There's more to say on the concept of Authenticity (or "The Original") in art, and on the practices and social mores of art versus craft, than a short blog post will allow. But Tove Hermanson at Thread for Thought has a wonderful post up about artists who eschew "the original" by hiring assistants or outsourcing the labor, such as Sol LeWit and Andy Warhol, and compares them to the common practices of outsourcing labor in fashion design, architecture, street art and community activist art. Of course the catalyst for the post was Damien Hirst's stupid spot paintings, but who really cares about those?
