Hockney painting outdoors. (photo by Jean Pierre Goncalves de Lima, © David Hockney)

Columbia University’s Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America is a treasure New Yorkers have all to themselves. With two downstairs gallery spaces and an upstairs theater, the programming offers art exhibits, concerts, films and symposiums all in a gorgeous setting. The Academy recently screened the filmmaker Bruno Wollheim’s David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, which was followed by commentary from the director, questions from the audience and a champagne reception on the outdoor terrace. This was the documentary’s New York premiere; it has been making the rounds of cultural institutions but has not had an extended run in theaters.

The film is a much more straightforward account than Jack Hazan’s 1974 movie A Bigger Splash. It brings Hockney’s life full circle — the earlier film followed the artist’s move from London to Los Angeles while Wollheim’s film deals with Hockney’s return many years later to his childhood stomping grounds of East Yorkshire.

The sickness of his close friend and the death of his mother were what drew him back to Britain. He had always kept a studio in his mother’s attic in Bridlington, using it during occasional visits, but now takes up a more permanent residence with his partner and assistant (Hockney’s sister Margaret, also on the premises, eventually moves out). The drives to and from his friend’s sick bed fascinate Hockney as he navigates changes in the lay of the land. He compares the winding terrain of the countryside to the changing vantage points found in Chinese Scrolls and is exhilarated by this as a pictorial device so different from the fixed frame of Western art. His residence in LA serves as his West Coast office but with the eight hour time difference, he and his entourage are left undisturbed to enjoy a bohemian daily existence.

Morning drives through the landscape propel Hockney toward a major new body of work. He has his assistant take off on the highway, driving until Hockney says “stop,” then they get out to observe, the artist quickly filling a sketchbook with drawings of the indigenous flora and fauna. This leads to Hockney painting the landscape, setting up an easel on the side of the road, brushing in compositions of green rectangles that capture the pastures, stones and rolling hills of the Yorkshire countryside. We take pleasure watching the artist work; admiring the ingenuity of the tools and setup, witnessing the abandonment of a canvas gone wrong, empathizing with the locals who stop to ogle and take pictures and listening to Hockney interject with a stray thought or comment on his process.

Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

Eventually Hockney moves on to larger more immersive paintings done on six canvases, three side-by-side stacked atop three below. Positioned in the woodland area of a park, he grapples with changes in the weather and time of day, before bringing the works back to his studio for continued painting. He explains memory is as much a part of the painting process since everything we do is remembered. His variations on the same landscape motif are not unlike Monet’s haystacks.

We learn of an invitation from The Royal Academy to showcase Hockney’s Yorkshire landscapes, and the last segment of the film chronicles the painter’s production, working in a variety of media in preparation for the exhibit. Because they are works in progress, it becomes a bit of a gamble with neither the artist nor museum knowing what the final outcome will be; the film is a remarkable record of an artist preparing for a show. The scale and ambition increase with only two weeks counting down to the opening — Hockney works on up to 23 panels, pieces of a whole that are too big to be seen all at once. With the help of his assistant, they come up with a technique of taking digital shots of each painted panel at day’s end, then assembling all the pieces in Photoshop to form the entire composition. From a computer screen, Hockney is able to track his daily progress. A final huge painting in primary reds, blues and greens, Bigger Trees Near Warter, scales 50 by 15 feet, its subject a large crucifix-shaped tree in dead center eclipsing a forest of tangled branches and cottages below.

Filmmaker Bruno Wollheim Talks with screening guests (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The film touches on Hockney’s controversial project during the late 1990s where he researched the master painters of the past and their reliance on photographic techniques. By the time of this film, Hockney has returned squarely to painting, remarking on the limitations of the camera and reciting the old metaphor of painting being a window onto the world that you can pass through and control. As he states, “In your mind’s eye, you can go to the ends of the earth or even outer space.” But as his landscape project deepens, he becomes invigorated by the possibilities of digital photography, Photoshop, the iPad and filmmaking, producing artworks for the Royal Academy that combine the freehand and technological.

The film raises questions about the decisions an artist must confront over a long career spanning almost a century of constant innovation and change. Often in the contemporary artworld, new mediums and cross-disciplinary work are privileged, with a tendency to ghettoize what are perceived to be “retardataire” practices i.e. oil painting in the genres of portraiture, still life and landscape. If an artist dares to explore the discontents of these older forms does he/she risk marginalization?

