This season Bravo introduces a reality television series, Work
of Art, billed as a contest to find the "next great artist." The
show collects 14 trained and untrained participants, all of whom
responded to a call for submissions by submitting zany
autobiographical videos, screened by three judges: critic Jerry
Saltz, dealer/advisor Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, and dealer Bill
Powers. That this show so enthusiastically adopts the structures
of another show, Bravo's hit Project Runway, makes it seem like
a program about conventionality—and whether or not the art world
craves it. Only the first episode is available for screening.
Since the onset of video art, countless forays have been made
into television, and specifically reality TV, but none before
have so scrupulously mimicked the conventions of mainstream.
Work of Art basically squishes art into the task-structure of
Bravo's hit Project Runway, in which designers compete to
execute themed contests. By comparison, Jeffrey Deitch's never-
really-seen 2005–2006