[typon]

My friend is a very good painter, but not a famous painter. In the art world, its an open secret that most famous painters, especially ones that are old, don't really paint much. They hire "ghost-painters" to do the actual work for them, and they simply set the direction of the art pieces and collaborate with the hired-on-contract ghost-painters. My friend has painted for a bunch of these artists and when I ask her whether its unethical, she just shrugs her shoulders because she needs to pay for rent but also, importantly, she thinks that the painting really does belong to the artist setting the direction - that she's merely doing the grunt work.

Are the thousands of choices of which brush strokes to put where actually the seed of creativity? According to some artists - not really.

[homarp]

https://www.througheternity.com/en/blog/art/how-did-michelan...

"the old tale that Michelangelo painted the entire vault by himself is not quite true; he did have help from assistants, and not just to assist in menial tasks such as mixing the plaster, grinding the pigments, moving the scaffolding and aligning the cartoons.

Some less important aspects of the painting were delegated too – minor angels fluttering around the fringes of the main images for example, as well as oak leaves and other ornamental details.

We even know the names of four assistants that arrived from Michelangelo’s native Florence in 1508: Bastiano da Sangallo, Giuliano Bugiardini, Agnolo di Donnino and Jacopo del Tedesco. They were relatively poorly paid, however, and it seems unlikely that they were entrusted with any significant tasks in the project. "

[dragonwriter]

It's weird that in, let's call it "static visual art", so many people defining "artistry" so narrowly, but in, say, film, we recognize -- just in regard to the visual production, not even talking about script, acting, etc. -- that the director, cinematographer, and camera operators, and others, are all artists on some level, and no one would argue that automating functions of one of those roles would negate the artistry of the others, whereas in static visual art narrowing the human involvement to a directorial role is seen as making it non-artistic.

[dahart]

It doesn’t seem at all weird to me that paintings have completely different standards than films. Using a ghost painter does seem a little like cheating, if the painting is sold as being the creative and manual work of the named painter. It seems slightly dishonest to advertise it and talk about it as the creative manual work of one person, but create it using other people. I mean, I’m sure it really does happen and that some people don’t care, but still it doesn’t seem clearly and cleanly ethical unless they advertise the paintings as cooperative works and credit the painter.

In the art world, painting and sculpting are known as ‘fine art’ partly because they’re supposed to be singular creative works that aren’t reproducible and that came from an artist, or in other words they’re judged by the purity of the discipline (according to the Wikipedia page on Fine Art). Prints and photography are second-tier because they use machinery to duplicate images, and they go to lengths artificially limiting the number of copies and including certificates of authenticity just to try to sit above commercial art and ads, closer to fine art. Directing a ghost painter isn’t that far of a step away from selling a print as though it’s a unique original. Artists caught doing that would quickly lose any notoriety.

Films inherently take many people to create, and more importantly many people get the credit. The lay public knows that films are created by large teams & production companies. Paintings, on the other hand, are supposed to be a one-person show, the sole painter gets all the credit. Painting is taught as a solo creative endeavor, the public thinks of it as a solo process, and the narrative of the artistry includes technique because it’s a manual solo process.

[dllthomas]

I wonder whether a (legal? social?) requirement for a full "credits" on any painting involving more than one person would change things.

[dahart]

Yeah good question. I would think so. To me, the problem goes away if there are full credits, or even just very clear expectations. I think it’s fine to have people collaborate on a painting, or to have a director and a painter, as long as the audience (and importantly, buyers) understand exactly what it is. What’s problematic is to have an artist charging a lot of money on the basis of their and reputation, and let people think they’re doing all the painting, but fail to disclose they don’t actually do the brush work or make the detailed decisions.

This is somewhat common in other arts too, maybe more common than with painting. I know Stradivarius didn’t make his own violins, but had hoards of apprentices doing the work, almost like a company. Architecture is labeled a fine art, and gets a special exception there, but everyone knows the architect is the director of other people who labor.

[typon]

That's an even better example. Although I can see Ted Chiang arguing that the really good directors painstakingly redo shots, cut, edit etc. Maybe the essence of art is the grind? Not sure.