“It’s time to sell out,” host China Chow told the remaining six artists on this week’s Work of Art. Of course, some would say they sold out when they signed on to Work of Art. But what sounded like a banal idea — exploring, as Simon de Pury said, the “art versus commerce” conundrum by having the contestants make art, sell it on the street, and then display it in the gallery ended up with one of this series’ livelier episodes. READ FULL STORY »

It’s always nice to have a person on a reality show with whom a viewer can identify, who speaks on camera the thoughts you’re having in your head. In the case of this week’s Work of Art: The Increasingly Fruitless Search for the Next Great Artist, that person was Lola, who responded to the careful, thoughtful critique of Simon de Pury by saying, after he’d walked away, “Whatever. I don’t care what Simon says.” READ FULL STORY »

Tasked with taking a headline from The New York Times and making a piece of art from it, the Work of Art contestants created some of their best and worst work to date, but the subhead that lingers over this season remains “Is this a vital reality show?” READ FULL STORY »

The second week of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist was a mess; assembling the hour must have driven the show’s editors crazy. The hour started out with a demonstration of parkour, the strenuous, French-derived, running-climbing-leaping exercise done by daredevils on city architecture. The idea was to give the contestants and viewers a kinetic image for the week’s task: create “a piece about motion.” The artists were divided into two teams, told to come up with a theme, and put together two competing group shows. READ FULL STORY »