"Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" - a review

If you are at all interested in art you are probably aware of the Bravo TV reality series "Work of Art." While I appreciate the fact that it may lead to "water cooler" discussions of art, the show exemplifies everything that is wrong with the gallery oriented view of art.

The purpose of the show, of course, is to entertain. The art is merely a backdrop for the human drama that the producers hope will make "good tv." Even so, it serves to to demonstrate just how far art has been removed from its proper role.

The show follows a format that has become pretty much standard, a group of contestants are given a challenge based on different criteria each week. Each week one contestant is eliminated until the last person standing is declared the winner. In this case the winner receives $100,000 and a solo exhibit at a presumably prestigious gallery, oh and the dubious distinction of being declared Bravo TV's "Next Great Artist."

So from the start it is made clear to us that this show and by extension the world of high-end gallery art, is all about the artist. The judges moved from piece to piece almost as if it were a puzzle they had to figure out. We heard terms that have become almost parodies of themselves. They spoke about what the artist was trying to say and how a great work is completed by what the viewer brings to it. In the end they declared the winning piece not by its' own merits but by what they knew of the artist and their assumptions based on that knowledge.

The winning artist was Jaclyn. Her winning piece was a series of photographs of men walking by a Volvo showroom and looking at Jaclyn who was in the showroom taking their picture. She then obscured the faces of the men with big globs of white paint and interspersed some mirrors in the exhibit (to make the viewer part of the work of course.) The judges praised the work for Jaclyn's ability to turn the tables the voyeurs and make them the object of attention.

So this choice raised several questions. Jaclyn is an attractive woman and so it was apparently assumed that that the only reason men would look into a Volvo dealership window would be to "ogle" the woman in the window, not to look at the cars, or to wonder who the person was taking pictures of them.  I am sure some of the men were admiring her but the whole attitude towards Jaclyn and her art was one of a victim becoming a victor (hey attractive people are victims too.) One of the judges even referred to the men as "leering," that's a pretty big leap seeing as how the judges were not there and all the faces were covered with white paint. But the big question was if you saw this work hanging in a gallery, and did not know anything about the artist or the context of its' creation, would you even give it a second look? Art is a visual medium, if you have to have it explained to you before you can understand it, then it is bad art.

There was a lot of talk about art challenging the viewer, and how happy the artists were to be able to "paint anything they want." But there was no mention of beauty. There was no mention of how these artists are using their gifts elevate the hearts and minds of the viewers. There was no transcendence.

You may think that I am expecting too much from a reality show but I'm not really. I don't expect anything at all from it. It is a symptom of a disease.

Artists are not privileged any more than anyone else. All of us have been given distinctive gifts to elevate peoples hearts and minds. The concepts of "art for art's sake" and the celebrity artist who cannot be told what is and isn't art, are relatively modern concepts that have only been around for a little more than a hundred years.

So the problem is that art has become all about the artist and not at all about the art or the community it should serve. Young artists are drawn to this because we have made celebrity status and its' accompanying wealth the pinnacle of achievement.

We should be better than this. How?

One of our greatest modern philosophers, Jacques Mauritain put it this way in referring to the view of art that dominated the world for thousands of years:

"He did not work for the rich and fashionable and for the merchants, but for the faithful; it was his mission to house their prayers, to instruct their intelligences, to delight their souls and their eyes. Matchless epoch, in which an ingenuous people was formed in beauty without even realizing it, just as the perfect religious ought to pray without knowing that he is praying; in which Doctors and image- makers lovingly taught the poor, and the poor delighted in their teaching, because they were all of the same royal race, born of water and the Spirit! Man created more beautiful things in those days, and he adored himself less. The blessed humility in which the artist was placed exalted his strength and his freedom." - Art and Scholasticism

"blessed humility" there's a cutting edge, counter-cultural idea for today's artist to embrace.