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Stroke of genius? Artists to mix it up on reality TV By Alan G. Artner Tribune art critic June 1, 2006 A week after the season finales of "American Idol" and "America's Next Top Model," the United States is a nation in withdrawal. "So You Think You Can Dance" gives a temporary fix, and "Big Brother 7" is coming. But those are known quantities for which the country has developed tolerance, whereas what millions really need is a new source of stupefaction, and Thursday Gallery HD, a high-definition channel on the Dish Network, obliges. "Artstar" is an eight-week reality-TV series in which eight artists, age 22 to 67, vie for an exhibition at a popular New York gallery. All involved should be ashamed of themselves, but, hey, dude, it's, like, a new age and, basically, here's something amazing that will resonate, totally and absolutely. The trailer and hourlong pilot shows more than 300 hopefuls lining up for blocks around Deitch Projects in SoHo, where former banker Jeffrey Deitch, resplendent in custom-made suit and Le Corbusier eyeglass frames, will assemble six other popinjays to trim a herd that is, by turns, restive and clueless. Deitch's gallery has been described as "sensationalist -- with a tendency toward carnality," and nowadays those are words of praise both in the art world and on reality TV. "Bring on the controversy," says one of the contestants. But the show provides only the goofiness outsiders believe is peculiar to contemporary art and the bitchiness that is characteristic of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy." The highlight in the winnowing process is a woman who cries and scribbles, later to declare, "It's what I am. I'm art. I'm nothing else." She nearly is matched by one girl who says she just ate her purse in Grand Central Station and another who confirms the authenticity of her art by swearing she was "literally passed out in Paris for 10 days." The judges are even better. Deitch says he needs no more than 15 seconds to understand an artist's work and believes that "artists look like their art." Photo director Cary Leitzes recognizes a contestant from having smoked a joint together. Critic David Rimanelli -- winner of the Steven Cojocaro award for vain and empty chatter -- likes that one woman had a nervous breakdown because then, under the stress of competition, "she could fall apart." The eight chosen artists range from a male retiree who calls himself "a basement artist" to a female former messenger in her mid-20s who "was tired of working really crappy jobs." The kind of art they create does not matter. As Deitch has elsewhere said, he began in the 1970s pushing "life as an art medium," and "it's amazing to me that it's still what I'm doing." So the way the contestants look and act is as important as what they make. By the end of the pilot, one had been complimented on his boots and another praised for his Prada shirt. A preview showed the female puppet wrangler, 30, saying angrily [about the retiree], "That old man is going to get it" and everybody waiting to begin a group project because the female video artist, 29, was gluing feathers to her face. Can reality TV get any better? |