"Making Art, Making Artists"

This article, by Wade Saunders, is mostly a collection of interviews conducted with artists who have employed assistants, artists who have been assistants for other artists, and artists who have taken on both the role of employer and employee.  Through the interviews, the relationship between assistant and artist is discussed and shown to be often quite extensive and complex.  Many artists initially hire assistants to do more organizational or tedious preparatory tasks like preparing the workspace, stretching and gessoing a canvas, etc.  Often this employment would develop into more of a give and take relationship between the artist and assistant, with the assistant sometimes doing critical amounts of work on a piece and giving extensive feedback to the artist.  In many of these situations, both the assistant and the artist would benefit: the assistant learning how to be a full-time artist and getting support in their own careers from their employer, and the artist having a companion who could serve as a friend and someone who could give the artist the freedom to do more decision-making.  Not all assistants had close relationships with their artist employers, however, and artists often differed on whether they would give credit to their assistants in their exhibitions.  Despite these differences, all seemed to agree that dealers and the public are averse to the idea of artists having assistants as it seems to shatter the preconceived ideal of the lone, struggling artist.