In 2012, the British artist Damien Hirst complemented his first major retrospective at Tate Modern with a live internet feed to his London studio. Visitors to his personal website were offered a view into a bare working space, containing nothing but a round piece of wood or canvas, painted black, balanced on a set of legs; a couple of chairs; and several trolleys containing materials. On the wall directly opposite the main webcam hung a large painting of one of Hirst's colorful trademark skulls. The artist himself was nowhere to be seen; instead, two assistants, working systematically but at a rather relaxed pace, covered the round canvas with small bits of shaped metal and paint in a regular, somewhat Orientalizing pattern. A second webcam, hung from the ceiling, allowed the viewer to track their progress. But what was it we actually saw? Not the artist at work, but his idea, his concept, carried out by others. Hirst himself was entirely absent, represented only by his monumental finished painting, which, with its brilliant bursts of neon yellows, blues and pinks, stood out boldly against the white wall. The public's desire for knowledge of the studio and its goings on is apparently undiminished, and hiding making — even as it seems to be on display — while showing creation seems to be as actual a strategy today as it ever was in the past.

Central to the following essays is the question of the nature, function and meaning of the studio for artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In how far does it differ from the studio of the nineteenth century? What new roles and connotations has it acquired over the course of the past hundred years? And, above all, what part has been played by the hiding/showing dialectic that forms the leitmotif of this volume?