There Can Be Only One, One More Time

My thoughts on the final episode of Bravo's Work of Art Season 2, including spoilers.

As with last season, the game changes once we get down to the final 3. Each is given a budget and 3 months at their home studio to make whatever they want for a small solo exhibition. We catch up to them 2 months into the process, tagging along with Simon. He starts by visiting Young in Chicago, meeting his family, and seeing the new work. The big piece is a four posted platform, rooted in Korean tradition. That, and the rest of the show is on the topic of his father and his death, referenced in his street art piece. He has photographs and plans to do something with his father's shirts. Simon points out that some of it is kind of boring. The other two artists are New York based. Kymia has been busy in Manhattan, creating some large and detailed mixed media drawings, as well as some figural sculptures. Simon loves one drawing, but declares on of the sculptures to be "horrendous", something he can't imagine anyone wanting to own. (his take on art often seems colored by his job as an art auctioneer, so that he considers salability more than the pure art critic or the guest artists on the judging panels do in their evaluations) Rather than the 15 works she shows in progress, Simon recommends keeping the one drawing and making 14 new works. Sara is over in Brooklyn. Her background is mostly drawing (which helped with the street selling challenge), but she had some success with sculpture in the later weeks of the show, and had developed some 3D and video pieces for the final show. The video showed her in a giant plaster head covering, and with a giant plaster vessel with a small hole hanging over her torso. She wore this on the street and people were invited to write secrets (anonymous confessions) on pieces of paper and insert them in the hole. Besides the plaster sculptures and the video, she had the papers with the secrets, which she planned to hang up in the gallery. In addition, she had made watercolors based on the videotaped images of people on the street watching her performance. These last items were the least interesting things for Simon, and I would agree that they didn't add much to the whole presentation.

Thanks to the magic of television, another month has passed and the three contestants are back together. (with two of them residents of NYC, it's not that much of a journey). We see scenes of them leading work crews in setting up their respective shows, then the opening receptions. Many of the eliminated contestants return for the occasion, most notably the Sucklord, who presents Jerry Saltz with an action figure of himself.

All three shows contain work that is more thought out and professionally finished than what we saw during the first 9 weeks, though having time to develop it takes away some of the urgency and immediacy of the work from the challenges. Young's show includes the platform, many of his deceased father's shirts (on hangers, on clotheslines) with photos attached, large projected images of family and boyfriend, and a homemade shrine to his father, made from various artifacts that had belonged to him (candies from his pockets, lip balm, etc) Show host China is very moved, mostly because of memories of one of her own parents dying from cancer, but without that kind of experience, it's kind of a boring show. Kymia has abandoned the more problematic sculptures in favor of more drawings. Some sculpture remains- three things that could be recently filled graves, and a head covering made with pieces of overlapping metal plates. Sara's show includes the video and a hired model to wear the plaster pieces and collect more secrets from those in attendance. A large artwork involving a man sized bird cage with what appears to be thousands of paper cranes escaping looks great on tv, and echoes the hanging clusters of confession notes from the original performance. Also some watercolors and other odds and ends (hair, skin cells). Some individual pieces are nice enough, but it doesn't seem like it all goes together as the work of one artist. After the judges have their usual post exhibition debate, they declare Kymia the winner of the large cash prize and the Brooklyn Museum show. Based on what we saw, I believe she was the best choice of the three.

Some general thoughts on the completed season:

*I've said this a few times before, but the artificial conditions set up by the weekly competitions work against the creation of good art. Doubling the creation time to two days instead of one would make a big difference.

*I've been a part of hundreds of critiques, as a student, a teacher, or the ones in my Studio, and in all of them together I've never saw as much crying as in 10 episodes of this show. I guess someone decided that emotional breakdowns are the point of this program, rather than the stated goal of finding the next great artist.

*If they do another season, they should explain to all the contestants that Simon's advice is not necessarily good, and following it may actually harm their chances of making it to the next round.

Whether there will be another season remains to be seen. Unlike last year's finale, there was no call over the closing credits for people to audition for a future season. It may be that they haven't decided yet, or may just be that they got so many to come out this last time that they see no need to promote it now. That they had so many sponsors providing cash prizes all throughout the episodes should be a sign that they can make a profit with this thing. On the other hand, the people at the Bravo network might decide that even one primetime hour per week not showing housewives or chefs is too much, and cancel production of the series. I'll be watching out for news on the topic in 2012.