The Sarah Jessica Parker art reality contest was casting in New York recently. Like all reality shows they seem to be attracting serial fame seekers from all sides of the art world whether they’re painters or auction house owners. The New York Times chats with them all:
Nick Gilhool, a casting director for Magical Elves, the production company that created “Top Chef” and “Project Runway” and is helping produce the art series, said that judges and casting officials had seen a remarkably wide range of artists, from “hobbyist Sunday-painter types” to 20-somethings just out of art school to older artists who had met with some success but whose careers had languished for one reason or another. (One artist at the Miami audition flew in from Thailand.)
He declined to reveal the identity of the judges, though he described them as curators, artists, dealers, teachers and collectors “whose names people in the art world would certainly recognize.” The lone judge brought out for interviews was Simon de Pury, chairman of the auction house Phillips de Pury. He said that he did not hesitate when asked to become involved, and that his hope for the program was that it would help penetrate the air of “hermetic inapproachability” surrounding contemporary art. […]
“I think there’s a reason why this really hasn’t been done before: because there are a lot of pitfalls,” Mr. Gilhool said. (In 2006 Gallery HD, a now-defunct high-definition channel, broadcast “Artstar,” an eight-episode reality show in which contestants produced works for a group exhibition at Deitch Projects, the SoHo gallery. One of its finalists, Virgil Wong, a New York conceptual artist, was in line Saturday to try out for Bravo’s show.)
By the end of Saturday’s cattle call almost 400 hopefuls had turned up. About a third of the way back in the line, Jesse Edwards, a 31-year-old painter and ceramics artist from Seattle who has been living hand to mouth since moving to New York this summer, opened his portfolio to show a picture of a work that the producers might keep handy as a cautionary reminder: a ceramic television with an image of painted apples as its screen. The piece was titled “Still Life Channel.”
“It’s a snoozer of a channel, the Still Life Channel,” Mr. Edwards said, but then quickly showed a picture of another ceramic television, this one with a mirror as its screen, titled “Your Personal Moment of Fame.”
“That channel can be whatever you want it to be,” he said. “It can be great. It’s all up to you.”
Hundreds Try Out for Art-World Reality Show (New York Times)
