Modern Art and Modern TV

When I was studying in England last year, I started watching a show called School of Saatchi. The premise of this show was that the reclusive art collector Charles Saatchi, who regularly sponsors budding artists, was having a nationwide competition to look for a new up-and-coming young modern artist to showcase in a world famous museum. The show only had about six episodes and I don’t think it went over that well, so why am I talking about it? Well, this year Bravo launched its own art-centered show called Next Top Artist which has me thinking about both shows and the nature of “Next Top ___” shows in general.

School of Saatchi seemed like a very natural program – a man who sponsors young British artists using a show to not only find artistic talent, but to gain exposure for modern art. To be honest, when I began watching the show I didn’t think I would like it. I wasn’t a modern art fan and I thought the artists would be abstract at best and full of b.s. at worst. Well, as it turned out, some of the artists who showed up for the audition were full of it, but others showed real artistic vision, and with the help of modern art critics breaking down why the good work was good, I began to actually appreciate what modern art can and does do - why it’s relevant for our generation. The fact that a tv show could make modern art more accessible in an actually entertaining and compelling way seemed really cool.

Bravo’s Next Top Artist has a similar format, but with a longer season and without the reclusive artist backer, and somehow it feels much more commercial. Watching it I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but instead of celebrating the possibilities of modern art, the show seemed to encourage the artists to live within the constraints of popularity or expectation. What I mean by that in other words: instead of making modern art and its process seem legitimate and intriguing, it made modern art seem contrived, seem like b.s.

I think part of the problem was that art and commerciality really don’t mix. You take a show like Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, or even American Idol –  these are all things (food, models, music) that are generally consumed or part of the commercial world. Art, as we are used to encountering it (art for art’s sake), really is not. Still, that didn’t explain why one show seemed to celebrate modern art while the other cheapened it.

After mulling it over, I realized the difference between the two shows: in the British version, the artists were given challenges, but the challenges were meant to make the artists think about their work in a different way, to challenge them to push themselves as artists. In the American version, artists were given challenges that encouraged them to give in to the constraints of commercialization, to, for example, make a book cover. Now I’m no art snob, I don’t even proclaim to know much about art, but isn’t this selling ourselves and our artists short? Instead of pushing them to see what truly new things they can create, a show which could potentially make modern art more accessible to the masses instead shows artists playing down to the masses. Sure you could argue that Top Artist is still gaining exposure for modern art which is, in and of itself a good thing, but at the same time it’s also teaching us that art should be “gettable,” and isn’t one of the points of art to push the viewer to see things differently? Just some food for thought.