Dear Readers,

Lately I’ve been getting wistful for the past. It’s not that I want to go back, never to return. It’s more that I yearn for more simple and innocent times; I’m not sure I prefer wisdom to naiveté.

It’s the direction art has been going that has made me nostalgic. What happened to the lone artist in the studio? That figure seems to have become outdated. With outsourcing and megabucks, that catch-all phrase, “money changes people,” is truly relevant in today’s art world.  

Take for example the Mike Kelley retrospective this summer at MOCA. If you start with Kelley’s college crude drawings and woodshop bird houses and end with his last major show, the “Kandors” series, one would have to be made out of Teflon to not notice the difference between the two.

I don’t mean aesthetically, I mean metaphysically. When Kelley became famous, relatively late in his career, the demand for his art vastly increased. He had more shows, more commissioned works, more complicated pieces. This required a staff of many assistants. His later work still possesses his humor and deep intelligence, but there’s something missing. The fabricated work and big film productions seemed empty. I found myself missing Kelley’s hand in the work, even his voice. I kept going back to the rooms that contained his earlier work, breezing past the “Kandors” stuff.

I suppose it could be that I’m just a sentimental old fool. I like to see a big glob of paint smeared on a canvas by the actual artist. There’s nothing else like it. When I saw the Jackson Pollock painting, Mural, at the Getty this past spring, I felt that I was in the presence of a work of art that could never be duplicated—digitally or otherwise—even by an army of grossly-underpaid Chinese workers (which, by the way, a lot of artists use). The painting almost brought tears to my eyes.

Jeff Koons’ giant balloon dogs will never do that to me. Paul McCarthy’s George W. Bush mechanical pig-fuck will never do that to me. Kara Walker’s sugar bitch will never come close. Sure, there’s the spectacle value and showmanship, but that doesn’t compare. To each his own, I suppose. I’m not saying those monumental pieces are meaningless—on the contrary. Those works are seminal in the art world, and reflect what is happening today.

When an artist reaches that point, for whom is he or she making art? This issue addresses the evolution of the artist’s practice and the demands made upon those who want to stay on top. This isn’t meant to expose the downward spiral of the art world, it’s more a recognition of the importance of the assistant to the artist, and the many roles of the assistant in the trajectory of an artist’s career.

Seth Hawkins, a regular Artillery contributor, is our Guest Editor this issue. He is also an artist who participates in the many tiers of art-making; he was Charles Long’s studio manager (who is featured and interviewed by Seth), has worked in a bronze foundry, fabricated public artworks, designed and curated exhibitions.

What I feel Seth and I learned most from putting together this issue is how small the art world can seem, but then how infinite it can feel. There are the famous, and the humble. The polarity of the art world runs far and wide. Artists can use a lot of assistants for the simple reason—they can afford to.

Back in grad school, my painter colleagues and I would joke around about how the first thing we would do when we became famous would be to get an assistant, with the sole duty of cleaning our brushes. We hated cleaning our brushes. Does Jeff Koons even own a paintbrush?