“Work of Art: The Next Great Artist” and Reality Arts Programming
In light of the buzz around MTV’s new series The Exhibit: Finding The Next Great Artist, let’s look back at another art reality show.
On February 9th, MTV announced that the new television series The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist would premiere on March 3rd. The winner of the reality series will win $100,000 prize and a solo exhibition at the Hirshhorn Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. Cue the expected intellectual whinging about What This Says About Us As A Society.
But let’s not forget that this is not the first time an art reality competition show, featuring a grand prize of an exhibition at a major museum no less, has been tried. In fact, two different programs stand out in not-too-distant memory. In 2006, dealer and curator Jeffrey Deitch ran the program Artstar, a competition following artists in New York City as they attempted to win a solo show at Deitch’s gallery. The show was critically panned (and currently has a shocking 2.8/10 on IMDB, but evidently not enough to stop Pretty Matches Productions and Magical Elves Productions from starting a new art reality competition program in 2010.
Work of Art
In 2010, Bravo hosted Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, a reality competition show that pitted fourteen artists against each other to find the “next great artist.” Judges included auctioneer Simon de Pury and art critic Jerry Saltz, so there was some nominal art world support from the usual suspects (that is to say, dealers and irreverent jesters.) The winner would receive solo exhibition at the “World Famous” Brooklyn Museum and a cash prize of $100,000.
(So, with inflation, will the winner of The Exhibit actually be getting a pay cut?)
The winner of the show was Abdi Farah, a Baltimore-based painter and sculptor. Farah got interested in arts as a child and as a teen he attended Carver Center for Arts and Technology, a magnet high school for art in Towson, Maryland. He went on to receive his BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009 before filming Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.
The Show
Like similar reality television programs like Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model, the episode begins with the introduction of the prompt, we follow the contestants as they conceptualize their ideas, the judges walk around and offer some feedback, the contestants make some adjustments. At the end of the episode, they display their final pieces, the winner is announced, two contestants are left in the bottom and, eventually, one is saved and one goes home. Pretty standard reality TV stuff.
The challenges in each episode were based around themes or types of materials, and included creating a portrait of one of their other contestants, designing a book cover for classic novels, creating a piece of public art, and a nature piece using materials from a nature preserve in Connecticut. Some of them were a little more cringe-worthy than others (in this case, there was a challenge called “Art that Moves You” in which contestants made artworks based on their “Audi experiences,” as the automobile manufacturer was a sponsor of the program. It was an unbearable drinking game for how many times people said “Audi” in that episode.)
Few works from the show stick out in my mind today, with two exceptions. Firstly, a particularly incoherent performance art piece by Nao Bustamante that lead to her elimination in episode 4 which I still think about when I think about performance art to this day. And, secondly, one of Farah’s works: “I.E.D.” (Improvised Explosive Device):
Farah’s sculpture shows the heads of black men with an added wick that transforms them into bombs, which he describes as a commentary on society’s hardening of these men (watch Simon de Pury’s initial critique here.) Farah won the shocking art challenge.
He wasn’t always safe, though. Episode seven’s “Child’s Play” prompt asked contestants to make works using materials from the Children’s Museum of the Arts, and Farah landed in the bottom two. The next episode, “Opposites Attract,” had the contestants create artworks around a binary, and Abdi’s work placed him in the bottom two once again. This late performance dip did not stop Farah from winning episode nine’s “Natural Talents” challenge for making works using materials from a Connecticut nature preserve.
In the final episode, the contestants were tasked with designing their final exhibitions. Farah’s work focused on sculptures, drawings, and paintings dwelling on Black masculinity and the Black male body.
The Show’s Reception
I actually started watching the show because I was attending the same magnet high school that Farah attended, Carver Center for Arts and Technology. I was a junior at the time the show was airing in 2010. You can imagine that for a high school full of artists, having an alum be a successful career artist and win the show was quite exciting at the time.
The art world had a less enthusiastic reaction.
The New Yorker predictably sneered in their review of the Brooklyn Museum show that “The small show includes, among other works, two cast-resin male figures, a painting of a body bag, and a charcoal self-portrait depicting the artist levitating. It all smacks of student-grade stuff: full of portent, without signifying much. In other words, it’s perfect for television.”
Ouch.
But what about as reality television?