David Hockney's "Woldgate Woods, 21, 23 and 29 November" (2006), Oil on six canvases, 182.9 x 365.8 cm overall (photo by Richard Schmidt, image courtesy of the artist, © David Hockney) (click to enlarge)

Hockney has walked this tightrope with finesse. He comes off as a bit of a dandified Picasso. Like Picasso, he is prolific, curious and willing to try anything and they both have had pictorial obsessions they needed to work through. Like Picasso, Hockney is well-versed in the painting styles of the past; in his work one sees elements of Fauvism, Cubism, Classicism and Pop and both artists returned over and over again to genre painting as a vehicle for painterly exploration. Just as Hockney is eager to try out the latest in film or pixels, Picasso employed collage and found objects, and the influence of movies on Cubism is of renewed interest to historians. Both have brought other media into their art with a low tech touch but always return to painting at the end of the day.

A film by Bruno Wollheim, David Hockney: A Bigger Picture, David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture continues at the Royal Academy, London through April 11, 2012

Corinna Belz’s new documentary, Gerhard Richter Painting (playing at Manhattan’s Film Forum from now until March 27), offers a rare glimpse into the life and work of the celebrated and self-proclaimed “secretive” German artist. For a little more than 90 minutes, we watch Richter labor over two new paintings, as well as devise upcoming gallery shows and attend large-scale exhibitions of his own work. Although the reasoning behind Richter’s artistic choices may remain largely mysterious, a sympathetic rendering of the artist emerges. Though he carries the mantle of being one of the “world’s greatest living painters,” his aspirations for his latest projects are recognizably human and endearingly modest: He wants their strengths to be recognized and their flaws to be overlooked.

Belz’s approach to her subject is generally unobtrusive. Recording Richter as he creates in his brightly lit white studio, she remains off-screen, occasionally asking questions about his artistic decisions from behind the camera. These scenes are shot primarily in static long takes, quietly observing the master at work. There are a few instances where her technique makes itself known, as when she zooms in so closely on pails of paint being poured that the cinematic image itself becomes as abstract as one of Richter’s paintings. Another example is a series of dissolves that shows a single painting in progressive stages of its evolution. The last, and perhaps most dynamic, are the quick pans she does of miniatures of Richter’s prior works. While she does not afford the viewer much time to savor the images, she does give an idea of his scope and his many variations in style and subject matter. But mainly her camera seems impatient to catch up with what he’s working on now.

From the beginning of the film, she tracks Richter as he creates two new paintings side by side. It’s thrilling to see these paintings being born individually and in dialogue with each other. As he works on them in tandem, dragging his ladder from one to the other, Richter is not stingy with the paint, covering swaths of canvas with a large dripping brush and slow, deliberate strokes. His next move usually involves a squeegee, which smears the colors across the surface. Occasionally the camera closes in on his paint-splattered gloves as he works or sometimes just on his pensive blues eyes as he contemplates his next step.

The images of the film in these moments are vibrant and sumptuous. Richter’s starting color palette comprises vivid yellows, reds, blues, and greens (“no earth tones,” as one of his two assistants informs us). The soundscape of the painting sequences is just as sensual as the images Richter makes: the squish of a brush making contact with paint, the scratchiness of a squeegee as he guides it across the canvas, the screech of a metal ladder’s legs as he pushes it across the floor. Other filmmakers may have scored these scenes with music, but Belz’s decision to highlight the sounds of the painting process makes her documentary aurally alive in ways that the paintings themselves can’t be.

Richter revisits the paintings day after day, adding a touch of paint here, removing a dab there. Eventually he may decide to paint over almost an entire canvas in white, turning the fields of bold color into pale pinks and grays — more Morandi than Mondrian. Richter obliquely explains that he knows when a painting is done “when nothing is wrong with it,” but the reasons behind those revelations will likely remain unclear to the viewer. So many iterations of his paintings seem intriguing and gorgeous in their own right, but then he returns to them to rework their surfaces again and again.

At one point in the documentary, Richter attends an exhibition of his portraits at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The subjects of his portraits are deliberately obscured, their heads often turned away from the viewer’s eyes. People seem out of reach from him, even as he observes them head-on. Back in his studio, he sifts through a mountain of yellowing family photos, deciding which to keep and which to cast aside. He knows the smiling, pretty woman in several pictures is his mother, but he does not remember his mother in that moment. “The photos show the world of the photo, not the world that was photographed,” he says.

