Your cast, ladies and gentlemen.
  • Your cast, ladies and gentlemen.
The first-ever episode of the Bravo reality TV show "Work of Art" was last night, and you can rate the works the artists created in their challenges, or listen to the lady who was kicked off bitch about it (in an I'm-at-total-peace-with-this-and-on-a-journey sort of way, I'm sure), on the "Finishing Touches" part of the web site here.

The show was horrible. Really, truly awful. Critic Jerry Saltz was the biggest disappointment for me: Is it the editing, or does he really believe that the mission statement of art is, "Art is a way of showing the outside world what your inside world is like." So is vomiting.

Mark Velasquez, the Cornish grad in the lineup, made a cheesy Photoshop portrait of a guy he'd just met—each artist was assigned the challenge of making a portrait that captured the "inner essence" of someone they'd just met—told the camera, "I think the judges should be impressed with my work because my Photoshop skills are pretty damn good."

The Christian blonde made a portrait of a black lady artist, and called her "noble." I'd only have been mildly surprised if she'd have added the word "savage." The black lady artist made a terrible painting that looked like wallpaper that needed wallpapering over.

There's a folksy, I've-got-no-training-and-I'm-just-here-making-this-clown-painting artist; an egomaniacal holier-than-thou "conceptualist" who declared "I'm not responsible for your experience of my work"; a lady who declared, "I'm really into lilies right now"; a young prettylady artist who hates the older lady artist, who creates images of cartoonish cats that incorporate the word "pussy" and who announced that "Pussies put me on the map." (Didn't pussies put us all on the map?)

The Tim Gunn character, auctioneer Simon de Pury, seems like he is hopped up on goofballs, and for his sake, I hope he is.

Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who made a THRILLING cameo appearance, "grew up in a time when the government supported art." (Girls just wanna have fun-ding.)

Yep, I'll be tuning in next week, when the show reverts to its regular time of 10 pm.