art scene

People send me free magazines, and, occasionally, I look at them. Today, I was sitting here on the floor, sorting through some stuff, when I picked up a copy of a magazine called Rockpile, and flipped it open to a short article on a new, contemporary art-based reality TV series produced by a New York-based group called Aboriginal Entertainment. The show’s entitled Artstar. Here’s the article:

New York’s art world has no shortage of celebrity, and soon it may have the reality TV spectacle to go along with it. Artstar, a new reality TV show produced by Abby Terkuhle (Of Beavis and Butthead fame), art dealer James Fuentes and artist Christopher Sperandio is set to air on Voom HD TV.

In February an open call attracted over 300 artists with work in tow to spend a few minutes with a camera crew and a panel of judges including Art Forum editor David Rimanelli, Paper’s Carlo McCormick, artist Ryan McGinness and curator Deb Singer.

“There’s the kids who get it and the kids who don’t get it, and the other art world-the one we don’t care about,” says Rimanelli.

Contestants competing in the show hope being voted in by the art world elite will propel their careers. Only eight artists were chosen for the show, and we’ll watch them create work for a group exhibition at Deitch Projects, the Soho gallery which represents performance artists-rockers Ficsherspooner.

The real reality is that artists, need both talent, as well as tight production and marketing skills to reach this level of fame. That’s a lot of sweat – why not let a seasoned, former MTV producer help you out.

If you’re interested, I also found something in The New York Times… If I had more time I’d try to say something clever about the New York art scene. I might even have mentioned that night in the mid 80’s when I almost ran over Andy Warhol and the young man who carried his umbrella. Or, I might have mentioned my friend Tubbs, an artist who now lives in Brooklyn and sells his stuff on the street. I don’t know that I’ve mentioned it here before, but I was mad at Tubbs for a while because he told me that if I went and stood outside the MTV studios that he’d come down, painted red and dressed in a loincloth, and put some kind of voodoo hex on them. He never showed, and, to make matters worse, he then had the nerve afterward to suggest that he was there, and that I just hadn’t seen him. (Like I wouldn’t have noticed a naked, heavily-pierced, blood-red man leaping around and shouting gibberish.) Years later he confessed that he’d gotten cold feet and we renewed our friendship… I don’t get Voom TV, and I don’t know anyone that does.