Again with the Collaborations

Last night's episode of Work of Art was not too inspiring, but I've written about all the previous ones, so I may as well see this season through. If you're not interested, you can skip the rest.

For the second time in three episodes, artists were assigned collaborative partners, randomness resulting in three boy-girl pairings. That same process assigned each group a topic- Mark and Peregrine got Heaven/Hell, Nicole and Abdi got Order/Chaos, and popular kids Miles and Jaclyn got Male/Female. Each artist was to produce their own work (based on one of their two words), the two halves should work as one piece, but only one artist would be sent home in the end. Seeing how the previous collaborative challenge worked out, I had little hope for anything good coming from this challenge.

Reality television, as many have noted before me, has very little to do with reality. Artificial conditions and careful editing can influence the results and response of the viewer. Personality conflicts are the focus of this genre in general, and despite the hopes of many artists, the producers of this show have made them as significant as the art. Maybe more so, since the parameters of the individual challenges and the extremely limited time allotted severely limit the possibility of great art being made by anybody. Forcing collaborations between competitors in this game adds further problems. Each pairing dealt with the conflict/art combination differently.

Of the three resulting pieces, Peregrine and Mark's worked best visually as a whole, a diptych with identical size and format on both halves, both featuring photos of a shirtless Mark. He did the "heaven" half, which was roundly criticized for being too simplistic and literal. I can't deny that, but it did address his topic more clearly than any of the other artists. Peregrine attacked her photo with grommets, hot glue and glitter, paint, etc. I thought the result a little too decorative to be evocative of hell. Worse, when the combined piece was criticized by the judges, she put all the blame on Mark, even though she was the one who conceived the total project. She may have been in our traveling print show, but she's no Outlaw Printmaker, acting like that.

Nicole and Abdi's individual pieces had no obvious relationship with each other, hers a small wooden hand cranked machine (order) that didn't function, his a large painting with an amorphous subject (chaos). Abdi was clearly out of his element with this challenge, and Nicole tends to be hit or miss, but at least they play nice together and didn't blame each other for their shortcomings this time around.

As usual, Miles and Jaclyn provided the most fodder for discussion. The producers really went out of their way to play up the Miles as villain concept. Early in the episode Jaclyn expresses a concern that Miles can easily convince people to follow his ideas instead of their own. He suggests a secondary theme of control for their piece; his male part will be about losing control (building a nice wall and punching holes in it to represent male anger), and he suggests that she do another nude self portrait as part of her ongoing female empowerment (gaining control) theme, generally not a hard sell for Jaclyn. He goes further to suggest that she show herself engaged in what Jaclyn would refer to throughout the episode as a "private sexual act". (there are repeated cuts back to him delighted in how he's manipulating her into these decisions) She takes the photos, and produces a nice photo realist painting based on that. Her idea of how their parts will work together is to have her painting reflected in a distorted mirror on one of Miles's walls. Of course he has a late inspiration. He eliminates her mirror in favor a wall of black tar with a glossy surface. (he reveals to us that the tar had been purchased by Ryan for some earlier challenge, and he talked Ryan out of using it, hoping that he could claim it for himself in the future, as he has done) Miles doesn't give any logical explanation of why he wants a tar wall, other than he just thinks it would be cool and he now has the opportunity to make it, and Jaclyn, despite her earlier concern, goes along. The two individual works have no relationship to each other (and there's nothing in Miles's walls themselves that suggest maleness), but the judges are all predisposed to liking these two, so they are declared the winners.

Mark, thrown to the wolves by his partner in this challenge, was shown the door. Unlike Erik a few weeks ago, he was gracious about it on his way out. Nothing in his work leads one to believe he has much future as a gallery type fine artist, but he is proficient enough in commercial/graphic art that this show should give him a boost in that world.