Kitschy time!

Alright, it's been nearly a week. Hey! Stuff got in the way! But...Wednesday marked the start of the second season of Work of Art:  The Next Great Artist. Yay! No, really. I loved the first season. Think Project Runway, but with artists instead of fashion designers.  The show, produced by Sarah Jessica Parker, gathers an eclectic group of artists, of various media, and has them compete against each other, week after week, challenge after challenge, for a nifty prize and a show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Last year, during Season One, I was rooting for a young artist, the likeable Abdi, for the win. And guess what? He one. Yay!

The first episode of Season Two was titled “Kitsch Me If You Can.”  This was our introductory episode, with each artist submitting, prior to the show, a self-portrait that is hanging in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Some of the more interesting ones included Arkansas art teacher Dusty’s crayons-stuck-to-the-wall rendition of this own face, and Chicagoland’s Young Sun’s photograph of himself standing naked with a slimy covering, with his dying parents (cancer) laying on hospital beds in the background (he said this was their last family portrait together…). He must be vying for this year’s Nao. 

This year’s “Miles” is…The Sucklord. Yup. That’s what he calls himself. And if you call him by his real name, Morgan, as mentor Simon de Pury made the mistake, he will quickly emplore you to address him by his formal title.  On the one hand, this guy is hilarious. He identifies with the nerd culture, making art out of disassembling Star Wars action figures—apparently is quite successful at it—and has quip after quip of never ending sarcasm. But…It borders on the pretentious. That’s one of the fun aspects of this show: Groaning at the super-pretentious artists, and appreciating the down-to-earth artists. That’s a big reason why I rooted so much for Abdi last year: He wasn’t that pretentious, he was a real guy. The Sucklord, well I’m glad he wasn’t eliminated this go-round, he’ll add a lot of humor to the show, but I don’t see him winning, and his antics may get old quick.

There was Chicago graffiti artist Tewes, who was amazed by the décor of their studio. He said he’d worked in abandon buildings, rooftops and …jail, so this was all very neato.  He had a cool painting of a pink spray painted hand on a wall, in his body of work.  But the trick here is that the challenges aren’t just geared to painters. Some artists are photographers, some are performance artists, some are, actually painters, but the challenges will often force people out of their comfort zone, such as the first one did for Tewes: He had to make a sculpture. With a cheesy cat.

For The Win!

Each artist was challenged to take a piece of ‘kitschy’ art and rework it into something more acceptable for a gallery. I’ve read many reviews where people were actually standing up for the artistic value of the kitschy style.  And leave it to The Sucklord, he stood up for it. He loves crappy art! (He got a wizard painting, declaring it Gandalf and Lord of the Rings to be a religious experience).

There were several female artist with dark hair, they kind of blended together for me. Sara J tended to have a hang up on inner pain, and expressed it with watercolor paintings of a style I just usually refer to as “Nightmare Before Christmas.” Little big-headed people all weepy and…wah. 

There was a woman who knew real pain, Michelle, who apparently was in a car vs. bike accident (she was on the bike) a few months before the show and had developed a new appreciation for life. She had an interesting technique of creating paper sculptures. Her kitschy piece was a wood carving of an eagle. She painted it grey, making it look like a tombstone and created a paper skeleton to lay at its base. She was the challenge winner.

This sent Ugo home.

Ugo was the evening’s looser. He went home. His work was declared too derivative of Keith Haring. And it was. It was also very red-on-red, and when he took the red back panel off the piece at the end of the show, leaving only the plexiglass with red…thingies…painted all over it, the judges looked like they felt they made a mistake. Almost.  And Sucklord got into their sights for his lack of defense defense of sucky art. He and judge Jerry Saltz are going to get along great! (sarcasm).

Oh yeah and then there was the girl that creates art by creating guts sculptures. Yuck. And according to the season’s previews, she cries weird.

In the end, for this first episode, it comes down to the question of “Who do I root for?”  It’s not so simple. I don’t have any immediate favorites like Abdi. I just had a good vibe on this guy.  I’m kind of liking Leon, the deaf Malaysian guy, but I’d like to see more of his work so he’s not just a reality TV novelty.  Tewes has a neat style, I only hope he’s versatile enough to make it. Other than that, Dusty does have some of that ‘good guy’ appeal, and his crayon thing was really cool.  I quizzed the BF and he (really really enjoyed his first time watching the show!) picked Kymia (one of the brown-haired chicks that has yet to make herself more memorable to me), Leon, or Michelle, the challenge winner. He also likes Jazz Minh’s painting style, but also worries about her versatility. And, as he put it, he fears the judges are “too snooty for her stuff.” I guess that's a synopsis of what this show is about. Art...but for the masses (the BF describes himself as an art appreciator, but no artist. He especially marveled at the idea of being challenged to complete a certain project like the show requires. He said he could take on high-pressure work environments or video games, but never ever creativity on demand!)


Snooty versus regular folks. Kitschy versus gallery-ready. Ding! Ding! Ding! GO!