Bravo Launches Reality Show To Find Next Great Artist

The Bravo network has helped define reality television over the last several years and, topically speaking, they continue to reinvent it (the format is usually recycled). Despite justified skepticism and critical ridicule, competition reality shows have managed to insert marketable stars into the national consciousness. Even some losers make their mark: Jennifer Hudson was an American Idol runner-up and she went on to win an Oscar. But can the world of fine arts emerge from the reality television machine unscathed? Apart from, say, Project Runway or Top Chef, which involve displays of actual skill, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist will be a somewhat more cerebral group than we are accustomed to seeing on reality shows. Or at least that might be the assumption.

From the previews available (it debuts June 9), it is clear that heated emotions and drama can run as rampant in the supposedly enlightened world of visual art, as they can in a gaggle of teenage girls vying to be supermodels. Which is such a relief. As a social experiment, reality television does what it seems to have been promising all along: it turns people into maniacs who thrive on cheaply-begotten exposure and the promise of, what else, fame and fortune. Which is of course why we’re all so enthralled. With quotes like these how could we not be?

“I don’t want to work with your poisonous attitude.”

(Through tears) “I want my work to show in museums.”

“I’m not responsible for your experience of my work.”

“You give performance art a bad name.”

This is as good a soap opera as anything Tyra Banks or Heidi Klum could have dreamed up! The judges involved are critics (Jerry Saltz), gallerists (Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, Bill Powers), auctioneers (Simon dePury), and general aficionados (China Chow serves as host), whose sharp wits will surely be a big part of the fun.

As the competition’s first challenge—the artists were paired off and asked to make portraits of each other—rattled toward its conclusion (the usual dramatic “voting-off” shenanigans), I found myself paying less and less attention to the (overwhelmingly dire) work and more to compiling a list of sententious quotes: “Wall power, that’s what you want” (de Pury); “To you, it’s a portrait, but to no one else will it ever be a portrait” (Saltz); “I’m getting falling leaves, is what I’m getting off this” (Powers), and the definitive “There’s no excuse for a bad painting” (Saltz again).   -ArtForum

It’s one thing to take joy in others’ suffering when being delivered from one social class to a higher one is at stake, but when we have a group of well-educated, ostensibly intellectual people throwing fits and breaking down on cable TV, it gets too good not to watch. Will this show find the next great artist? Highly doubtful. But as far as viewers are concerned, the personal success of reality show contestants is rarely the point.