- 21 Jan 2023 22:55
#15262775
So yes the assistant is providing necessary labour. If the assistant didnt do clean the brushes, then Picasso would have to, taking away time for him to perform the labour that's much more valuable of his time and skills (painting). Its more economically productive for him to have the assistant.
And I agree with you that the question then is: what is the actual value that the assistant is providing? Is his value being properly rewarded by his wage? I'm not really sure, because I don't know how to properly determine value.
One could argue accurately that Picasso would be making a lot less money if he had to clean his own brushes, which is true, but the actual task of cleaning brushes requires very little skill, so much that almost anyone could be his assistant, which makes the assistant's value someone low if their labour can be easily replaced. Compared to Picasso himself, whose skills are extremely rare and in-demand and thus his labour is extremely valuable.
@Fasces also brings up a valid point, which i'll try to address later.
ckaihatsu wrote:(Again.)
In the context of the artist's studio, the cleaning of the paintbrushes is a *must*, a social necessity that's akin to doing-the-dishes for a *chef*.
That *is* labor, since the artist wouldn't want to interrupt *their* personally favored activity, to tend to the mentally-numbing but logistically-necessary in-house chore.
*Without* that labor, as anywhere else, the (studio) workplace would cease production and would grind to a halt, due to a lack of productive implements, clean paintbrushes.
How much value, in wages, does the brush-cleaning assistant *get* from the revenue that they helped to enable? What proportion *should* they get, of the net income?
So yes the assistant is providing necessary labour. If the assistant didnt do clean the brushes, then Picasso would have to, taking away time for him to perform the labour that's much more valuable of his time and skills (painting). Its more economically productive for him to have the assistant.
And I agree with you that the question then is: what is the actual value that the assistant is providing? Is his value being properly rewarded by his wage? I'm not really sure, because I don't know how to properly determine value.
One could argue accurately that Picasso would be making a lot less money if he had to clean his own brushes, which is true, but the actual task of cleaning brushes requires very little skill, so much that almost anyone could be his assistant, which makes the assistant's value someone low if their labour can be easily replaced. Compared to Picasso himself, whose skills are extremely rare and in-demand and thus his labour is extremely valuable.
@Fasces also brings up a valid point, which i'll try to address later.
...
All of a sudden these pro-Palestinian campus protestors gladly support illegally occupying land that doesn't belong to them, and enforcing checkpoints, blockades, and ethnic apartheid. Some of them even openly support genocide.
All of a sudden these pro-Palestinian campus protestors gladly support illegally occupying land that doesn't belong to them, and enforcing checkpoints, blockades, and ethnic apartheid. Some of them even openly support genocide.