Creative Collaborators: Authors or Assistants?

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In this post-digital age increasing numbers of artists collaborate to create non-traditional works of time-based or mixed media, for which a significant global market has developed and is advancing. For art market professionals trading in such works, for collectors and curators, authenticity is their paramount consideration; not in the sense of proving personal hand-eye coordination of a single master, rather of being sure who conceived and directed execution of work. Artists should, but do not always, provide definitive proof.

When two or more people work together to create a work, the author may be: the lead artist alone; the two or more joint creators; or contributors such as independent contractors, assistants, employees. Does this matter? Did it ever matter?

For most historical works, records have not survived and authors are unknown. We have to guess whether works were commissioned or autonomous, and whether artists were identified in their contemporary time. Such anonymity evidently concerned Grayson Perry in our time. His exhibition at the British Museum in 2012 paid homage to unknown artists throughout art history: his installation The Tomb of the Unknown …