Bravo's 'Work Of Art': Can You Explain The Thing About The Judges Again?

As Elizabeth Blair reported on today's Morning Edition, Bravo is debuting its latest arty-endeavor reality show tonight, and it's called Work Of Art: The Next Great Artist.

What Project Runway did for fashion, what Top Chef did for food, and what Top Design emphatically did not do for interior design, Bravo is hoping Work Of Art will do for art. What kind of art? Well ... "art." The lineup includes contestants with backgrounds in performance art, photography, sculpture, and lots of other branches of what Bravo is broadly calling ... "art."

Bravo presented this show to the Television Critics Association in January, and the question that kept coming up was (not surprisingly), along the lines of, "How do you get a panel of judges to judge pieces of art competitively?"

Producer Dan Cutforth said this:

From being behind the scenes as a producer and trying to be the kind of — you know, sort of see it like the audience would see it and not being an expert and, I think, very much seeing it like the audience sees it, the interesting thing was those of us who didn’t have a voice and who stayed and who went and, you know, who’s the winner, who’s on top, who’s on the bottom, I think that was
a — in almost every case, it was really clear who the best and — and who were the best and who should be on the bottom. And I think those of us backstage who are watching 99 percent of the time completely agreed with the judges, so it sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it actually really does.

Now, if your concern is that judging art is hopelessly subjective, then this is a promising statement, because essentially, Cutforth is saying, "It wasn't a chaotic mess of varying opinions; there was enough objectivity for the winner to make some kind of sense."

But on the other hand, he's saying, "We all agreed about what was the good art and what was the bad art." And while getting too "it's all subjective" about evaluation of art tends to downplay the importance of technique that can be learned and taught, when a panel of judges and the people backstage agree "99 percent of the time" about what was good and what was bad, it raises the question of whether the art is very interesting.

 

The mentor (the Tim Gunn of the show) is art auctioneer Simon de Pury, and he shared these thoughts:

However, every time I have seen how the judges have judged, and each time I fully agreed with what they came out with. When I see a work of art, I instantly know whether I love it or not, and I think everybody has that. When you look at a work of art, you have a visceral, instant reaction when you look at it. What is great about this competition is that each artist is seen creating these works, but at the same time, has to articulate why he’s doing a work of art, so you see how it’s being created and it’s being articulated what thought process goes behind. And then, the consensus of the judges is produced and, as Dan has said, in most cases concurs fully with what your instinctive first reaction is.

So not only is he saying that he agreed every time with the judges' conclusion, but he's also saying that it generally isn't different from his "instinctive first reaction" is.

Now, before you start saying, "Well, duh, it's reality television's version of art, what did you expect?" please note that this isn't a bunch of artists who are the equivalent of the disastrous cooks on Hell's Kitchen. These people have demonstrated some seriousness about art; they're not just models who draw. This guy was a Presidential Scholar in the Arts. This guy was the youngest person awarded a grant by the Minnesota State Arts Board. Many of them have had shows or won awards. One of the judges is the Senior Art Critic for New York Magazine.

But it's a curious question: If they're finding it this easy to judge in a way that seems reliable in the sense that all the judges agree, then how provocative is the art? It doesn't mean the show won't be interesting, but does the confidence the judges have in the infallibility and ease of their judgments suggest that they're not giving the art a whole lot of thought?