‘a while ago, A study showed that the strongest sign to make it as an artist today is not talent or a master’s degree in fine arts or group performance. Most important, the study says, is validation: how quickly an artist can gain institutional support in the form of a solo exhibition at a major gallery or museum. Everything else follows. Apparently there are few other ladders to climb.
That explains MTV and the Smithsonian Channel’s latest reality show, The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist, a show that turns advertising into the ultimate prize. In six episodes, seven emerging artists compete for $100,000 and an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. The contenders range from rising stars (Baseera Khan, reviewed in Artforum, Frieze and the New Yorker) to rising stars. -and-come (Misha Kahn, whose “Watermelon Party” was showcased in 2021 at Dries Van Noten’s LA flagship store) to the established but overlooked (Frank Buffalo Hyde, whose work is exhibited by the Institute of American Indian Physician in Santa Fe). ).
In a well-known formula, artists are given several hours to create an “assignment” following a specific theme – gender, social media – and their work is judged by a rotating panel of judges, including artist Adam Pendleton and author Kenny Schachter criticized. After six weeks, an artist reaches a level of visibility that normally only mega galleries can provide. For artists who can’t rely on traditional platforms to always work to their advantage, the show offers an escape from a disadvantaged gallery system and an opportunity for them to expand their audience.
But these gladiator fights in the culture arena are a tacit confirmation of the destructive belief that culture is a blood sport. Artists already compete for support, resources and attention, and The Exhibit only exacerbates the problem by being presented as entertainment.
This is not the first show of this kind. In 2010, Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, produced by the company behind Project Runway and Top Chef, drew a nice parallel between the internal drama of the art world and familiar conceits of reality TV. The show also offered a $100,000 cash prize, as well as a one-man show at the Brooklyn Museum, where a trustee resigned in protest, dismissing the museum’s perception as “a party spot and a hub of celebrities.Critic Jerry Saltz wrote an apology for his role as a judge in the first season, describing it as “bad for art(He subsequently returned for the following season.)
After winning the second and final season, Kymia Nawabi said hyperallergic: “Unfortunately, the show hasn’t really influenced my career (yet). I thought some galleries were interested in my work: no. I thought I would make a lot of new sales: no. Despite decent reviews “work of art” is cancelled and followed by the even shorter “Gallery Girls,” which followed various ups and downs in New York’s glamorous gallery scene, tellingly ending with an artist choosing a job with a luxury janitor over an internship at a respected art consultancy.
The Exhibition wisely keeps its institutional affiliation at a calculated distance. Melissa Chiu, director of Hirshhorn and the show’s head judge, opens the competition by calling the contemporary art museum “the wild child” of the Smithsonian. Presented by MTV’s Dometi Pongo, it’s certainly a more daring and irreverent show than the lavish close-ups of wet paint and brooding galleries lead you to believe, more in keeping with the museum’s high-profile initiatives with contemporary artists such asBarbara Kruger And Nicholas feast. After less brutal crafting tournaments like The Great Pottery Throw Down and Blown Away, the show aims to create a fun atmosphere ahead of the weekly eliminations. In its heartfelt embrace of sportsmanship, The Exhibit seeks to renegotiate a parasocial relationship with reality TV and bring some much-needed frivolity to the rare and often off-limits realm of high art.
But within 10 minutes, factions and villains appear as predictable tropes. Emerging artists fall into MFA jargon as they vilify the self-taught who find camaraderie and motivation to be pushed out of the mainstream; Sculptors and mixed media artists pit painters and draftsmen against each other in a gentle parody of centuries of academic debate. Local painter Frank Buffalo Hyde, for example, criticizes the attention given to young, institutionally sanctioned artists over those who have long since “done the job”—a fair criticism, though one whose superficial treatment here attacks the artist and an old man establishes. Conflict.
Rivalry can be generative. It can sustain creativity over long careers and push the boundaries of artistic experimentation. But that sense of competition is a frustrating contradiction to a number of the week format that expects artists to create new (and readable) work on demand.
Entrants are judged on their originality, quality of execution and strength of concept – a set of criteria so universal as to be essentially worthless. In the first criterion, which features works on the theme of gender, Misha Kahn is rejected for an overly ambitious resin sculpture of a banana (“a new toy,” says Schachter). Visibly unfazed, Pendleton dismisses Jamaal Barber’s vague Cubist charcoal portrait of a bisexual nanny as “superfluous” and berates Jillian Mayer’s hormone-inducing incense for “failing to energize the room”. Not only is this a well-known criticism, but it also lacks a sense of vision and trajectories for the subjects. If The Exhibit’s own judges don’t even believe the show’s promise that the museum can play kingmaker for a new crop of artists, why should we?
Any competitor could have gotten $100,000 for less than the production budget, and the cash price of the show doesn’t even account for inflation with “Work of Art.” Baseera Khan, The Exhibit’s most established cast member, has already received a good one solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum. What can you win? The award ceremony is only one work: the winner’s sixth assignment for the season finale. While it’s not the “exhibition of a lifetime” promised in the trailer, the shrine of spectacle is certainly, in Pongo’s words, “career-defining.”
Source: LA Times