| Abstract: |
In 1958, the French philosopher Etienne Gilson observed that "painters are
related to manual laborers by a deep-rooted affinity that nothing can
eliminate," because painting was the one art in which the person who conceives
the work is also necessarily the person who executes it. Conceptual innovators
promptly proved Gilson wrong, however, by eliminating the touch of the artist
from their paintings: in 1960 the French artist Yves Klein began using "living
brushes" - nude models covered with paint - to execute his paintings, and in
1963 Andy Warhol began having his assistant Gerard Malanga silkscreen his
canvases. Today many leading artists do not touch their own paintings, and
some never see them. This paper traces the innovations that allowed a complete
separation between the conception and execution of paintings. The foundation
of this separation was laid long before the 20th century, by conceptual Old
Masters including Raphael and Rubens, who employed teams of assistants to
produce their paintings, but artists began exploring its logical limits during
the conceptual revolution of the 1960s and beyond. Thus by the end of the
twentieth century Jeff Koons explained that he did not participate in the work
of painting his canvases because he believed it would interfere with his
growth as an artist, and Damien Hirst defended his practice of having his
paintings made by assistants on the grounds that their paintings were better
than his. Eliminating the touch of the artist from painting is yet another way
in which conceptual innovators transformed art in the twentieth century. |