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"FacebookPinterest\n\nThis week on  Work of Art, the artists had to work together to create a large-scale, outdoor installation and the interpersonal drama resulted in the elimination of one contestant. As guest judge Yvonne Force Villareal, explained on the show, \"this is one of the reasons there isn't more public art in the world, because people can't come together to make something happen.\"\n\nYvonne is president of  Art Production Fund, which she co-founded with Doreen Remen, and has years of experience developing projects that bring art to new audiences and public spaces, such as \"Art Ads,\" in which Alex Katz, Yoko Ono, and Shirin Neshat used 500 taxi cab tops as their canvases, and Karl Haendel's \"Scribble,\" a large, anonymous mark spanning the side of a building, meant to invoke thoughts about gesture and the need for pure expression.\n\nGQ spoke with Villareal about the importance of art in her own life and why it is necessary for everyone to have the opportunity to experience fine art outside of a museum or gallery.\n\nWork of Art airs Wednesdays on Bravo at 10pm ET.\n\nDo you feel a connection to earthworks artists who felt that people should have contact with artwork outside of the gallery or museum context?\n\n Yes. I think that Robert Smithson and land artists did a lot of important work and really laid the groundwork for the ideas about democratic art for everyone who wanted to make the pilgrimage to see it.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nArt should be out in the world as much as it is within a museum context or a gallery context. There is not enough public art. And that is what we do at Art Production Fund, we get the art out there to the people who both stumble upon it and this great surprise and gift happens.\n\nHow do you think a person's experience of art changes when it's in a public space?\n\n I think that it's more of a natural experience, in a way, because you're not necessarily aware that this experience might happen to you... It's their opportunity to have a one-on-one experience with an artwork. When one goes into a museum, one is prepared and chooses, for the most part, what exhibition they want to see. And they kind of set up their day in order to experience art... But I think for the average person who doesn't really get into a gallery or a museum, having art [in public spaces] is important because it opens their ideas of what is possible. In contemporary art, it's embedded with so many important messages about transcending your everyday life in a variety of ways. I believe that the viewer can take a voyage with the artist's vision.\n\nCompared to other countries, do you think Americans have a strong appreciation and understanding of art?\n\n No, I don't. I think that Europeans, for the most part, have a longer history with art, because... art appreciation has been embedded in the culture. When you look at public art in many different places around the world, it has existed for thousands of years\u2014like the great sphins, or the Obelisk, or the fountains of the Roman empire, the sculptures in Greece...\n\nIn America, it's newer and... [there was] a huge influx during the post-war era when a lot of the great artists from Europe were coming over and starting to live here. So what you really have starting [in the 50s] in America is a very strong, dynamic movement of abstract expressionism... And in the contemporary realm that's where American strengths really begin to build.\n\nIt takes a long time for people to be able to appreciate that and I think a show like Work of Art is important because it begins to make the viewer aware of the processes in which artists think about making art. It's something that is a very private practice. Artists go into a studio and pretty much close the door. They'll have a curator, or a collector, a gallery owner, or a friend come over. But for the most part, until they show their work, nobody really sees it. So it's very insular and it's very private. And when art starts to become spectacular or make a splash because of its true greatness, people like Jeff Koons or Jasper Johns become much more recognized because of the media attention their artwork has gotten. You'll see what a difference it is to educate the public. And that's why I really think that art programming on television is fantastic.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nIs that what attracted you to working on the show?\n\n Yes, I have long wanted to do art programming on television and I feel that this is a very interesting platform for [showing] how art is made, how artists think and how the visiting guests, like myself, or critics look at art. I think all of this dialogue is really interesting and also entertaining.\n\nIt seems like a good match.\n\n I was so happy that Bravo matched me with the public art episode, because that's my passion. And when you believe in something and you know it so well, it's really easy to... appreciate on all levels [the artists] trying to wrap their heads around the project. I was very impressed by their outcome.\n\nYou have an extensive personal art collection. How has living with art changed you?\n\n Living with art, for me\u2014it's always been like that. My husband is an artist, I collect art, most of my friends are artists, I produce public art. It is really my life. There is no separation between my life and art.\n\nIt changes me on an ongoing basis. It changes me when I re-hang one artwork next to another artwork. The relationship between those artworks change and, as a result, a new dialogue is created in, let's just say, the home that I live. Or on a daily basis when I deal with artists I am continually inspired by their focus and their need to make something and to get their ideas across. So I would just say that it changes me on a continual basis--it's ever evolving. And it's a really good way to age--through understanding art--because your understanding can get deeper and deeper, and also your capacity to go back into the past and see how the art world is one thing and art is another."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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