Meet "The Man Behind the Legend" in this Guardian article by Sean O'Hagan. The guy who manages Damien Hirst used to manage circus acts... it is all becoming clearer... "Step right up, folks!"

Forgive my redundancy if you read my comment at Ed Winkleman's yesterday, but I have been pondering his question, as well as the Thinkers vs. Makers question for last few hours... when artists do not make their own work, not only do you have a problem with authentication*,
but if we are entering a new age of art where the kids who were rich enough to attend the ivy-league art schools simply come up with ideas, and the kids who went to the low-tuition, skill-teaching schools execute the elite's paintings for them in true blue-collar fashion, these "artists of ideas" could theoretically be "creating" work for decades after their own deaths by minions continuing to follow their instructions and diagrams. What do you think? Would the value of the work then go up (the artist is dead) or down (he [there are no "shes" doing this in the art world so far, but that is for another post] is no longer overseeing)?

And... if Da Vinci designed the first flying machine, but the Wright Brothers really got it to work, who gets the credit?

* Painting by Charles Thompson. Saw it at one of the Basel fairs a while back, and laughed out loud. I do love Tracy Emin's work, and I think she makes most of it herself, for the record.