I caught up on most of the behind-the-scenes videos on Bravo's website. This week I'll try to get caught up on all the show's participants' blogs.
I didn't see anything on Bravo's website about how I can see one of the gallery shows at the end of each episode. They look open to the public, but it also looks like they only let a small number of people in. Who are the people lucky enough to see the gallery? Are they people in New York's art community, such as students or museum interns? Are they family and friends of Bravo employees there to score some free drinks? Are they random people pulled in off the street? I'd like to go see one of the galleries, but then I'd have the future of the show spoiled for me because I'd notice that so many artists were absent.
As with Top Chef, I also wonder how far in advance these episodes are filmed, and how far apart they are. Are the challenges all back to back, one day after another, with no time to rest inbetween? That seems exhausting.
This is the episode that is all about creating a 'shocking' piece of art. I'm very interested in this one, since it seems to me that telling an artist to create something 'shocking' is going to result in a lot of forced-feeling pieces. I think the idea would have to come from the artists themselves for it to be truly shocking, since most of what makes an artwork shocking is that the intent of the artist was never to be shocking in the first place!
It's nice to see the show start off with the artists exploring Simon's gallery. The photography is amazing - it's hard to deny the impact of those large photographs with such bright colors.
Abdi and Mark stand in front of the Piss Christ, a photograph of a crucifix that Mark reveals to be set inside a jar full of urine. I think I've heard of this photograph before. Abdi wonders aloud if this work was provocative for the sake of being provocative, and without seeing the photo for myself, I might have been inclined to agree, but seeing the photo itself, I have to admit that whatever the artist's intent was, it's a powerful image that could likely be interpreted in a number of ways, both positive and negative. That artist, by the way, is named Andres Serrano.
I'm a bit concerned that these young artists are going to go overboard trying to create something 'shocking'.
Also, I'm a bit concerned about Peregrine's rabbit ear hat.
$100 in hand, off they go to Utrecht. If it were me, I'd want to take a long couple moments to clear my head and come up with a clear idea before starting my piece.
And they're off!
We meet up with Abdi first... I'm not so sure about his idea: young black mens' heads with sticks of dynamite in them. It seems juvenile, somehow.
John's idea of a guy sucking himself off is definitely shocking, but it seems more like bad porn than art.
Erik is taking things to a political place, making art inspired by the molestation scandals in the Catholic church. Here I'm worried about his piece being just one note - too simple, too easy to tie up in a bow and say, 'ah-ha! So that's what this is about'. Good art is more ambiguous.
And what a surprise, Jaclyn gets naked! I think this is a bad idea (I know, I know, why would I possibly object to the hot girl taking her clothes off?!) because it seems to pigeonhole her. It brings us back to her self-portrait and the nude image of herself she used last week in her Jane Austin [sic] book cover. I don't think anyone will take her seriously as an artist if she keeps exploiting herself.
Mark seems to be going in the right direction, even though it's in a similar vein as Erik's. He says that he himself is horrified by child abuse, and so that's what he's going to be representing in his art. It looks like his photos will be bright and simple, but I'm worried that Andres might feel that Mark is copping his style.
It's interesting that Ryan seems to be also resorting to self-portraiture, but making himself look like a cheap whore (hey, that's what he said he was going for!). If this were not a time-restricted competition, I wonder if he would have used someone else to model for the piece or if he still would have used himself.
I'm interested in Nicole's piece. Her fake thumb molds look repulsive. Equally repulsive was Peregrine's description of them: "little kid dicks". Eww.
Props to Miles for telling his story about getting a boner to The Little Mermaid movie on national TV. That one took balls, dude. It's creepy that Miles is yet again going to incorporate anuses into his work. Paging Dr. Freud...
But wait! There's more!
Miles jizzes on his own piece. Shoots a load on it. Now THAT is disgusting.
This week there is a twist - two people are being eliminated. Almost half of the group are asked to stay behind and risk being sent home.
Jaclyn and Abdi ended up being the judges favorites. It didn't bother me that Jaclyn's piece was heavily influenced by Erik - like the judges said, it doesn't matter whose idea it was, only the artist who is credited with the piece will get recognition for it. This was the motivation behind Marcel Duchamp's dada piece titled "fountain", which was a urinal that he wrote his signature on without doing anything else to it, thereby turning it into 'art'. After all, he was an artist, and that was his signature on it, and it was put in an art gallery, so if that's not 'art', then what is? Duchamp (and the rest of the dada crew) were making fun of art, and in a way, Jaclyn's piece was sort of referencing this, even if she (or Erik) were not aware of it.
I wasn't a big fan of Abdi's piece, but whatever. We didn't get to see the smoke coming out of the heads like the judges described, so maybe it looked a lot cooler in real life than it did on TV.
Then the poor 'losers' of this round had to come out to risk being sent home. I was happy to see Erik stay, and happy to see Nao go home. I liked how Andres stood up for Nao, saying that he was interested in her piece, but that it just wasn't good enough for him to save her from elimination. I liked his comment about artists not being understood. It also makes me wonder how established artists like him feel about this reality TV show art competition. They probably aren't behind it.
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