By That You Mean

It’s the last deathmarch before the finale! Just like the artestants, I have no idea what to expect. Work of Art’s second season has been all over the place — from the inspired to the tired. Mmm hmm, you see what I did there? We have two peoples’ dreams to crush, so let’s get to it. The Fiat 500 waits for no one!

For no apparent reason the challenge is to make a portrait of someone in Cold Spring, NY. Not a…here’s a crazy idea for a challenge set in a majestic Hudson Valley hamlet…landscape? No, a portrait. No need to explain. We totesunderstand. As a former portrait photographer, I can attest to it being extremely difficult to get people to sit for one. Well, not extremely difficult when you post impostor pictures of yourself online and don’t tell your subjects you’re photographing them. I mean what? What’s happening? Art!

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Six artestants remain on America’s Next Work of Great Art Person: Miami Redux 3D. Who will win, and who will fail? Us? We’re just two episodes away from the finale, and this episode is hilariously themed the “sell-out” challenge, as if…no. I won’t do it. Too easy.

If I had to advise an artist on how to make things people would buy on the street, I’d say whatever it is make sure it has the Brooklyn Bridge, it is vaguely abstracted but still realistic, requires 1.5 seconds to understand what it is, and 11 x 14 inches in size. Whatever it is, it must fit in a carry-on bag and/or not take up too much wallspace in your nephew’s tiny Queens apartment.

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It’s been a little while since we lost The Sucklord, and to be honest we needed the time to mourn. Did the judges intentionally eliminate the male contestants in decreasing order of attractiveness? Will Stickergate be forgiven and forgotten? Will SJP show up for no reason, again? Now that we’ve put ourselves back together, it’s time for another episode of the worst/best reality TV show ever!

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It’s certainly been an interesting week in the art world, and though of course Work of Art was prerecorded and thus couldn’t comment on the news at the moment, I still nonetheless found this episode relevant and as always, entertaining. Did you?

To backtrack a bit, I appreciated the challenge last week but didn’t love the products nor ultimately did I really agree with the judges. A solo show at the “world-famous” Brooklyn Museum hangs in the balance, so let’s not waste any more time:

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Last week we may or may not have been visited by Jerry Saltz, and he had some things to say about my recap, as can be read here. Obviously, we’re flattered here at BTYM, and we want nothing more than to hear what you all think. Well, we want lots of things, but maybe that’s not what we want the most, but it’s totes up there.

Anyway, maybe what Mr. Saltz picked up on was the sense that I’m very passionate about this show, which I truly am. I think Work of Art is at times exceptional in its crapitude yet more often presents moments where art is talked about on levels rare for television. Perhaps more importantly, I think it’s entertaining and plainly weird. This week the artestants begin with a visit to what I imagined to be a pretty interesting starting point: The New York Times newspaper factory.

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Ah, this show. It’s not horrible? By no fault of its own, the art world just happens to be in the midst of one of its biggest weeks of the year; we’re on the verge of the big contemporary auctions in New York, which occur in mid-November and mid-May. I say “happens” because you wouldn’t have known that having watching this week’s America Hates the Arts! It’s ironic given that the ostensible mentor is none other than Simone de Pury. In fact they visit the auction house, Phillips de Pury, which is incorrectly described as a “gallery.” The Bravo audience wouldn’t understand that? Ugh, moving on.

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Well, this is easily the most scatological episode of any television show I have ever watched. On Work of Art this week it’s the parkour, dyah i mean “motion challenge,” and for the event China has decided to wear a men’s big and tall yellow cableknit sweater backwards and inside out. The artestants divide up into two teams, because forcing artists to work together where no other reason exists is always a great route to producing relevant, well-executed works of art.

“I would love actually to do a pooping piece,” Michelle unceremoniously exclaims almost from the get-go. And with that team 1 decides to concentrate on digestion as their motion inspiration. Um OK.

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It’s that time of the year again, when Work of Art tries it’s darndest to be literally the worst thing that has happened to art since…since, well it sets a new low bar, so probably since never. In case you didn’t see season 1, Work of Art is the search for the “next great artist,” in the same way that America’s Next Top Model crowns a supermodel and Cake Wars crowns a, I dunno, midget cupcake? I think that show is on TLC, so I might be getting things mixed up.

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