Painting by Kehinde Wiley"?
I'm guessing it would be the later.
Which makes the pointing of Obama an "Assistant aided Painting by Kehinde Wiley", no?
The fact that he outsourced it to China is just the cherry on the sundae. Because apparently "painting Obama" is just another one of those jobs Americans won't do".
John Pickering said...
the picture shows Obama with cum on his face
Why is Pickering spreading these vile rumors? Does anyone know what he is talking about?
Is JP the new Chuck? Haven't heard from him in a while.
"Composite" artistry.
Trying to picture all the assistants fleshing out the beheading masterpieces.
I mean, if your art sucks, a secondary strategy to achieve cred is to outsource it.
I'm not aware of the bit about cum on Obama's face.
But it's triggering reconsideration of young Kennedy's "Chapstiquiddic" speech.
John Pickering (September 22, 1737 – April 11, 1805) served as chief justice of the New Hampshire Superior Court of Judicature, and as judge for the United States District Court for the District of New Hampshire. He was the first federal official to be removed from office upon conviction by impeachment.
Sock-Chuck.
I would like to hear the conversation the assistants are having in having to paint such drek. That's where you get cutting edge snark.
Gabriel said...
"Steve Jobs didn't program or build iPhones either."
Nice straw man you're beating up there. Because last I checked, no one was claiming Steve Jobs programmed iPhones, or did assembly work, either.
however, we expect authors to write their books, not sub-contract loosely described scenes to apprentice writers. And "ghost writers" generally get credit, and it's a scandal when we find out that they didn't
It doesn't matter if he had assistants, elves, or imaginary friends paint the portraits. What matters is they are so shockingly godawful that Kehinde Wiley should be jailed for crimes against humanity.
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