This review from Peter Plagens at Newsweek in 2010 sums up the problem of arts reality television programming:
What’s not so mysterious, however, is why Work of Art — though probably destined for the ratings graveyard — has made it to our LCD screens: what we don’t understand, we reduce to a contest. Have no idea what makes a good businessperson? Watch the Donald summarily fire the ones who aren’t. Can’t tell crème brûlée from a cheeseburger? Look at those Top Chefs try to out-cleaver one another. Even the solitude of bass fishing has been ruined by its own TV tournament. And on and on, through art-auction prices to novelists trying to climb the Amazon ladder, and the adrenalized warblers on Idol. The pernicious bonus is, of course, that we get to see the losers dissed and feel as though, somehow, we might be more talented than they are. When the ax finally falls on Work of Art’s first victim, it’s Chow who delivers the bad news with the brutality we crave (and recognize from a certain other Bravo contest show): “Your art doesn’t work for us. It’s time for you to go.” Well, when television treats aspiring artists like combatants in the octagon, somebody has to do some smiting.
The ratings were not necessarily at graveyard level after season one, it must be said. The show went on to have a second season in 2011, won by Iranian-American artist Kymia Nawabi, but then was not renewed for a third season. At least IMDb thinks it was more successful than Artstar, with a respectable 7.5/10 rating.
Farah After the Show
But did the show end up finding the “Next Great Artist?”
Since the show, Farah has continued as a working artist. Besides his solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Farah has shown around the United States at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Margulies Collection, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 2016, as well as abroad at the Institute for American Universities in Aix en Provence, France.
Much of Farah’s work since the show has focused on the relationship between race, gender, and sports. From his 2020 artist’s statement:
By ruminating on the players and surrounding accoutrement of high school football in New Orleans, I hope to unpack my tenuous relationship to stereotypical notions of masculinity, in particular Black American masculinity. Much of my work incorporates the sewing of used clothes and fabrics, often in colors and sheens reductively described as feminine. The embrace of this “woman’s work” honors the single mothers that raised so many of us, and serves as a necessary foil to the hyperbolic performance of machismo on the football field.
Farah has also continued his education, attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and receiving is MFA in painting from Tulane University in 2018. In 2021 he held artist-in-residence positions at Black Rock Senegal and the Joan Mitchell Center. Farah has also gone on to a respectable teaching career, including a visiting lectureship at Harvard University in 2022 and a visiting assistant professorship at Tulane University.
What Are You Afraid Of?
The hostile reactions within the art world to Artstar, Work of Art, and The Exhibit are utterly fascinating to me. So much of the rhetoric of the backlash takes one of a few forms:
- This won’t launch anyone’s careers.
- This isn’t what art should be about.
- This is an embarrassment on behalf of the Hirshhorn.
Let’s take this in turns. Will this show actually launch anyone’s careers? Well, given the history of programs like this, it certainly won’t turn anyone into an overnight Damien Hirst or Yayoi Kusama. It is no secret that reality television is virtually useless at launching careers — fans have long discussed that winners of America’s Next Top Model (which in many ways shaped the format for this kind of reality programming) did not necessarily go on to become superstars in modeling. Relatively few American Idol or The Voice winners go on to become successful singers, but that does not stop these programs from being immensely popular.
In an interesting turn of events, some have said that the most successful alum of Work of Art was not the winner, Abdi Farah, but actually 2022 MacArthur Foundation Grant recipient Amanda Williams, who was the first contestant eliminated from the show.
Let’s turn to objection number two: defending the virtue of art. “This isn’t what art should be about.” Pray, tell me, what is art about? There’s this fascinating double-standard at play where artists are allowed to comment on celebrity culture, but to actually use it to gain status and notoriety is bad? Do you want artists to have careers, or are you too wedded to the notion of a tortured, starving artist?
I feel as though some are defending the “honor” of the art world, of artists to get successful “the old fashioned way,” when in any other scenario they would be readily admitting that success in the arts has nothing to do with talent and everything to do with connections and marketing. So, are we mad that the reality television program is just more blatant about it?
Finally, some have questioned the Hirshhorn’s involvement in the show. As a Smithsonian institution, the suggestion seems to be that the institution should be above reality television. As if that has stopped us from electing a reality television star to the highest office in our country.
This is very much tied into the previous notion of what art “should be about,” but let’s be clear. The primary failures of museums today are:
- Failure to adequately address museum’s complicity in oppression through investments, collections practices, and exhibitions.
- Failure to protect and provide for particularly front-line workers in the museum world, especially in terms of wages and safe working conditions.
- Failure of community engagement and outreach that perpetuates a sense of elitism in museums.
Note that “degrades the arts through association with popular media” is not on the list, and if it makes even your top five, I’d be surprised. The show has the potential to increase outreach and community engagement, which is (I’m sure) why it was green-lit in the first place. So, to the art world, let me give this gentle reminder: reality television is about entertaining viewers and selling advertising. It isn’t about you.
Will this actually find the “next great artist”? Probably not, so here’s hoping it makes good reality television.
Hi, I’m Mary! I’m an art researcher who loves teaching about art. If you enjoyed this piece and want to hear more about writing, art history, education, and museums, consider giving me a follow. Thank you for your support!