Perhaps it is impossible for Gerhard Richter Painting to show us Richter’s world itself, but within the world that the film creates, he is a thoughtful, provocative subject. He seems much younger and spryer than his 79 years, though the lines of his face are etched deep. While he is patient with demanding photographers and autograph-seeking fans, he seems weary of the press and of his fame, and being filmed by Belz as he works has made him feel naked and self-conscious. He likens it to being in the hospital, only more painful. Worse, being observed is effecting how he carries himself in the studio and the decisions he makes while painting. The paradox of working in private for so long only to turn the work over to the public when he is finished isn’t lost on him. And even at this point in his venerable career, he is not impervious to the viewpoints of others. His two studio assistants know by now not to comment on a painting while it is still in progress. If they praise it too much, he will just decide to “destroy it.”

Richter comes across tireless and forever engaged by his process, and at times, pushing that giant squeegee through countless layers of paint seems like a Sisyphean task. But when he uncovers an unexpected streak of yellow while squeegee-ing a canvas, he is visibly delighted by the surprise. “The paintings do what they want,” he claims, and rarely do they turn out as he had anticipated. With every abstract painting he makes, Richter is chasing that elusive point of completion and there is always a risk that he won’t be satisfied with what he finds. But at nearly 80, he returns to his studio, still puzzling it all out. As elusive as his process may remain for the viewer, Richter’s guiding principle is as inspiring as it is matter of fact. “Working through it,” he says, “is better than doing nothing.”

Gerhard Richter Painting continues at Film Forum (209 West Houston Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan) until Tuesday, March 27. The movie will be opening in Riverside, California, San Francisco and Hartford, Connecticut in April and May. Visit the movie website for more screening locations and dates.

All press images for Gerhard Richter Painting via gerhardrichterpainting.com.

James Franco as Allen Ginsberg (image via nouse.co.uk)

America, says Charlie Citrine in Saul Bellow’s novel Humboldt’s Gift (1975), is proud of its dead poets. Especially the mad ones: the bridge-leapers, the drink-guzzlers, the pill-snackers. Robert Lowell thought everyone was tired of his turmoil, but he obviously wasn’t thinking ahead to the possibilities he and his fellow scribblers presented to the movie business. You can only imagine the film gurus and movie execs surveying the poetscape of the twentieth century with nods of excited approval, foaming about their mouths. Drink, adultery, jealousy, madness, suicide: who knew poets led such cinematic lives!

Alas, a problem arises, and that problem is essentially this: even the maddest poets weren’t mad all the time. There must have been some down time, some humdrum non-time; quotidian moments spent at the shop or on the can. There must have been, one imagines, some work being done. This ultimately is the great limitation of movies about poets: the excitement of poetry is internal, not external. Watching someone write a poem is not an inherently interesting thing to behold (Believe me, I’ve seen it). Watching someone write a poem, in fact, is pretty boring.

Franco as Ginsberg in "Howl" (image via blogs.metrotimes.com)

Thus we don’t bother with Factotum (2005), Bent Hamer’s adaptation of Bukowski’s 1975 novel of the same name, for those rare moments where the Bukowskian alter-ego (played by Matt Dillon) is seen writing (those moments, indeed, serve merely as intermissions to the film’s main attraction: 90 minutes of drinking, fighting and fucking). Nor do we bother much with Sylvia Plath the poet in Sylvia, Christine Jeff’s 2003 biopic starring — who else? — Gwyneth Paltrow. Oh sure, we get the occasional stanza, the stray, half-uttered verse. We even see Sylvia failing to write a poem. But in the main what we see is Sylvia Plath being married to Ted Hughes — a cinematic spectacle in and of itself, what with all the romance, sex and jealousy going on.

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman’s Howl (2010), which starred James Franco as Allen Ginsberg, is easily the best film about poetry I’ve ever seen. It managed to weave the story of the poem’s obscenity trial, Ginsberg’s famous Six Gallery reading, and various moments in the life of its author in the ‘40s and ‘50s into a nonlinear narrative that is literary criticism, biopic and poetic adaptation all at once. Because Franco reads the entire poem aloud throughout the film, Howl was like a multi-media performance; an interpretive staging of a work of poetry that is also a commentary on that poetry.

