An interesting point you make, especially with the dichotomy of the need for the market to have a “brilliant” individual as figurehead for a painting (and indeed an old painting found is not judged by aesthetics/talent/whatever but by if it’s done by the big name artist or not) and the need to create at such a pace for a demand that a team is required.

If the demand is needed for a legitimate talent (Rebrand etc) we seem to be fine with it.

But what about when we know that the artist has only conned their way into a certain position and brand (via abstract art etc) and now needs to paint realism for their market and so hires talented starving painters to do what they can’t do?

Gets a little more tricky, doesn’t it?

I wrote a short story about an artist who painted edge nodes with millions upon millions of points. It turned out they used a robotic arm to finish some of the paintings as they weren’t humanly possible otherwise. Where would that fit in?