The Art of Usefulness: Inside the Fraught World of Studio Assistants

Graduating from art school can be a slap in the face for young artists. Many depart without a real understanding of how to become a working artist, and even those with a plan leave behind a world in which they had free studio space and use of expensive equipment, time to develop their art, fellow artists with whom to share ideas and professional instructors who gave valuable feedback. They enter a world of high rent, small apartments and low-paying jobs that may have little relationship to the skills they developed in school. The professional artists they encounter may have little interest in or time to spare for mentoring, and their fellow graduates may be similarly adrift: unsure of how to meet the right people, land jobs in the arts or find the time or space to keep creating.

All that education and training, and what do they have to show for it? That depends. Claudia Bitran earned an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013 and, shortly afterward, was waitressing at a restaurant in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. (Something she did for a number of years.) But within a year of receiving her master’s degree, she also had a separate gig: a part-time job five mornings a week working as an assistant to Jorge Tacla, a Chilean-born painter who lives and works in New York City. In his studio, she handled administrative tasks—answering the phone, hiring photographers, cleaning up, designing his catalogues, sorting his archives, writing emails on his behalf in both English and Spanish, talking to museum curators and his gallery—and priming the occasional canvas.

Bitran also spent time making arrangements with Candace Moeller, the director of New York’s Cristin Tierney Gallery, which has represented Tacla for fifteen years. After many practical conversations, the talks had become cordial enough for Moeller to ask Bitran, “What do you do?” Bitran suddenly had the rare opportunity to discuss her own painting, which she had been doing in her free time, and the results were studio visits by Moeller and, later, by Cristin Tierney. “Cristin saw my work, and she must have liked it,” Bitran told Observer. “Cristin said, ‘Okay, we’ll give you a show.’” The resultant solo exhibition took place in 2022, and Bitran has been represented by the gallery ever since.

Many newly minted artists look for jobs as artists’ assistants in the hopes of both continuing their education and getting noticed. They hear about openings from galleries whose artists make it known they need help around the studio or from other artists, and they see these gigs as a way to meet collectors, critics, dealers, curators and successful artists, praying that someone someday will ask “What do you do?” It doesn’t happen often, but the fact that it worked out that way for Bitran means it does happen.

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Dana Van Horn, who worked for eight years as a studio assistant for painter Jack Beal, saw different but equally valuable benefits from his assistantship. “The art world is based on connections,” he told Observer. “Knowing and being associated with Beal gave me credibility with galleries and collectors,” and that led to exhibitions, commissions and sales. Van Horn was never paid by Beal, but he did get room and board at the artist’s home in Oneonta, New York, and he was allowed to stay in the artist’s loft in downtown Manhattan. One floor below that loft was the home and studio of painter Chuck Close, whom he came to know and for whom he did various paying jobs—“there was some construction work. I sanded his floors, I babysat his kid.”

For others, the experience of working as an artist’s assistant is not as rewarding. Indeed, some young hopefuls have had notably bad experiences working as studio assistants. In 2023, more than a dozen former assistants to sculptor Tom Sachs alleged workplace abuses, while Damien Hirst is said more often than not to have his assistants produce his artworks in toto while he gets full credit. The luckiest of the unlucky, perhaps, are those who perform menial tasks for meager pay. The environmental artist Christo, for instance, sometimes used hundreds of assistants on his major projects. His wife and collaborator, Jeanne-Claude, told Observer, that they “are not hired as artists but as workers. We generally need people to carry heavy things.”

Expectations vs. reality

Given that some assistants and artists have notably good, long-lasting relationships—Tom Ferrara and Willem de Kooning come to mind, as do David Dawson and Lucien Freud—it’s easy to forget that studio assistant is just a job. Making assistants feel comfortable and appreciated is not the goal. Neither is praising what assistants create on their own time. “Once upon a time, I had an apprentice,” sculptor William King told Observer, “but there were days when there was nothing for him to do. I asked him to clean up the shop, and he didn’t want to do that. He was a budding artist, not a janitor.” Muralist Richard Haas noted once that “I have better conversations with people who are older,” and Alex Katz said, “I don’t talk much with my assistants.” Jonathan Williams, a studio assistant to Frank Stella, told Observer that his experience with the artist did not include much conversation other than shop talk. “Everything that mattered with Stella was the work at hand, and we really didn’t talk about anything else. I don’t remember him ever asking me much about myself.”

Being a studio assistant is “not a stepping stone for most artists,” Mark Tribe, a painter and current chair of the MFA Fine Arts program at New York’s School of Visual Arts, bluntly told Observer. He noted that some young artists become disappointed, but most of the assistants he has known as students found the experience helpful. “They tell me that they learned so much, from how to make things to how to run a studio as a small business to how to manage a group of people.” He added that any art-related job will help a young artist build community with other artists and expose them to what is going on in the industry they are trying to enter.

Artists, like other employers, come in all flavors: some are generous and encouraging, while others are less so or not at all. “They get paid by the hour, and they work in the mornings, so they have time to devote to their own work,” Jorge Tacla said. “They remain with me until it is time for them to move on to other endeavors,” which is how his employment relationship with Claudia Bitran ended. She added that she “was getting jobs teaching and invited for some residencies, and Jorge said to me, ‘You really should leave. You have other, better things to do.’” His only request was that she look for and train her replacement, which she did. “I knew someone, one of my best friends, who was bilingual and needed a job.”

