“Reality”, Vladimir Nabokov said “is the one word that is meaningless without quotation marks”.
My friends call me Gary Gilmore because anyone can have my eyes. But I never watch reality TV because, as well as finding it sinister, cynical and sloppy, most of the shows are written by scab writers. Anyone with any pro-union and Writers Guild support should not be seduced by Reality TV’s meager mouth-breather titillations. It kills me even to use the term “Reality TV” and not only because of its obvious shortcomings. But here I go (as I suspect many Stretcher readers will) committing to watching the entire ten episodes of “Work Of Art: The Next Great Artist” and day after blogging about each of those installments, starting now:
The group of contestants are as withering and whimpering as any freshman interdisciplinary class I’ve ever taught. If they were my class I’d kill them. The tight focus of on the power grid is a little blinding. The one thing that they got is attention to the fact WE HARDLY NEED TO be reminded of—a small, powerful (not to be mention arbitrary) group tells us what pictures we’ll look at. The art world is all about approval. Life and art isn’t fair.
But it’s going to be a great show. And not only because Nao Bustamante is the star (or “villain” as Vanity Fair says). It’s television which means it never ends. Tune again next week. Same Bat channel…