Artists assistants work with, and often under direct instruction from, artists in the production or preparation of art works.
[10] One of the most famous is Salaì who was assistant and pupil of Leonardo da Vinci.
The controversy primarily focuses on the assistants not being acknowledged for their work and questions of what constitutes art.
[13] The contemporary artist Jeff Koons uses assistants in a similar way, “I’m basically the idea person," he told an interviewer, "I’m not physically involved in the production.
I don’t have the necessary abilities, so I go to the top people.”[14] There have also been exhibitions about the relationship between artist and assistant such as that at the New York gallery Luxembourg & Dayan which hosted ‘In the Making: Artists, Assistants, and Influence’ – a show tracing the link between artists and their (eventually famous) assistants in 2016[15]