Franco as Hart Crane (image via cityoffilms.com)

Which is why I was so excited to see James Franco’s film about Hart Crane, The Broken Tower, written, directed and acted out by Franco himself. As a subject Crane is a no-brainer: he dabbles in pills; he uses his typewriter as a trampoline; he gives a well-executed blowjob to a guy in a truck. All of this we see, all of this we witness, and we are much obliged. But Franco is clearly interested in Crane the poet as much as Crane the man, and much of The Broken Tower depicts Crane trying to reconcile his poetic ambitions with the anti-poetic realities of Depression-era America. Franco wants The Broken Tower to bridge our interest in Crane’s life with Crane’s poetry. The film is chapter-structured after Crane’s long poem Voyages, focusing on what is or ought to be several key moments in the life of the author. The problem is that the movie is too obsessed with its self-consciously amateurish camera angles, its eccentric editing and its black-and-white color, to bother with anything as trivial as, you know, context. Near the end the gay Crane is suddenly sleeping with a woman in Mexico. That woman is supposed to be Peggy Cowley, wife of New Republic editor and critic Malcolm Cowley, with whom Crane had a scandalous affair in the early 1930s. But I guess I should have already known that.

Do these narrative gaps exist because Franco wants the movie to foreground the poetry? If that’s the case he hasn’t succeeded. In spite of the admirable sensitivity to Crane’s writing (we witness the gradual fruition of Crane’s long poem about the Brooklyn Bridge), the movie commits the almost unavoidable fallacy of conflating the poetry with the life. Crane’s verse thrums like audible subtitles, like a soundtrack to the author’s self-destructive life. Fair enough: Crane’s struggles with homosexuality, poverty, and madness obviously influenced his writing, and vice versa. But life is short and art is long, and The Broken Tower only tells us half the story. What it leaves out, what poetry and popcorn always fail to conspire to show us, is what comes after; when the poet becomes his admirers and is (take it away, Wystan) “scattered among a hundred cities / And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections; / To find his happiness in another kind of wood / And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.”

The finalists chilling (all images via bravotv.com)

The time has come. Last night was the last episode of Work of Art this season. One of our artistes dreams was made, and two others were crushed, much like bones after a terrible murder. I often follow up my Work of Art viewings with SVU. It puts the devastating losses in perspective.

Our final three are Young, Kymia and Sara. They were sent home for three months and given $7,500 to prepare for their final show. Young immediately starts out by saying “I’m clearly the favorite going into this finale.” Oh, Young. Do you not know what happens when one is filled with hubris? Have you never read The Iliad?

In the clips of Sara, we see her asking Young to massage her vagina. This show makes me more uncomfortable than David Hassellhoff’s home videos. They re-show Sara’s emotional breakdown, which is always a good thing.

Sad Kymia and her perfect eyeliner make it into the finale. In the clips reviewing her performance there weren’t as many tears as I expected. I hope the tears come soon.

Simon, in the great tradition of Project Runway, goes to Chicago to visit Young. His apartment is super nice, which makes sense when it is revealed that his boyfriend is a stock broker. Get it, Young.

His mom, who is battling cancer, was also in the apartment. She was very sweet. Young broke out his third grade drawings. I would imagine that they would hold up on the show. They go to his giant, amazing studio, for Young to show Simon his work. Simon tells Young his work is kind of dry and boring. Uh-oh. But he then finds his work dedicated to his father, who passed away, very strong.

Works by (left) Young Sun and (right) Sara.

Kymia’s turn! She and her boyfriend live with his parents, which kind of blows. Kymia tells Simon that her dad died in a jet-skiing accident, and she was there, which is insanely upsetting. Poor Kymia. Her sadness now makes sense. She shows Simon her drawings, which are beautiful. She has some horrible sculptures, which he tells her she cannot show. So she cries. A lot.

Sara’s turn! Her boyfriend is really cute. They go to her massive studio. She shows Simon a performance piece she did, where she asked people to write down confessions and put them in a pouch she was carrying. She then drew portraits of the people watching the performance piece and made a sculpture based on it. Simon was not happy with her.

They go to the Thompson Hotel. Nice, Bravo. Young says he didn’t have time to get his eyebrows threaded. From then on, his eyebrows were the only things I could pay attention to.

They go up to the Meatpacking District to the Phillps de Pury auction house, where they will show their final pieces. China, wearing a hat that resembles an upside-down tea saucer, gives the artists some hugs. Awwww. One of the winner’s pieces will be auctioned off in a Phillips de Prury auction! The artistes are excited.

I have yet to comment on the shots of the city Work of Art shows in black and white with little splashes of color. They look like an over-enthusiastic middle-school girl figured out how to use Piknik.

Setting up! Stress, stress, stress. Kymia’s got these pedestals, for a gravesite? Or something? And they are too short. And so she cries.

Bravo shows a montage of Simon being awesome. The dude is a DJ? Who wants chickens to invade the world? He rules.

