At the direction of my cousin, Jake, I spent last evening watching Work of Art: The Next Great Artist. If you haven't heard about the show, it is a reality program that is similar to Project Runway. 14 artists competing against each other in timed challenges, one winner an episode, and one poor sap that gets sent packing.
(If you are at all interested you can watch the episodes here.)
After watching the first two episodes I'm not too sure how I feel about it. My cousin's complaint was that, "it is not what art is about." And while I understand his issue, there is a part of me who is incredibly excited to see artists finally getting some much needed mainstream attention. I also don't find the competitive nature of the show to be too far off from some of the real-life competitions for commissions that have been held throughout time. Granted Ghiberti was never asked to create a postapocolyptic-humanoid-toasteroven-corpse in a post-modern response to consumerism, but one can make some connections (albeit stretched) to similar competitive endeavors.
Anyways, I suppose that my major concern is just this... while there seems to be some serious talents amongst the group, right now it's just plain boring. And the bullshit and drama isn't even the bad kind of reality television people are drawn to watch because it is just so BAD. Pull out some of the mediocre characters, and lose some of the annoying critics and perhaps I'll be back.
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