Giving credit

[StoneCut7@zzzzzzz]

Norman,
You raise an interesting question about credit and authenticity. I remember
the first time this issue really struck home for me, I picked up a Bernini book
in a bookstore and it hit me- no one could possibly have done so much large
scale and detailed work in even 10 lifetimes on their own or even with a few
assistants. Having grown up around the museum business my intellect was aware of
the use of apprentices, schools/workshops production, etc., but it was at
that moment that the implications really struck home. The following are a few of
my experiences and reflections on this subject:

-As a professional stoneworker I spent about eight years doing almost
everything myself including digging by hand thousands of cubic feet of earth,
breaking down huge blocks of recovered stone, loading and moving much of my material
alone, shaping/laying   thousands of tons of stones, etc., etc. I think I was
trying to prove a level of personal authenticity. While, in retrospect I'm
happy about my moxy and willfulness, I could do without the inflamed discs in my
lower vertebrae. I also think it may have been a waste of my other
capacities-a kind of active avoidance- a stuborn and vain attempt at creation as only my
own act. Perhaps after digging a few foundation trenches and learning
something of the essence of hand digging I would have been better served in handing
that off to a laborer and spending more time/energy on shaping the stones or
even conceptual work. This includes roughing out in sculptural and carving work.

-Even with all that individual effort, I often allowed clients or friends to
impact a project with input,I have made sculptures as joint projects-did that
make them less purely mine? No easy answer here either. I can say that I feel
as good and often better about the pieces where I allowed outside impact as
the ones I kept to myself.

-A few years ago I was in my stepmothers studio, she is a leading restorer of
old-master paintings and I was watching her work and asked her how much of
any painting was "original." I was a bit shocked to find that although it
varied, much of the paint on any old painting isn't that old. This isn't always the
case and varies a lot, but still, how authentic is a Rembrant if even 5% of it
dates back to the mid 1980s? Again a question I have no easy answer to.

-In a certain way sport is seemingly a very direct and obvious kind of
creation because the created action which is beautiful or truthful or impressive is
gone as soon as it is made. Recorded images notwithstanding, the creation
exists in time only as it is created by its creator. Yet even here, can the
creation be understood as solely the work of one man or woman? Without Joe Fraziers
famous left hook in round fifteen, a creation as beautiful in its' rawness and
truth as any sculpture I know, would we have Ali's rise from the canvass? Is
one possible without the other? Apparently not. As anyone who has ever laced
up a pair of 10oz gloves knows, one's own movements are by no means solely the
result of one's own conception and/or will. Even setting aside the obvious
factors of geometry and contact-you can be sucked into the other guys very
rhythms and timing. Yet there still is distinction in the origins of those actions.
Again no easy answers for me.

I have already, and could continue to go on about this for quite a while so I
will cut it off here, but I think notions of authenticity and creative
provenance are difficult ones-with difficult answers.