Art show! China looks like a milkmaid from Imperialist Russia. It’s working for me. The other artists come back! The Sucklord is there! He made Jerry a glow in the dark action figure of himself. I want one.

Sara’s exhibition is filled with sculpture and installation based on the confessions she took in her performance piece. Some of it, like the bed filled with needles, is kind of obvious and extraneous. But her paper crane sculpture is strikingly beautiful, and I like the imprint she did of her entire body’s dead skin cells.

One of Kymia's works in her winning exhibition.

Young’s show, based on the death of his father, is extremely personal. China cries. The photos projected on the wall is a good idea, as the show is about how life is temporary. It is very moving, but I’m not sure how I like the arrangement of his father’s shirts, as Sara says.

Kymia’s exhibit is very, very beautiful. The drawings have gorgeous texture and color, and are impeccably detailed from what I can tell through the TV screen. Her “graves” aren’t really necessary, but the drawings are incredible.

Last crit! China cries more when it comes to Young. Aw, China! Kymia gets a good crit, except when it comes to her sculptures. Guest judge Kaws likes her piece dedicated to her father the most. She cries. Sara gets a good crit for her ambition and experimentation with a bunch of different materials.

Kymia wins! It’s not really a shocker. Her exhibit was very, very beautiful. She cried when she won. This was also not a shocker.

In all seriousness, the artists this season, especially the ones who got eliminated later (Michelle! Lola!) did a really good job. I wish them well in all of their respective careers.

But I shalt not miss the show. Goodbye, Jerry Saltz and your constant references to your man-spanx!

Work of Art: Season Two appeared on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c this past fall.

Simon de Pury with on the reality show contestants (all images via bravotv.com)

Simon comes to visit the home of the bonding couch. He sends the artistes on a train ride! They head up to idyllic Cold Springs, New York, where China greets them in a rather fetching trench coat/dress combo. We expect so much from her.

It’s a double elimination! Oh shit! The challenge is to travel around Main Street, USA, and find someone’s portrait to do. And then do it in some interesting way. And then display it.

Dusty, of course, bonds with a child. He decides to do her portrait in candy. The child’s mother has no objection. She is not a responsible parent.

It is fun to see les artistes interact with the small town folks. Kymia picks a couple that owns a creepy store. The guy has a crazy beard. Lola goes for adorable old men who own a coin shop. They are my favorites. Young interacts with a hilariously creepy real estate lady, who acts like a Stepford wife whilst giving him a tour of a home.

Sara J. meets some firefighters! Damn girl. Young continues to search. And then he finds an artist! How very meta. He gives the guy $200 to paint a portrait of him in 20 minutes, and Young paints a portrait of the artist painting a picture of him. He can certainly afford it.

Back to the city that never sleeps! Everyone squeezes onto the bonding couch and talks about their nerves. And then the studio! Work, work, work.

Simon visits. His accent on the word “finale!” is quite exquisite. He is concerned about Dusyt’s M & M portrait. He likes Sara J.’s metal fireman portrait, which to me looks like something I made at summer camp when I was nine. Young’s is pretty cool. Simon enjoys it. He thinks Kymia’s creepy portrait of a creepy couple is “too conventional.” Lola is working on a piece that does not incorporate any actual imagery of her subject. It’s interesting, and Simon approves.

Works by (left to right)Dusty, Sara and Kymia.

Dusty tries out a better idea, which is to cover the portrait in little paper fortune teller things, to “predict what the girl will be like.” It’s better than the candy. Yet a piece does not emerge.

The artistes then bond on their bonding roof, which I do not recall being previously utilized for bonding. Lola offers to cast a spell saying that the judges will take all five of them to the Brooklyn Museum. I really wish she would bust out some more Wiccan stuff.

There is a dance party break. It looks enjoyable. Of course it makes Kymia cry.

Last gallery show! China looks like a beautiful chiffon muppet. The guest judge is Richard Phillips, who failed to bring Lindsay Lohan. The humble folk of Cold Spring are the guests!

Judgment day hath arrived.

Sara J. gets praise for her sculpture. I found the metal tags to be aesthetically displeasing, and the smiling, hammered metal portrait of a firefighter to be juvenile. Which brings us to Dusty. Who gets praise for the M & M’s falling off of his portrait. From the shots in the studio, it didn’t seem intentional. Lola and Kymia bring this up, which makes them seem like assholes, but also makes them correct.

