In 1919, a radical, experimental art school called the Bauhaus was established in Weimar, Germany. Growing out of the German arts and crafts movement (Kunstgewerbe), the Bauhaus’s mission was not just to unite art with craft, but to adapt both to the new age of industrial mass production. To train a new kind of artist-craftsman, who would be comfortable using his or her creativity and expertise to design previously unimaginable new products for the spirit and technology of the age.¹

The Bauhaus looked towards the future, and was attempting to grasp it – and it succeeded.

It’s difficult to overstate the school’s influence on the modern world. Indeed, the Bauhaus has been described as “the single most influential modern art school of the 20^th century.”²

It was in the workshops of the Bauhaus that furniture was first made from metal tubing, rather than wood. It was at the Bauhaus that kitchens were first designed with floating cupboards and continuous running worktops beneath, instead of free-standing tables and dressers.³

It was at the Bauhaus, in 1923, that the artist and tutor Lázló Moholy-Nagy produced a series of three abstract, geometric paintings via the radically unorthodox method of calling a sign-making factory and describing over the telephone how he wanted the finished pieces to look.⁴

No designs were exchanged; Moholy-Nagy commissioned the paintings verbally, and then, once they’d been produced by the factory, exhibited them as his own work.⁵

It was at the Bauhaus, therefore, that commercial means of production were first used to produce original works of art, forty years before Andy Warhol first conceived his silk-screen paintings.⁶

But it was Warhol who first embraced mass production, using industrial printing techniques and teams of assistants, from 1962 onwards, to produce “thousands of identical originals.”⁷

Again, as with the Bauhaus, it’s difficult to overstate Warhol’s influence on the contemporary art world. Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami – three of the world’s wealthiest living artists – all employ teams of fabricators and studio assistants to physically manufacture their artwork. At the height of his fame, Hirst alone is said to have employed over 100 such assistants.⁸

Many commercially successful artists today outsource the physical manufacturing of their work to specialised “art fabrication” studios, who can craft artworks using a wide range of materials and production techniques.⁹

The idea that the role of the artist is to conceive the work, not to physically make it, has been widely accepted in the art world for decades.¹⁰ Not that you’d know it from studying at any of the UK’s art schools, where students are still expected to make their own work with their own two hands.

This is so bizarrely anachronistic, it’s as if engineering students were spending three years at university studying the horse and cart.

Artists in the 20^th century strove to adapt the arts to the era of mass production in which they lived. Perhaps it would help change the abysmal life chances of visual artists in the UK if our educational establishments caught up.

Now, in the middle of the 2020s, we find ourselves once again on the threshold of massive technological change.

In recent years, there has been an explosion of AI technology. Not since the invention of photography have artists – along with writers, musicians and other creative workers – felt themselves so directly threatened.

Understandably, some have responded with lawsuits and boycotts. But the genie won’t go back in the bottle, and the future won’t belong to those who smash up looms.

And it’s not just AI. 3D printing/scanning, although having existed for some time now, still has the potential to revolutionise manufacturing, with risks and opportunities for future artists – especially when combined with nanotechnology and the use of smart materials.

Virtual and augmented reality, wearable electronics and biometric technology will continue to blur the boundaries between the online and offline worlds.

All of these technologies will also impact the economic climate in which artists operate. The creative industries already have significantly higher numbers of remote workers than other sectors. For instance, 47% of creative workers are freelancers, compared to 15% of workers across the UK workforce as a whole.¹¹ This increases to 70% for visual artists specifically.¹²

It follows, therefore, that technological changes underpinning the gig economy will have significant consequences for creative workers across the board.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand, continuing to teach, make and exhibit art as if nothing has changed.

Nor can we simply adapt our existing art-forms to new media and new platforms.

What’s required is a reimagining of what art is and what art is for, in the context of the social and economic changes that will occur as a consequence of new technologies.

We need to be as radical in reimagining the role of the artist in the 21^st century as the founders of the Bauhaus were in the 20^th, when they dreamed of creating a new kind of “artist-craftsman” whose creations would be adapted to the technology of mass production.

Find out more by clicking on the image below:

References

1. Whitford, Frank (2020). Bauhaus. Thames & Hudson Ltd. ↩︎
2. The Art Story. Bauhaus. https://www.theartstory.org/movement/bauhaus/ (retrieved 26^th September 2024). ↩︎
3. Whitford (2020) ↩︎
4. Ibid. ↩︎
5. MoMA. László Moholy-Nagy, EM 2 (Telephone Picture), 1923. https://www.moma.org/collection/works/78747 (retrieved 26^th September 2024). ↩︎
6. The Andy Warhol Museum. 1960s. https://www.warhol.org/andy-warhols-life/1960s/ (retrieved 26^th September 2024). ↩︎
7. Honnef, Klaus (2000). Warhol. Taschen. ↩︎
8. de Souza, Isabella (2024). Damien Hirst’s Assistants vs. Renaissance Workshops. My Art Broker. https://www.myartbroker.com/artist-damien-hirst/articles/damien-hirst-assistants-vs-renaissance-workshops (retrieved 26^th September 2024). ↩︎
9. Wilder, Charly (2024). Who Makes Your Art? Art Basel. https://www.artbasel.com/stories/who-makes-your-art-fabricators-labor-art-making-berlin-german-capital-behind-the-scenes (retrieved 1^st October 2024). ↩︎
10. Child, Danielle (2015). Dematerialisation, Contracted Labour and Art Fabrication: The Deskilling of the Artist in the Age of Late Capitalism. Sculpture Journal, Volume 24, Number 3. https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/618068/1/Sculpture%20Journal%20Article%20Revisions%20DC.pdf (retrieved 26^th September 2024). ↩︎
11. Easton, Eliza & Cauldwell-French, Evy (2017). Creative Freelancers. Creative Industries Federation. https://www.creativeindustriesfederation.com/sites/default/files/2017-07/Creative%20Freelancers%201.0.pdf (retrieved 17^th September 2024). ↩︎
12. DACS (2024). Welcome to a New Era: Supporting the UK’s Visual Artists. https://www.dacs.org.uk/news-events/new-labour-government-support-for-visual-artists (retrieved 17^th September 2024). ↩︎