Too Fond of Books

Last night was the 'Work of Art' finale! ... and I almost forgot about it, which is saying something. As much as I enjoy this show, I don't have the raw, visceral need to follow it that other shows (reality and otherwise) have elicited. Perhaps it's because the drama (especially in the final episode) feels so manufactured, and as such, my contrary nature says, "Ho hum, not real, why not go to bed early?" But I'm still glad I caught the finale, which had a semi-surprising, but very satisfying result. ( Spoilers ahead! )

In non-spoilery talk, I do want to say that China's fashion choices last night were crazier than anything she'd previously worn on the whole season, and both of them were overdone and extremely terrible. For the first half of the show, she wore an outfit that made her look like a blueberry (a *plastic* blue beret and a rounded blue dress with matching heels), and for the second half, at the gallery show, she was wearing a black and white number that looked as if she'd been walking past a palette factory that exploded, covering her Victorian nightgown in large black and white disks. With her crazy Bjork hairstyle, the whole concept for her clothing appeared to be something like "Uptight Nanny Secretly Wants to Party With Self-Absorbed Art Critics and Runny Mascara." All season long, her stylist apparently decided that China should look like Carrie Bradshaw, since the real life Sarah Jessica Parker is an executive producer on the show. The problem is that Carrie Bradshaw had more personality than China and even with all that personality, half the outfits she wore looked insane and terrible anyway. The resulting look for China was Lady without the Gaga, Tea with Carrie Bradshaw, a distracting and bizarre mix.

Speaking of distracting and bizarre, I've seen two superhero movies in the past two weeks, and they were both only mildly engaging. "Captain America" and "Green Lantern" were supposed to be all kinds of thrilling, but both ended up being mildly diverting at best.

I was more entertained by Captain America, and this largely had to do with Hugo Weaving's presence. My Dad's assessment of Weaving's villainous character, Red Skull, in the comics is, "Man, that guy never goes away!" Weaving made me believe this villain would never go away, either--he had too many plans up his military, mutated sleeves for that. And, really, his mockery of Captain America was spot on: here's a guy in a ridiculous costume, running bravely towards the mortal peril with apparently little else to fight with than his gumption and gosh-darn-it-American-ness! If I were the Red Skull, I'd roll my eyes at that, too. Captain America himself came off as 2.5 dimensional. I liked his motivation, succinctly stated as, "I don't want to kill anyone. But I don't like bullies." But Chris Evans was weirdly flat in some places, and the script shied away from giving him true character. There's a great moment about three quarters of the way through where Captain is mourning the loss of a friend, and he reveals to the love interest that because of his increased metabolism, he can no longer get drunk. I would have loved for this quiet scene to go on just a little bit longer, because it made him a lot more relatable. But instead, we were back to the action moments later. Whee, Tommy Lee Jones! Don't drive that car off a cliff! OMG! etc.

Far less successful to me was "Green Lantern", and this mainly had to do with Hal Jordan himself. I have to ask: was he really that much of a self-absorbed douchebag in the comics? He came off like an overgrown frat-bound teenager, and it bothered me quite a bit that everything and everyone in the movie hero-worshipped him. (That scene with Blake Lively in the bar was... well, turn off the visuals, and just listen to the dialogue alone. It sounds like something else that involves dubious consent.) I was excited to see non-humanoid aliens, but they were only in the movie for a very short time. Anyway, I got heartily sick of the whole affair about halfway through and spent the rest of the movie playing Thread Words on my Kindle. The next time I looked up, the bad guy was attacking a generic city and causing lots of property damage. Pretty much par for superhero movies.

I think very few people are tuning in for Bravo's "Work of Art" reality TV show this season, and this makes me a little sad. I realize this show doesn't have a lot going for it; it's so-called "reality TV" (strike one), it's about modern art (strike two), and it has some pretty crazy casting choices, both on the part of the judges and contestants (strike three, change the channel.) But despite all these failings, I can't help but love it. Even with the overly edited nature of the episodes, the terrible, terrible "art", and weird characters, I think it's an interesting idea, and its execution, although deeply flawed in some areas, is fascinating to behold.

Of course, the idea that anyone is going to find the "next great American artist" via the reality show medium is patently ridiculous. Likewise, the idea that art produced in the course of a twelve-hour challenge is somehow going to be fresh and original, is laughable at best. (Can you imagine asking great artists of any century to produce a masterpiece in a set amount of time? It's happened, but very, very rarely.) In fact, the testing format is more like the SAT, and like any standardized test, it rewards a set kind of thinking that isn't necessarily indicative of creativity. The judging criteria so far has skewed towards picking out obvious crap (the word "derivative" is, so far, the worst insult flung) and getting rid of it, while favoring pieces with "stories" (what these stories are, it's really hard to tell) or works of art that take the artists out of acceptable comfort zones. The challenges have run the gamut from interesting (create a museum installation around the theme of motion, which one only of the teams managed to pull together) to standard (create a piece of pop art, creating consternation among some of the competitors about the definition of pop art.) But even in teams, or individually, the artists are hampered by time and financial constraints, and their creativity appears a bit stilted at best, and utterly absent at worst.

But what I love about this show is that the questions it shakes in the modern art world's face: What is modern art, and what's its purpose? Who is allowed to judge it, the creator or the patrons? Where is all the money coming from, and do those sources allow for true creativity? Can someone with no artistic education be considered a true artist? None of these questions are easily answered, but the narrative dances around the edge of them, offering answers here and there before hastily pulling back into reality show convention. (So far, there is no clear villain, although I think the editors are very sad that the tear-prone, creepy photographer Cathryn lost last week's challenge.) The modern art world, as personified by the judges and personalities at the gallery, is a mystifying and snobby place, filled with money (if you know who to sell to) and pretentious, overly judgmental statements. (For example, one of the judge's words to the deaf contestant about his piece not addressing how deaf people use Facebook is pretty much one of the rudest, most facile things I've ever heard on TV.) It's no wonder that the competitors have all banded together; even if their mediums and subject matter are all completely different, it's better to support one another instead of sniping or snarking. Even the contestant who's named himself "The Sucklord" is a pretty tolerable guy, despite his overly exaggerated concern that the women in his life are going to "cut his bawls off" every time he does something wrong. All of these contestants have at least some talent, and how it's going to serve them in the art world is a great question. It's what I want to see play out.

I should I say there is one thing I want to smack the editors for, and I have no idea if it was from the hypocritical higher ups at Bravo, or from some other force, but I find the censorship of women's breasts to be pretty laughable. In the pop art challenge, one woman photographed herself, topless, holding a plastic water bottle. During the actual photograph session, when she was posing, her breasts were pixelated out. But the photograph itself was depicted on TV, completely un-pixelated. And this was a high quality digital photographic print, with every detail shown to the audience. What on earth is the difference between taking a topless picture for a camera, and showing the topless photo that that camera took? Absolutely nonsensical.

Anyway, regardless of stupid censorship standards and art world pretentiousness, I'm curious enough to stick around and see which artist wins. At the very least, watching host China Chow's insane fashion choices is entertainment to last me for an entire week. I hope others will give this show a chance, not only because it's a good show, but also because I'd love to have someone else to talk about it with.