Work of Art 2.5 and 2.6

Episode 5: “Ripped from the Headlines.”

A great idea, but again the judges totally blew it. They jumped on the Sucklord for being too literal, yet gave 20k to Young for a piece that was the most literal piece of the week.

In week 6, the challenge was to create street art and the winners, Young and Dusty rack up a deserved win. Unfortunately the Sucklord finally is defeated by the forces of evil.

Frankly, I could see value in his and Sarah’s piece. Having been to New York, and not being from there, the city is a maze, and I thought their piece expressed that.

Then there is Lola and Michelle. Frack. Lola is quickly becoming the “Miles” of the season. What a frickin douche bag. I’m starting to realize that they cannot draw. What kind of artist can’t even draw a frickin penis? You would think that between two people with BFA’s, one of them could draw better than a 5 year old.

They also tried to pull off some kind of “Bad Girl” skit this week. Try to imagine, two Harvard educated socialites being “gangster,” Totally unbelievable. And BTW if they had encouraged people to deface my work before judging, Mr. Elite would have seen what the term “Get Medieval” really means.

Nothing On

I came across this old broken down TV in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I first spotted it because the edges of the case formed an unfamiliar straight line off in the distance. As I got closer, I realized what I had found. It really stuck me as odd to find such an old style piece of electronics out in the middle of nowhere.

It reminded me of a time when television programming went off the air at night, the only image they would broadcast was a test pattern and tone.

We only had four channels back then, and I still remember being entertained by what was on.

Today we have the 24 hour news cycle, tons of programs, and yet, there still seems to be nothing on.

11/11/11

As the clock approaches 11:11 today, 11/11/11, I’m happy to say that I find the project I’m working on to be quite appropriate. The press release will come later today, but I can say this project is to benefit the Wounded Warrior Project.

The Wounded Warrior Project is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to "honor and empower wounded warriors" of the United States Armed Forces. "The Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) works to raise awareness and enlist the public's aid for the needs of severely injured service men and women, to help severely injured service members aid and assist each other, and to provide unique, direct programs and services to meet their needs."

For more information you can visit their site at:

www.woundedwarriorproject.org

Work of Art 2.3 and 2.4

The challenge in week 3 was: Create Pop Art.

Jerry Saltz is quickly proving himself to be a total prick. Two comments from him pretty much spell out his disdain for artist and art lovers alike.

Quote 1 - “I'm on this show to explore how art can be brought to non-élite audiences.”

Really dude? I’ve watched the show for its entire run, and I haven’t found any profound wisdom that has been divined from his eliteness.

Quote 2 – “Young won for his piece about California's Proposition 8 and gay marriage -- not for his p.c. subject matter, but because he took on scale, color, advertising, powerful messaging, and communication in a very direct, visually forceful way, produced in the quasi-political conceptual way in which he already works.”

The challenge was “Pop Art” not “quasi-political art” In case Mr. Elite didn’t know:
From Webster’s Dictionary - Definition of POP ART:
“: art in which commonplace objects (as road signs, hamburgers, comic strips, or soup cans) are used as subject matter and are often physically incorporated in the work”

From Wikipedia:

“Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation.”

Leon commented that his piece was possibly the only real Pop Art, and he was right, but he got sent home anyway.

Why have challenges if you’re not going to use that as prime judging criteria?

In week 4, the challenge is to make a companion piece to match with the work of a child. A good challenge, again some of the artists missed the point. Surprise, Surprise, they were not the one sent home.

This week’s victim was Tewz who I always figured would go home early. I don’t think he deserved to be booted yet, and thought it was great of Sucklord to defend Tewz’ work.

And then there is Jerry “Elite” Saltz. What a douche. He decides to threaten to go “Medieval” on the Sucklord if he includes any more Star Wars characters in his work.

First, Star Wars is a part of Sucklords art, which is just what he does. It is his style, his shtick; it’s what makes people like Simon part with their cash to own an original Sucklord.

Second, the only way for J-rod to go “Medieval” would be for him to dress up like the court jester he is and have the contestants beat him with a Cat-o-Nine tails.

Hey that might be an idea for next weeks challenge.

Work of Art 2.2

The challenge this week was:

“The artists must use Parkour, a discipline where participants overcome obstacles using only their bodies to move from point A to point B in the most creative and inventive way possible, as their inspiration.”

So they were broken into teams and challenged to create art that showcased “motion.”

While watching I thought Bayetés idea was really quite unexciting, boring, really kind of dumb, but I was glad to see he was not going to try and make this week’s challenge about “race” again. In the end he won the challenge, and I have to agree with the judges. His piece did show the childish fun he tried to portray. And really, there wasn’t much competition.

Then there was Kathryn.

A graduate of MassArt and a MFA from Yale. Impressive. What isn’t impressive is her work, which consists of taking dough, jelly, fruit juice and other materials and throwing it at paper or plastic. It’s supposed to look like human organs and blood.

And then there is the crying. Really, get over it. In some of the first art classes I took, the instructor conducted brutal critiques. His point was that someday one of us would put our work out in the world and people would trash it. We needed to be strong enough to take the crit, because in the end “it is only fake guts.”

I find it hard to believe this is what you get for spending over 150K on an art education. I’d ask for a refund.

Work of Art

I don’t normally use this space to rage, but I really feel that this is a subject that,
a. I want to talk about and,
b. needs my meager input and my insight.

Bravo TV fired up the second season of “Work of Art.” I watched the first episode and I was not disappointed. The show gave me plenty of things to complain about.

I think a touch of background information is important here. I watched season one. The show is kind of like “Survivor” for “artists.” Each week they get an art challenge, and must complete a work in a very short time. The lovely China Chow tosses the loser with her catch phrase “your work of art didn’t work for us.”

Last season I did very little public commentary on the show, the one time I did was in Laguna Beach, when some people were talking about the show as they entered a gallery. As we passed, I did say that Miles (who ended up being in the final three) was a douche, which is a comment I stand by to this day.

So in the interest of providing season two with at least one great artist, I went to an open call for the show. I waited in the glaring sun of Los Angeles with about 400 other people for about four hours. I brought a portfolio of paintings and photographs. When I finally got in to see the inquisitors, the one comment that will forever stand out was “your work is really great; it is however, just photography.”

So I found it interesting that the guest judge on the first episode would be Mary Ellen Mark, a very accomplished and wonderful photographer. I was quite disappointed by the way the other judges seemed to treat Ms. Mark. I wanted to reach into the TV and choke Jerry Saltz when he rolled his eyes at one of Ms. Marks comments.

So I guess it really doesn’t matter if you’re amazingly famous, or just a guy from LA, because in the end your work is “just photography.”

The Final Frontier or Accidental Porn?

Life has been busy; I’m still working on new pages for the Legend of the Ninja Knight, as well as creating title slides for an independent film.

But I still found time to create two new abstract paintings for a show celebrating the connection between Art and Science.

I decided to paint my Interpretation of an image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Now after it’s been finished, judged, displayed at the Science Center, and returned to me, my wife takes a look at one of the images and asks me if I intended for it to look like a nude woman.

I really didn’t, but now that she has pointed it out, I named the image, Aphrodite Nebula.