![]() ![]() Of the 14 artists who started off in the competition, Bustamante was perhaps the best known, having amassed a body of work that spans more than 20 years. It was on that same episode that NYFA Fellow Nao Bustamante was eliminated from the program. In other words, it was not your average hour of network TV. After discussing Serrano’s image, which depicts a crucifix submerged in a glass of Serrano’s urine, the artists proceeded to create works about self-fellatio, child molestation, and transsexuals. In the recently-aired fourth episode, “A Shock to the System,” the contestants were challenged to make a piece of “shock art” inspired by guest judge Andres Serrano’s Immersions (Piss Christ), a photograph that became an icon of the culture wars in the ‘80s and ‘90s and elicited death threats and loss of funding for the artist. Despite its standard competition and elimination format, the series is a relatively daring prime-time exploration of contemporary art and the people who make it. In 2010, Bravo began airing the reality TV show Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, a compelling mix of low-brow format and high-brow subject. At the same time, the fine arts have been obsessed with television, with countless paintings, sculptures, performance pieces, and photographic representations of the medium over the last 40 years, from Robert Frank to Matthew Barney. Other than occasional documentaries on PBS, programs about art and artists are rarely seen on America’s commercial TV networks.
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