From Renaissance Workshops to Warhol's Factory and Beyond

For the longest time, art was made in workshops. During the Renaissance these workshops were at the centre of the art world. They produced paintings, frescos, sculptures, and other forms of art. 

These workshops had a certain hierarchy. At the head of the workshop would be the master. It was under his name that works were produced, even if he never touched the work himself. Under him were his assistants, and under them were apprentices.

Workshops functioned not only as little factories of art, but also as schools of art. Young boys often as young as seven or eight years of age were placed in workshops to learn a trade. 

As an apprentice one would be given small tasks which would grow to larger more important ones. Making brushes, mixing paints, cleaning the workshop. As one moved to being an assistant, one would start with minor parts of a work of art. As one’s talent developed, one was given larger parts of a piece to work on. If one showed particular talent in one area (such as painting hands), one would work on those areas of a commissioned work. 

If an assistant was clearly gifted enough, he could once old enough ask to become a master himself. This would usually require him to complete a “master piece” of his own, on his own time. His first responsibility was to his master and the workshop. 

If the assistant’s master piece was considered of good enough quality, the assistant would be recognized buy both his master and the guild that governed his particular art form. The young assistant could then open his own workshop, and the process would renew itself.

This process for making art lasted for centuries from antiquity on. It is in the Renaissance however that we moved from the idea of “artisans” to “artists”. As time would go on artists would become far more “individual”, and art became a much less collaborative effort. 

Lately however certain contemporary artists, such as Andy Warhol (pictured in his “Factory” above), in the 1960s, and Jeff Koons today, had or have “workshops”. It would be easy on the surface to compare the two, however though they have similarities, they are in fact very different enterprises.

Perhaps the name of Warhol’s workshop “The Factory”, is a rather appropriate term. Though it could be said that Renaissance workshops were art factories as such, they were also art schools. With apprentices and assistants spending much of their young lives working and learning from the master and other artisans in the workshop.

Warhol’s “Factory” was a work place, a social gathering spot for other artists. It was more about image and producing works to be sold to a larger public, than the workshops of the Renaissance.

Already trained artists would work, for pay in the workshop silkscreening and painting works that would be signed by Warhol. In Koons modern day workshop, many of the people who either work for pay or work as interns (for free) are graduates of art schools. They are just there to produce art, much like assembly line workers. Koons is sometimes criticized in today’s “artist centered” art world, for not even touching the works he signs his name to, something that would have been considered normal in the quatrocento in Florence.