[pastage]

My take on it is that it is the artist that brings the idea and make it come to light, they do this by letting other people do the work but they are still the visionaries and in charge of the execution of art.

Good examples of ideas and execution is plentyfull in both software and art, just because you get both of them right doesn't mean you will succeed.

[extralego]

This just doesn’t represent reality of contemporary art. It’s a bullshitters game. These artists almost never even have a vision that is important to them. They behave as such, but the project motivations are consistently reflexive. They are just a response to what they thing will help their recognition. This is just not about expression.

Historically, this is extremely wrong. Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That’s what they were known for.

This is the rot of an industry built on extracting funds from overly wealthy patrons with no limit to the amount of dishonesty.

[pmoriarty]

"Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That’s what they were known for."

That's only partially true.

While Renaissance masters usually had the skill to execute a fully finished work, and probably did so during their own apprenticeship, by the time they became masters they often had workshops of dozens or even hundreds of assistants who did almost all of the work for them. After the work was almost complete, the master might come in and put on some finishing touches.

There's lots of art out there these days that's misattributed to the master when it was actually done by one of his assistants in the workshop, whose training was usually centered around creating art that looked just like the master's.