It is striking how differently the art technicians in this article think. They see the idea as having all the intrinsic value. More cynically I wonder if it is really the marketing value of a big name rather than the quality of ideas that count. A great idea by an art student is far less valuable than a great idea from a famous painter or sculptor.

Good examples of ideas and execution is plentyfull in both software and art, just because you get both of them right doesn't mean you will succeed.

Historically, this is extremely wrong. Renaissance artists were the technicians of course. That’s what they were known for.

This is the rot of an industry built on extracting funds from overly wealthy patrons with no limit to the amount of dishonesty.

That's only partially true.

While Renaissance masters usually had the skill to execute a fully finished work, and probably did so during their own apprenticeship, by the time they became masters they often had workshops of dozens or even hundreds of assistants who did almost all of the work for them. After the work was almost complete, the master might come in and put on some finishing touches.

There's lots of art out there these days that's misattributed to the master when it was actually done by one of his assistants in the workshop, whose training was usually centered around creating art that looked just like the master's.

If you think Duchamp was pulling a fast one you'll probably think Emin to be some sort of queen of hustlers.

Like many businesses, the art business is primarily driven by marketing. The act of painting is largely orthogonal to the act of persuading an oligarch that your painting is valuable.

Which is more an indictment of the Capitalist system than anything else.

An architect comes up with the overall concept and, if they're famous, gets their name on the building. But they still have a roomful of structural engineers figuring out how to stop it falling down.

Or a musician. Creating an album takes a team of session musicians, producers, engineers etc. But it's the artist's name that goes on the front.

I think what people don't see when they compare art to another industry like software, engineering or architecture in their examples is just how much work will go into a specific piece of art and just how corrupt the current art establishment is.

Technical skill is hidden away to the point where people don't even really know the involvement of artists when it comes to stuff like art technicians. In fact I had a tough time convincing people I know that cgi isn't "all done by computers" and that actually the level of raw artistic skill in videogames is unbelievably high.

I think it's right to be upset about credit being apportioned fairly. If a person is able to pretend they created a work of art whilst someone else profits off of it then that behavior will only be encouraged. Fundamentally though the decision does rest with the individual artists in question who offer their work up to people who give them no recognition. Ultimately if they're ok with it then perhaps there isn't a problem, but if not, then they should find a way in which to work where they are fairly rewarded for their efforts. Expecting the system to change or expecting people to stop taking advantage of others is unlikely to change anything.

A good analogy would be if Hollywood films didn't list credits and pretended that only the director worked on the film and did everything by themselves.

It would be insulting for people to believe that a director did 100% of the work on one of their films and ignored the entire crew. Not sure why this doesn't apply to the art world where teams are way more common than people believe.

If so and so has the idea and so and so executes it, the there is a director and an artist working under the director. It seems extremely clear that to use assistants for more than grunt work and calling the finished product your own solo piece is quite dishonest. If we're all so obsessed with the Romantic ideal of the lone genius ala van Gogh, that's both ahistorical and silly of us.

Many cooks work for a chef, and some grow on to become chefs.