Abstract
Visual artists and scientists frequently employ the labour of assistants and technicians, however these workers generally receive little recognition for their contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work. They are effectively “invisible”. This invisible status however, comes at the cost of a better understanding of artistic and scientific work, and improvements in artistic and scientific practice. To enhance understanding of artistic and scientific work, and these practices more broadly, it is vital to discern the nature of an assistant or technician’s contribution to the production of a work, which is difficult as it is uncommon to discuss these workers. To address this, I investigate how different kinds of parallel working arrangements in collective artistic and scientific practices affect the creative potential of individuals involved. Different working arrangements permit different degrees of autonomy for individuals involved in these practices. Significantly, a lack of autonomy precludes the opportunity to act spontaneously and so exercise, what I term, “creative agency”. Evaluating the contribution of an assistant or technician based on the degree of autonomy that they are granted in the production of a work is an approach that I show can be used to precisely determine the nature of their contribution to the production of a work and accordingly, what kind of recognition an agent should receive for this. Importantly, this approach has the advantage of explaining the artistic and epistemic significance of different kinds of contribution to the production of artistic and scientific work.
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Notes
I will use assistants and technicians as umbrella terms to include, for instance, craft workers and operators.
Naturally, there are some exceptions, as I will later explore, but these tend to be rare.
Henceforth, I will primarily use the terms “art”, “artistic”, and “artists” to refer to visual arts and artists, as this will largely be my focus in what follows. I will specify when this is not the case.
This being said, it is worth noting that in philosophy of science, social epistemology is becoming increasingly prevalent, while in recent philosophy of art there has been an increasing amount of discussion over who counts as an “author” and who is a mere “contributor” in particular cases of collectively produced works including Michael Crichton’s Micro and Jeff Koons’ Cracked Egg (Hick 2014; Bacharach and Tollefsen 2015; Killin 2015). These debates demonstrate how thorny the issue of determining the nature of different contributions can be in real-life cases. They also demonstrate that more needs to be said about figures who fall somewhere between the role of “author” and “mere contributor”.
See for example, Leeson (2017, 117).
Notably, to gain information about the contribution of assistants and technicians in their respective fields of study, Wylie (2015) conducted first-hand interviews, Doing (2004) himself worked in a lab, and Bantinaki (2016) primarily refers to one book (Petry 2011) where artists have been interviewed about their work with assistants.
The sound engineer and producer roles are not always easily distinguishable but generally, sound engineersare ‘responsible for much of what we hear on a recording - from the quality of the sound colours to the refinement of the smallest details in the mix’ (Zak 2001, 165) while ‘producers must nurture the overall process and preserve a larger creative vision as the process moves through myriad mundane details’ (Zak 2001, 172–3).
There are of course, many cases where artists and scientists can and do undertake technical tasks themselves. However, some artists and scientists may be too busy to personally carry out such tasks or the task may require an enormous amount of time and labour so that it is not feasible to carry out alone.
Yet as Becker has highlighted, ‘we praise Picasso, not M. Tutin who printed his “impossible” ideas’ (2008, 364).
Koons’ control of the work’s form is aptly demonstrated by the fact that he deemed ‘the original fabrication, an eight-foot egg too large’ and so had a smaller, seven-foot egg made instead (Hick 2014, 150).
More specifically, as Kronfelder has described it: ‘Spontaneity refers to a certain independence from the intentional control and the previously acquired knowledge of the person whose creativity is at issue. It includes a partial opposition between routine and creativity.’ (2009, 579)
Moreover, this necessary aspect of spontaneity is something that artists can attest to (Umney and Kretos 2014, 584). Leeson for instance has proposed that: ‘All artists are familiar with the crucial role of “not knowing” in the creative act’ (Leeson 2017, 103). For another philosophical account that is complementary to this idea, see Hausman (2009).
Similarly, Livingston has argued that the intentions involved in art-making are a kind of propositional attitude, where the content of the intention is a schematic plan to do something and the attitude taken towards this is ‘an executive one’ (2005, 7–8).
If an agent realizes their executive intention predominantly through their own actions, it does not follow however, that they have thereby been less creative. For instance, an artist may work without assistance to apply pigment to canvas, but act spontaneously and improvise new ways of using a palette knife to realize their executive intention as the piece unfolds.
To be clear, on this account, working autonomously does not necessarily entail that a creative agent works entirely free of constraints. For example, after completing the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo was, over twenty years later, commanded by Pope Paul III to paint, on the wall behind the altar, a fresco of the Last Judgement. While Michelangelo’s autonomy appears to have been curtailed with regard to the subject of the commission, his creative agency is nevertheless evident and can be seen, for example, in his decision to transform the depiction of this subject from a traditional hierarchical composition to a dynamic swirl of figures around the central figure of Christ (Fedi 2018).
The term “fabricator” is often explicitly used to describe individuals such as Ted Lawson, who physically made Jeff Koons’ Cracked Egg (Hick 2014, 150). Nevertheless, as I outlined earlier, there are reasons in this case to doubt that the technicians who made these “feats of technical virtuosity” were merely following instructions.
Similarly, Kronfelder has maintained that the work of craftspeople who make the same products over and over again is excluded from being creative, since these products can be made from prior knowledge and by following routine methods (2009, 589).
Yet, as Wylie has highlighted, these workers remain largely invisible to the scientific community (2015, 33).
That is, preparators rely on ‘physical knowledge of anatomy rather than comparative anatomy or anatomy specific to species classification because preparation focuses on individual specimens’ morphology and not on patterns between groups’ (Wylie 2009, 7).
Unusually, the production of this work took place in the gallery for the public to watch, which enabled the local community to become involved and learn about the collective ethos behind Gormley’s work. However, in wider discussion, while much has been made of the contribution of the volunteers, little has been said about Gormley’s technical assistants, such as the welders who, unlike the volunteers, remain nameless, yet who also appear to have been key to the outcome of the work.
For a counterpoint to this view, see Wylie on the potential benefits of invisibility (2015, 52).
Having a clear idea about the most favourable collective working arrangement may, for example, have an important bearing on whether a project receives funding (Sawyer 2012, 232).
In the recording arts, one can also find evidence that increased autonomy can potentially lead to greater creativity. For instance, Joe Meek, an engineer/producer of the 1950s and 1960s, is ‘credited with some of the earliest radical sound treatments in rock’, which is largely attributed to the fact that he ‘used recording techniques that would have been forbidden in the studios of any of the major record labels’ (Zak 2001, 182).
Guild regulations meant that workshop leaders could sign their own names on products of the workshop that were produced in their style (Bruyn 1991, 70).
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Anton Killin and Adrian Currie, and two anonymous referees for this journal for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to express my thanks to audience members who gave invaluable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper at the Creativity in Art, Mind, and Science Conference (Cambridge 2018), and Creativity Across the Arts and Sciences Pre-Conference Workshop (Bristol 2019).
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Anscomb, C. Visibility, creativity, and collective working practices in art and science. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 11, 5 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-020-00310-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-020-00310-z