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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThe first episode of the new reality show Work of Art aired on Bravo last Wednesday. After shedding one contestant in the premiere, 13 artists remain and will get back to competing on tonight's episode, which airs at 10pm ET. The assignment: transform one man's trash into another's work of art. My prediction? Given her background in conceptual fabrication and use of industrial materials, Nicole stands a pretty good chance.\n\nBut whomever wins the show's $100,000 prize and an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, lots of questions remain. How does the experience of being on the show compare to the \"real\" contemporary art world? And will the winner actually go on to become \"the next great artist?\"\n\nOne reason to have faith in the name-making validity of the show is the presence of Jerry Saltz, one of Bravo's judges and New York Magazine's art critic, who was twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Our GQ interview with Saltz is after the jump.__\n\nWould you consider your presence on the show to be a type of performance?\n\n Yes. I think it is. It's performing art criticism. It's performing my personality. And some people have called me wonderful, others have called me obnoxious. So obviously, there is a lot coming through. And do I think it's like me? Yeah, I think you're getting a good window on what I am on that thing.\n\nThe format of the show seems to resemble an MFA program, with assignments, shows, and critiques\n\n It's more like art school than it is, say, a reality TV show in the great mold of The Real Housewives. They're not just following artists. This isn't the Real Artists of Bushwick. This is very different.\n\nDo you think the show will prompt people to become more interested in the process or the persona of an artist as opposed to the product?\n\n This is complicated. Artists, of course, have become celebrities. I think the more personality, the less art. I think that the artists who will win, not on the show, but in life and in their work, are the ones that, while they might have great personalities, big personalities, what you're really looking at is the work. Not at the cool squirrely, weird personality or the good-looking boy or the good-looking girl. I think that the art world, of course, is very nervous about it, because we're a very small world... And this brings it to a much wider world. And I like that, frankly. I'm not writing for 500 people who speak the same hip, metaphysical language. I have no interest in that. \n\nHow would you describe a successful artist by today's standards?\n\n I don't think success has anything to do with money. The best art does not necessarily sell for the most money. And only 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent of all artists ever made money, until there was no money starting about 15 to 20 months ago. What I look for in people's work is an attempt to redefine what skill is. I'm looking for something that does not look generic. If you're idea is other people's idea of art, it's probably not your idea and that can be a problem\u2014if I'm thinking more about another artist in front of your work than your work. I'm looking for an element of energy, a kind of surprise. But I'm not looking for somebody just to shock me like your dead-grandmother, baby art. That's not what I mean by a surprise. Something that makes me think, \"Gee, I didn't know that before.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nDo you think that the time constraints affected their work negatively?\n\n Well, I'll tell you what I think. I think that great art can be made in little bits of time. I think that time constraints are real. But I do think that there is no denying that that is an artificial, contrived frame. There's just no question about that... Would my next week's column in New York Magazine be better if I had more time? My answer is, no. It would be better, maybe, if I had less time. It would be better to have it as 1,000 words than 5,000 words.\n\nWould you consider the show itself a type of endurance test for the artists on the show?\n\n I do think it was an endurance test to them, as I see them exhausted. And that's always fun. I'm not against that. Artists are supposed to be up at 3am in the morning, having a dark night of the soul. Too bad there has to be a camera on them for this one, but that's what they signed up for.\n\nDo you think that artists in the 1960s who were against the exclusivity of galleries and rebelled against the mainstream, commercial aspects of the art world would be in favor of the show?\n\n No, they would hate it. They would see it as a pollution of the purity of art. And I'm not interested in what purity police say. I'm not interested in policing the borders. I'd say, just let people do what they want to do and if you don't like it, say you don't like it. You get a vote, I get a vote. It's no problem. It's like when you're favorite band suddenly signs a big record contract and you say, \"I don't like them anymore. I only liked them when they were a garage band.\" Look, the air is dirty, but we have to breathe it.\n\nYou have a new book out, Seeing Out Louder, a collection of your columns from New York Magazine that is a sequel to your first book, Seeing Out Loud. While going through your old reviews, did you notice a change in your own opinion over time?\n\n It does change. Sometimes I end up not liking something that I liked and sometimes I end up liking things that I didn't like. It does change, it's a funny thing. And I'd like to think that as a weekly critic, I'm lucky enough to have a second chance to come out and say, \"No, no I was wrong. These paintings are more problematic than I thought.\"\n\nLike who?\n\n A German painter named Neo Rauch, a very big deal painter, who I liked a lot, and then the more I looked at it, I felt like the work was getting repetitious, that it was too opaque. That it somehow wasn't exploring its own implications that much. That it wasn't experimenting enough.\n\nIf you had to compare an episode of 'Work of Art' with Chris Burden's 'Through The Night Softly,' which one do you think would make better television?\n\n I love 'Through The Night Softly.' I love that baby seal body of Chris Burden and the mystery of not knowing what he's doing and the lack of a beginning, a middle and an end, the absolute disappearing, the going away of narrative. I really like the fact that this has something to do with being alive and also a terrible neediness and something pathetic. Does \"Work of Art\" have neediness, people that are pathetic? Yeah. Does it have stuff where you have no idea why the people on it are doing it? Yeah. So I think they have similar qualities, but I actually think that \"Work of Art\" is a TV show and Chris Burden's piece is a work of art."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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