Work of Art is Eliminating Artists in Height Order

by Will Brand on November 4, 2011 · 2 comments WANGA

It's true.

Sometime during the first minute of this week's episode of Work of Art, my TV's closed captioning simply said: “[All groaning]”. That's a fitting reaction to most of the episode.

No two ways about it: this week was incredibly boring. The challenge (work with kids) was unoriginal, the guest judge (producer Sarah Jessica Parker) was a punt, and the elimination (Tewz) was overdue. There was crying, but no tits. In light of this, we'll stick to a few general observations:

  1. Seriously, they’re eliminating people in height order. Ugo is at least six feet, because that’s how tall men are in generic female fantasies, and he left in the first episode. Kathryn, the second elimination, doomed herself: she’s marginally girl-tall, but she kept wearing enormous heels. In the double elimination, Leon (~5’11”) and Jazz-minh (~5’10”) each had an easy two inches on the next-tallest boy and girl, respectively. Tewz, Bayete, and Dusty are all roughly the same height, and of those, Tewz is already gone; meanwhile, Bayete has had an erratic run on the show, and Dusty’s luck in this week’s challenge  – he’s a schoolteacher, the challenge was to work with kids – was pointedly not enough to earn immunity next week. What is the meaning of this? It should be noted that both the executive producer of the show – Sarah Jessica Parker – and the principal judge – Jerry Saltz – are short. Is there an agenda at work?
  2. Sara Jimenez's kid, in this week’s challenge, has a quilt-like collage of words she loves. On it, written out over brightly-colored washes, are “Pirates”, “Bunny”, “Hope”, “Bacon”, “Pirates” again, and, right at the center, “Offended”.
  3. Lola's “my mom dated Al Pacino for ten years” backstory, as recounted in this week’s episode, was no surprise to diligent AFC readers because we broke that shit.
  4. Not one person in the house seems to have noticed, over the course of four episodes, that Tewz’s name is misspelled on their blackboard. I think he missed his chance to say something about that.
  5. Sucklord mourned the elimination of the deaf contestant by calling for a moment of silence.
  6. Kymia’s kid this week had a painting of a carrot lying on a beach. A painting of a carrot lying on a beach, with the sun shining on the water, and there’s a fence that’s out of frame. Oh, and also out of frame, there’s the woman this carrot just killed. Word of advice, kid: don’t bury the lede.
  7. While trying to find a full track of the excellent “Bad Art Bassoon” score, I found the website of the musical collective that produces all the scores for Bravo’s reality shows. Craving another listen to that sick Top Chef cold open? Need background music for an event in which you sit in judgement of others? Check it out. “Bad Art Bassoon” is, sadly, not to be found, but we’re trying to get it uploaded because we fight for you.
  8. Bill Powers said Dusty’s piece was not so much a “portrait” as a “visual biography”, because it incorporated images and subjects important to his kid’s personality and history, and attempted to depict a specific vision rather than an objective representation. What Bill is forgetting here is the entire history of portraiture.
  9. The winners of this round were very, very clearly the artists who played the game the best, and stuck close to the challenge parameters. This isn’t surprising at all, but it seems like the contestants are having trouble getting this.
  10. Tewz: You mix the concrete, then pour it in the mold. Shame on the other artists for not helping him with this.
  11. China: You’re trying too hard. The judging outfit looked like you were wearing, in AFC Editorial Director Paddy Johnson’s words, “a special backpack!”
  12. Sucklord is fantastic when he goes on tirades; it’s just the right amount of faux-dissidence to create good TV without distracting from the show as a whole.
  13. I don’t know who writes Bill Powers’s puns, but they’ve gotta stop this.

{ 2 comments }

Lisa Klow November 8, 2011 at 10:32 am

Why wasn’t Dusty eliminated in the previous episode? Oh, he teaches kids and this is a kids-art challenge. Got it.

Lauren M. November 9, 2011 at 3:45 pm

Next season: Cesar Millan reads the energy of dogs from Cirque du Soleil and has the artists interpret their auras and misbehaviorz.

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