Gallery Girls Episode 5: I Didn’t See a Vagina in It, But Spencer’s Boss Did

by Ben Macaulay on September 12, 2012 · 3 comments Gallery Girls

For weeks, we’ve been watching Angela mis-prepare for her show, dragging her feet between meaningless snapshots and letting her external locus of responsibility take care of the rest. A venue has finally agreed to her terms (showing unseen work from an unknown artist for no money), but their schedule only leaves Angela with a few days to have other people print her work.

The show is named after Angela’s blog, Totally Not Depressed, and is held in a shoe store. Much of the work depicts people in everyday situations, a theme yet untouched by photography. Having failed to find enough everyday situations, Angela fills the rest of the show with pictures of her friends and a shot she took in Paris to make sure we all know about her trip to Paris. She describes her work as portraying “this whole state of denial that [Angela and the similarly deluded] live in,” and when that doesn’t work she churns out some almost-art-approved purple prose. “It’s really just teetering on the precipice of moroseness,” explains Angela, admitting her inability to effectively portray moroseness.

We knew there were breasts in here somewhere.

Angela is about to congratulate herself on a job, well, done, when Chantal insults her work. She finds photography “easy to manipulate,” though not easy enough to prevent her from handing a picture of her vagina to Spencer’s boss. Angela is heartbroken, but it’s okay because she’ll probably get bored of photography in three months.

Amy’s having a dinner party this week, which at the very least saves us from watching another episode about Liz.  Amy and her brother burn some chicken, then finish their meals before the other dinner guests arrive. Only Angela, Kerri and Maggie come to the party, and the three of them spend the entire time bashing the opulence of Amy’s apartment, which is less acceptable than the opulence of their own apartments. Kerri derides the “extravagant upholstery things” on Amy’s walls. “I work for everything I have,” she says, wiping the soot from her forehead after a gruelling day in the art mines.

Meanwhile, Maggie takes Ryan to her hometown of Easton, PA for a weekend with her family. It’s revealed that Ryan said “I love you” to her mother before he did to her, cementing another awkward note on the bassoon solo that is Maggie’s life.  After the visit (and two years into Eli Klein’s 30-day commitment), Maggie resolves to find a better job. Her parents don’t understand her current gallery job, and it would really stick it to Eli; these are totally healthy and mature reasons to seek employment.

The first stop on her search is the Brenda Taylor gallery. The gallery’s fairy godmother tests Maggie with a series of three trials: talking about a painting, identifying a gigantic vagina, and being in a room with some photographs without saying anything stupid. Of course, Maggie fails all three.

“I didn’t see a vagina in it, but she did.” —Maggie, lacking the ability to see genitals in art, arguably the most important element of connoisseurship.

The Bernarducci Meisel Gallery has a simpler interview for Maggie, questioning her about her knowledge of a second language, familiarity with graphic design, and personal growth during the internship at Eli Klein Fine Art. She has none of the three, and inarticulately changes the subject by talking about her nails. Maggie knows she’s got this one in the bag.

End of Century’s been open for five episodes now, and hasn’t managed to sell a single piece of art. Unable to stretch the Brooklyn girls’ inaction into any more scenes of Chantal getting fondled at yoga studios or Claudia making a worried face, Bravo’s producers leaf through their Rolodex to find an artist who’s actually sold a piece before.

The girls find themselves at the nearby studio of the Sucklord, toy artist and antiheartthrob of Work of Art’s second season. Sucklord’s mildly off-color pop art and the skin-deep concepts behind it are too much for the delicate Claudia, but Chantal convinces her to host an Occupy Wall Street-themed performance piece and a series of Sucklord’s signature action figures at End of Century.

The performance is simple enough; Sucklord and his friends play on Occupy’s 1%-vs-99% concept by asking the eventgoers to wait outside in the rain unless they’re willing to make a purchase. The actors, donning masks from Transformers, protest with picket signs and are sprayed with paint by an authority figure, before being welcomed in by Sucklord. The performance sends Claudia and Chantal into a full-blown panic, as the two have never experienced performance art before and would prefer that the group “yell in [their] inside voices.”

The End of Century girls miss the point of the performance entirely, but after receiving boatloads of cash, they begin to realize that regular people aren’t so bad at all. It’s once again asserted that Sucklord has a soft spot, and the gallery lives to see another month.

Next time on Gallery Girls: Liz gets a bikini wax in preparation for Art Basel.

 

{ 3 comments }

Carolina A. Miranda August 14, 2012 at 12:57 am

omg, wannabe pseudo gallerinas that are really OC housewives in disguise? how is it that i’m missing this piece of quality programming?

Matt August 14, 2012 at 11:00 am

This sentence in paragraph three: “Brooklynite Angela claims Carrie Bradshaw as her inspiration, despite her hostility toward the cast members who at all resemble Bradshaw and toward the Upper East Side in general.”

It makes me feel dyslexic.

ohcomeoooooon August 14, 2012 at 12:48 pm

Really really need my neighbor to get her cable turned back on so I can start watching this.

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