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Bored, Naked, DesperateWhat happens when artists go on reality TV.

By Dushko Petrovich

"I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is 'In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.' " –Andy Warhol

The new show ARTSTAR (Gallery HD, Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET) enticingly promises to marry the sensibility of Warhol's Factory to reality TV, as contestants work toward a coveted spot at one of New York's leading galleries. The first shock is that nobody did this sooner—history will note that it took the New York gallery scene 14 years to hook up with TV's avant-garde, The Real World, which debuted on MTV in 1992. If Andy Warhol turned fame into an art form, and reality TV has turned fame into a game, what happens when the two collide?

ARTSTAR starts off looking like a line at a soup kitchen. Of the hundreds of contestants who showed up in bad weather to audition, many mocked their own desperation. That saves us the trouble, but gallery owner Jeffrey Deitch, the show's impresario, might have overstated the quality of the contestants when he observed that "In the 1970s … no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show." After watching people cry, bare cleavage, scribble wildly, and even use PowerPoint to vie for a slot on ARTSTAR, it seemed that self-respecting artists might still be declining Deitch's invitation.

The show isn't helped by its poor editorial decisions. Once Deitch picked his eight contestants, he decided to forgo the handy elimination structure shared by almost all reality shows. A less competitive framework must have sounded more pleasingly documentary, but the plot suffers right along with the characters. It's hard to tell, for example, if all eight of the artists have become Artstars simply by being chosen or if they are somehow competing to become an Artstar. The would-be Artstars are definitely grateful for the opportunity, but they keep saying, in the private asides, that they don't exactly know what they're doing on the show.

Neither do we. After two hour-long episodes of ARTSTAR, not a single art object has been made. The Artstars mostly spend their on-air time around a boardroom table worrying about their marching orders, hearing about more auditions (naked ones!), and getting mini-lectures on recent art history. They do literally get marching orders, as Deitch decides the contestants should collaborate on an "art parade" rather than have a standard gallery show. But what's a wood sculptor to do? And the rest of the cast, despite some less-than-conventional art practices, clearly had their hearts set on a conventional gallery show. But not so fast, Artstars. Like Donald Trump, Deitch is the boss.

But unlike his savvy precursor, Deitch is mostly charmless. A serious fault, as he's the real focus of the show. He even does the voice-over narration. The second episode starts with a mini-documentary about Deitch's gallery-world ascent, with superstar artists and dealers such as Jeff Koons and Mary Boone providing testimonials, and Deitch himself explaining his business ideas. Product placement abounds. The Deitch Projects logo, which is a reappropriation of the Brillo Box Andy Warhol famously appropriated back in 1964, pops up often. Instead of Brillo, Deitch's box says ... "Deitch." Occasionally, instead of Deitch, it says "HYPE." At times, ARTSTAR feels like an upscale infomercial.

The real products, of course, are the Artstars themselves. They are diverse and competent people who seem hardworking and nice, so it's hard to say what's wrong with them, except that they are dull. Much of their speech sounds like prerehearsed art-school talk—discussing "issues of gender and representation"—and they come across as docile in their opportunism. They frankly discuss their practical reasons for being on the show, and you feel for them. The problem is that none of them want to make good television. They want "budgets." They want to be able to support themselves only with art. They want a good gallery to promote them. To get all this, they keep saying they need "access." But what will they do to get it? And will it be entertaining?

At the end of the third episode, the contestants are invited to be a part of a spectacle that involves putting naked supermodels in public spaces. The Artstars can audition (that is, undress) to be in the performance. Two of them, a cross-dresser and a woman who glues feathers on her face, are excited by the opportunity. The cross-dresser, still clothed, even fools the judge, who has to rescind the invitation upon discovering that the cross-dresser "can tuck really well." The rest of the Artstars stand by, either uninvited or unimpressed, and a few wonder aloud about the value of the naked supermodel project. None of them wonder about the value of the show they're on, but stay tuned: Like the home audience, the Artstars are getting restless.

