Visual art reality show set for TV debut
The producers behind hit reality-TV competitions Top Chef and Project Runway have created a new contest pitting contemporary visual artists against one another.
Work of Art: The Next Great Artist will have its debut on U.S. cable channel Bravo on June 9 and will see 14 artists compete in weekly art challenges in a variety of media.
The grand prize is $100,000 US and a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum.
Production company Magical Elves hopes its new show will do for visual art what Top Chef and Project Runway helped do for cooking and fashion: namely, take a mainstream, TV-watching audience behind the scenes to better understand what goes into artistic creation.
"When we started reaching out to the art community, we were worried that people would be against the idea of a reality show. What we found was that people were pretty receptive," Dan Cutforth, one of the executive producers, told Reuters.
More than 2,000 artists — from oil painters to conceptual artists — applied for a spot on Work of Art.
The main judging panel will include art critic Jerry Saltz and New York gallery owners Bill Powers and Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. They will be joined by a number of guest judges that include mixed-media artist Jon Kessler, photographer Andres Serrano, painter Richard Phillips and photographer-director David LaChapelle.
Art auctioneer Simon de Pury serves as a mentor to the contestants, while the show will be hosted by actress and model China Chow, who spouts the requisite dismissal catchphrase: "Your work of art didn’t work for us."
Though the contestants may fit certain reality show archetypes (e.g., the villain, the misfit, the front-runner), the goal is to give a boost to the struggling artists and to encourage more mainstream discussion and acceptance of visual art, according to the producers — who include actress Sarah Jessica Parker's company Pretty Matches.
"I hope that people will feel more comfortable talking about their opinions about art, or wanting to have opinions about art," Magical Elves producer Jane Lipsitz told Vanity Fair.
"That's our goal."
Article From: CBC
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