Double ughs, Michelle and Lola. Lola rationalizing about cutting in lines as a child because her impatient mother could not wait shows that her inclination for bullying is inherited. Her annoyance with Kymia because she is polite and has manners reveals just how little she cares about her own character, but then, “mean” girls aren’t about caring, they are about, demeaning, or ignoring others to make their selves feel superior. Michelle and Lola sitting around laughing at their own poor behavior, buying in to each others self righteous folly, is revealed in the content of their piece. Once you get behind the surface and imagine yourself the voyeur as they suggest, you are confronted with devious behavior and debauchery. This is taken further by deliberately and repeatedly trying to sabotage others work as they giggled with joy at their “mischievous” actions. They should have been eliminated for that. Granted, yes in real life, street art is tagged, but the act of tagging is different from the act of creating a work of art that is about to be judged for a tv show. They make the Sucklord look classy. While I liked the sort of no holds barred approach at letting their imaginations go, the whimsey, the silly, the contrary-ness of their choice of imagery, the actual art work fell flat. Difficult to see, poorly composed and not big or bold enough to fit the scale of the wall. Visually or conceptually they didn’t pull it off.

Speaking of Sucklord, the most entertaining aspect of the show has now been eliminated, there won’t be quite as many laugh out loud moments.

Young and Dusty’s piece was cool, but did not really have a street art vibe. I liked the way they put there differences aside to really come together in a very compatible way, but I like Kymia’s and Sarah J’s piece best. The big bold imagery fit the space, was interesting, and clearly something was uprooted.

I hope Dusty wins and I can’t wait to see him scrunched into young’s short shorts LOL!!

I loved the little white dress that China Chow wore for them to paint on. I had to kind of suck my teeth at Simone de Prury’s attempt at being cool by adding to the sucklord’s boob spots, oh brother :b hahah

funny

During the critique, when Peregine glanced askew and sneered that “Mark could have given her more” I saw that not only did she not want to take responsibility for her weak piece but she wanted to let Mark take the blame, at that moment I lost interest in her winning. Conniving, manipulation and deceit ala “Survivor” and Miles Mendenhall, puts a bad name to good art, were there any. While the judges apparently don’t see the goings on behind the scenes the public does and its hard to separate the art work from the artist behavior and attitude and one hopes that decency prevails. Because of its game show like format, its a matter of luck and one good piece, even Abdi stands a chance. And since Abdi and Nicole are the only two who havn’t tried to be underhanded my hope is that they will strike it lucky with an outrageously good idea and maybe even a strong work of art.

Mark seems unpretentious and allowed himself to be vulnerable at Peregine’s bidding. China Chow’s tears at the end probably had to do with recognizing Mark’s sincere effort and then being shot down, not sure, but for her to shake that icy demeanor had to mean she was touched…And honestly, while the heaven and hell topic was trite to begin with, Marks piece worked better to me than Peregrine’s grommetted, glittered gunky cigarette butts of a mess.

Jaclyn’s piece was suppose to be about masturbating while standing up but her posture read something else to me. The limp hand shrouding her pubic area and her pose with head thrown back appears to be an act of complete surrender and maybe shame (as a fig leaf would do, covering nudity) rather than control. This is after all what happens with an orgasm, a complete surrender of bodily function. I would be interested in what scholarly feminists in the know would say about that. It seems that the meekness of it in contrast to a powerful stance and confrontational stare, in the nude or not, might have been more effective if trying to convey feminine “control”. And oddly enough, Mile’s piece, which was suppose to convey masculine/out of control, showed literal, violent penetration, think what you will, but he did penetrate that wall with his fist.

As you know I am watching this every week and can’t help but weigh in, cuz its fun.

“Last night on Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the artists entered the gallery to find judge China Chow standing in front of a bunch of question marks. She produces a suitcase and asks everyone to pick a paint tube out of it. Each paint tube contains a word or phrase: some examples were monster, love, good vs. evil, and time travel. The artists travel to the other side of the question marks and find book covers of six classic novels: Alice in Wonderland, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Pride & Prejudice, The Time Machine, Dracula, and Frankenstein.

This week, each artist must create a cover for a classic book. Kathryn Court, president and publisher at Penguin books, came to talk about how important artwork on a book cover is. The winning design will be published on a penguin book which will be for sale all over America. They have until midnight that night to complete their work.” Mike Bandy

It kind of bugged me that the artists were so impressed by the possibility of being published that they stressed way more than in the previous episodes. I dunno it changes things, also, it was for a commercial assignment, so all the import given it sort of negates the fine artist.

What struck me with this episode was just how much the participants had to be more than an artist, they really need to be a jack of all trades, And given the assignment one needs some graffic design experience with typography.

Poor Judith, she really was acting a little crrrazzy. The pressure must have been getting to her. I learned this morning that Jane Austen would write letters to her daughter backwards. Had the judges known that, Judith’s piece would have had a lot more credibility and maybe she would not have been booted off.

Jaclyn’s piece was weak and and her sniffling after the critique was annoying. She seems to want to use her womanly wiles more than her brain, but most artist’s know you have to be thick skinned in the art world, I keep thinking of Tom Hanks saying, “crying, there’s no crying in baseball!” Well, crying under those circumstances is not impressive and I think Jaclyn is far too impressed with her body and it stops her from coming up with good ideas. Putting a semi nude, contemporary figure holding a black hat like in the movie “All That Jazz” is not a good idea for a period piece Jane Austen novel.

I have been disappointed with the critiques from the judges and the artists, some are harsh and mean spirited and in one instance, China Chow made an unnecessarily disdainful expression and her comment was snobbish. Snobbery in the art world is far to prevalent and not helpful. Giving constructive criticism without sentimentality or useless emotion, or rude remarks takes skill and intelligence and can be very helpful for the artist and also for the viewer to understand the elimination rationale.

I was anxious to see the interpretations for Alice in Wonderland, disappointing!

I can’t say there was any one piece that I thought was spectacular although, I have to say, Miles piece was very clever and visually attractive. I had to laugh out loud at the comment Nao made, maybe Miles will read for his piece, ha! (he literally read the whole book “Frankenstein” before doing his piece).