Just in time, Episode 3 features a party. We glimpse some bra-less schmoozing, some vodka-guzzling, and a lot of nicely dressed people standing around. "Not a lot of art is going to get made tonight," concedes Deitch, but of course that's normal for a party. What's weird, and sneaks by without comment, is how little artwork matters to the show. Future episodes promise more art and more drama, but, fancy party notwithstanding, the show is off to a complacent start.

ARTSTAR's appearance represents a funny stage in the so-called dematerialization of the art object, which was heralded as progress by such artists as Joseph Kosuth and Yoko Ono, who hoped to end the commodification of art by eliminating the object. Radical artists once dreamed of a purified realm of concepts, but thanks in part to business-savvy showmen like Jeffrey Deitch, the dematerialized scene that ensued has turned into a kind of circus. Watching ARTSTAR, you get the funny feeling that what triumphantly replaced the commodification of objects ended up as the commodification of people.

But the problem with ARTSTAR isn't the bad reality so much as the bad reality TV. So far, there is none of the trashy drama, smart editing, and pure sadism that gives the genre its nerve. Instead, ARTSTAR gives us all the awkward self-promotion and conflicted monologues of the art world, without the art. The poor Artstars, meanwhile, are caught in an embarrassing trap: They think that notoriety is some kind of precondition for art making, an activity they postpone as they are finding out what they should do to get noticed. It's painful to watch them get it so backward, but not to worry: In 15 minutes, they'll get their privacy back.

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Dushko Petrovich is a painter and the editor of the journal Paper Monument.
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Remarks from the Fray:

ArtStars sounds like a reality show that skewed a bit too far towards reality. Most of the people I've known who style themselves as artists seem to fit the mold described in the article, that is, they're people who do more talking about art than they do making it. Same for drama - lots of talk, little real drama, except perhaps in some idealized daydream of what their life could be.

And it sounds like the kingpin of the show, Dietch, is nothing but a wannabe designer rather than an artist.

--Gilker_Kimmel

(To reply, click here.)

I was a little intrigued when I read the article, so I googled Artstar. Sure enough there is a website; barely. There is one group photo of the artists, with a link to Deitch's website. There were no profiles of the artists, no synopsis of episodes that have aired, nothing to encourage me to give a damn. I understand that there is a certain elitism that is at play here, but then why bother with such a project at all then?

All in all the pictures of events strike me as a little desperate to prove what a good time everyone is having. People are trying a bit too hard to be different, to show how important the art is, to be avante garde.

--Chauncy

(To reply, click here.)

Deitch is the star and that's why the show sucks.

Amazingly this reflects the non-television reality in which Deitch operates normally. And an artworld in which dweeb gallerists are the real stars will make Mark Kostabi look like the titan of a departed golden age by comparison.

What else is wrong? Is it:

--the collapse of the magazines and the disappearance of criticism that is both credible and intelligible?

--the polarization of all culture into the same stupid us and them game played on the internet?

--the Miami/Basel and other fairs that all cater to the same cadre of bored rich idiots in Gulfstreams who now can't be bothered to support a local scene any place?

--the cumulative suicidal boredom that comes from forty years of continuous post-minimalism?

-- all the real new work's coming from Korea, China, Mexico and Argentina, and the Gulfstream crowd is beginning to figure this out, so their continued support of ANY American art is not to be counted on? After all, why should they bother supporting a bunch of overpriced Chelsea galleries when they can get hotter, better-hyped work in Beijing, Seoul or Buenos Aires?

In fact, the arrival of the new York scene on tee vee is one way of announcing that it's just a banking and redistribution point now, like London. They SAY Brooklyn's hot, but have you seen any art that's made there? ..... I didn't think so.

--melvil

(To reply, click here.)

If the starving artist cliche wasn't already so overused, it would certainly apply here. Notoriety might not be essential to creating art, but creating art isn't the difficult part. Selling art is tough.

Since we no longer have a lot of wealthy and eccentric patrons, and the federal government isn't a major player is supporting the arts, a working artist has to sell artwork to earn a living. There's where fame and its red-headed stepchild notoriety come in handy.

--Tonto_Goldberg

(To reply, click here.)

(6/17)

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