Losing a studio assistant can be quite disruptive for an artist, who then needs to train new people who will hopefully stay a long while and accommodate themselves to the artist’s needs. Mark Tribe, who has employed assistants for twenty years, said that his assistants stay as long as he can keep them. “They learn to understand me and how my mind works, and it takes a while for the next assistant to learn all that.” Painter Susan Schwalb has employed studio assistants, usually just one at a time, since 2000. “My current assistant has been with me for around eight years, and before that, I had someone else for ten.” Her assistants handle a variety of tasks, including “computer work, packing artwork for exhibitions and organizing my studio. My current assistant is also a photographer, so she does all the photos I need and handles my website updates.” Of her current assistant, Schwalb said, “I hope she never leaves,” but they all do eventually. Being an assistant is not what they went to school to do.

Studio assistants aren’t apprentices

The artists’ assistants of today are very different from the journeymen apprentices of the Middle Ages or the Renaissance. Then, the relationship between master artist and apprentice was that of teacher and pupil, and young hopefuls were contracted out to artists for specified periods of time, doing certain duties in exchange for instruction. Often, these duties included helping the artist complete pieces, though there was plenty of gruntwork (e.g., grinding pigments, preparing surfaces). One began as an apprentice, became a journeyman and then a master. The studio of Peter Paul Rubens, for example, hosted such promising apprentices as Anthony Van Dyck and Franz Snyders, who worked directly on the master’s paintings.

By the 17th Century, the rise of the officially recognized art academies in Europe spelled the end of the guild system, although apprentice-type conditions lingered on, if in a different form. Academies were the creation of artists who wanted their profession elevated into something higher than artisan; they founded some of the first structured art schools. With the advent of Romanticism, there was a greater emphasis on individual style and on working alone. Being able to do the same kind of art as one of the great masters was no longer highly regarded, as distinctiveness became the predominant artistic virtue.

Still, the master-disciple relationship continued in various forms and still exists today. Eugene Delacroix, often considered the father of Romanticism in painting, worked with several apprentices (most of whom are not household names), as did classicist Jacques Louis David, who taught such notable talents as Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Théodore Géricault. Jackson Pollock worked first with Thomas Hart Benton in something like an apprenticeship and later with Mexican revolutionary muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. Pollock learned about painting from both artists and made contacts that helped him later on—exactly what most young assistants still hope for.

The prolific artist with scores of assistants and “fabricators” is more and more the norm. Sculptor Henry Moore made small models and handed them to others to turn into large pieces. Andy Warhol’s Factory had an assembly line of workers churning out works pieces his signature. (George Condo was a diamond duster there.) While some would argue that art’s value lies in the process of making it and not solely the conception in the artist’s mind, the complicated processes of creating works at scale to live up to the modern definition of ‘successful artist’ make employing studio assistants a necessity.

Working for an uber-successful artist can have downsides. Developing a unique artistic voice or simply maintaining the energy to create while working for a Koons or a Hirst may feel impossible. Artists looking to establish their own careers need to stay alert to signs that their time with a master artist has lasted too long and is becoming an obstacle instead of an advantage. Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian-born sculptor who left Rodin’s studio, notably said, “Nothing will ever grow in the shade of a big tree.”

Joel Meisner, on the other hand, chose a different path. Not long after he received his MFA from Columbia University in 1960, Meisner got married, and he needed to support a wife and then a child. By chance, he happened to read in a magazine that the assistant to Jacques Lipchitz—the Lithuanian-born School of Paris sculptor who had been living in New York City since 1941—had been drafted into the army, and Meisner called the 70-year-old sculptor to ask for the job.

Lipchitz was not overly encouraging when it came to Meisner’s own artwork; after reviewing the younger man’s portfolio, he said, “You should go to museums more and try not to invent things that have already been invented.” But he did give him the job. Meisner helped Lipchitz make enlargements from the artist’s maquettes, restored models and saw to it that the foundries Lipchitz used made the sculpture editions properly. In time, Meisner became an expert not in sculpture but in foundry work. “The problem that Lipchitz had with foundries was that the nuances of his work were being lost,” he said. “He was always retouching the waxes. Over time, I developed a process that helped duplicate the nuances, the fingerprints, as it were, of the sculpture.”

Meisner called working for Lipchitz “the best thing that ever happened to me. I found that foundry work was something I really could do and do well. I rededicated my life to founding other people’s art. I made a judgment on my own work that maybe I’m really not that good, but I could use my understanding of art to help other artists. I also realized that I could, frankly, make a better living at foundry work than trying to sell art.”

Shortly after starting work with Lipchitz, Meisner convinced a commercial foundry on Long Island to let him establish an artist’s section. “What really opened the door for me was telling the foundry owner that I was Lipchitz’s assistant.” In 1973, Meisner bought the foundry, renaming it the Joel Meisner Foundry (now Meisner Casting), and thanks in part to Lipchitz, works with scores of artists all over the country.