I liked Lola’s abstract portrait a lot, and not just because I adore her and her witchy ways. She was genuinely interested in her subjects, and chose to represent them by showing what they were truly passionate in. The judges were total assholes to her. Young’s piece was very polished, but a clever way to represent a person he only got a brief glimpse of. Kymia’s super creepy portrait really captured her super creepy subjects. I enjoyed it very much.

Kymia and Young are victorious! The final judgments await Lola, Sara J. and Dusty. They let Dusty go gently, which he deserved. I will miss him and his accent! His sweetness and light! His mullett.

Sara is chosen over Lola, and it totally blows. Even China was in tears! My beloved crazy Lola is done. Good for Sara, but Lola’s piece was better! Jerry Saltz even admitted it in his recap for NY Mag. Whatever. She’ll cast a spell on him.

Stay tuned for next week’s finale, in which Kymia will cry and China will dress like a milk maid.

Work of Art: Season Two appears on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c.

The remaining artistes on Work of Art (all images via bravotv.com/work-of-art)

This week, China announces that this week, “it’s time to sell out.” Because no one has “sold out” by going on a reality show, right? Anyways, the challenge is to create art to sell in the street and also display in the gallery. Art and commerce! The challenge rules are a little different: everyone works in teams of two, and they have five hours to combine shopping and studio time.

Kymia “feels awful about selling out.” Oh, Kymia. You still wouldn’t turn down that prize money though, right babe?

Sarah K. talks about Native American headdresses and makes no sense. Lola talks about getting naked and selling out, and says she might have “the loosest morals here.” Again, can someone PLEASE get this woman her own reality show?

All of the artists hit up American Apparel. There are obvious hipster jokes in here somewhere. Young buys short shorts and talks about how much his boyfriend loves his “pert” butt. TMI, Young.

Sara J. and Young are the first ones to get back to the studio, because they are smart. Sara J. busts out a ton of watercolors real fast. Homegirl’s like her own sweatshop.

Dusty makes t-shirts with an outline of America on it with a security camera in the middle, because we live in the year 1984. Lola gets naked, and Kymia says “you sell out to make the money!” Oh shut the fuck up Kymia, YOU ARE ON A REALITY SHOW. Lola and Kymia have another fight, this time about how Kymia wants to sell other people’s signatures, or something. I may be watching this show whilst intoxicated.

The teams go about selling. Lola gages her prices based on how much she thinks someone is willing to spend, which lands her a dude who pays one hundred dollars for her photograph. Evidently there are people out there who haven’t discovered internet porn.

Sara J. gets the smart idea of doing portraits of her costumers. It has worked for caricature artists at Sea World for decades, so it should work for her! Simon gets a little bit freaky, complimenting Sara J. on her tiny outfit and telling Lola he is distracted by the background of her picture, aka her naked bod. Her piece, a photograph of herself with embarrassing secrets superimposed on top, is by far my favorite.

Art works by (left to right) Young Sun, Dusty and Lola.

Sell sell sell! The artistes are like the cast of Newsies! And then it’s back to the studio! Dusty cries about being away from his daughter and it is very sad and I hope he is with his child at this very moment. Bravo shows the greatest montage ever of all of the artists crying. Because you can’t spell tears without A-R-T.

Gallery show! Young’s evaluation isn’t great, because his piece wasn’t exciting and he didn’t show what he sold on the street (underwear). Sara J. gets positive feedback on her clever street portraits idea. Dusty displays a road sign of his surveillance camera, which everyone thinks is a printer cartridge and Jerry says is “awful.” Kymia sold her signature, and asked customers to give her their signature back, and displays those signatures. She gets positive feedback  because “signatures are personal.”

Sarah K. gets terrible feedback. Her ridiculously crappy headdresses and tshirts didn’t hold up on the street, let alone in the gallery. Lola gets the best feedback of all. Bill Powers should call up his good pal Terry Richardson. I’m sure he’d love it!

Young and Sara J. made the most money, and because commerce ultimately wins over art, they win! Dusty and Sarah K. are up for elimination. Sarah K. goes home. Her piece was crappy. There are tears (and a-r-t). It is sad.

Stay tuned for next week, when the artistes go somewhere mysterious, and are doubly eliminiated!

Work of Art: Season Two appears on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c.

Installation view of "Time and Place of Incident" at the Vargas Museum, Manila.

MANILA, Philippines — On November 23, 2009, just a little over two years ago, Esmael Magundadatu, the vice mayor of the southern Philippine city of Buluan, invited 37 journalists to accompany him as he filed for his certificate of candidacy. The group, along with a cadre of lawyers and family, never made it to their destination.

They were stopped by 100 armed men, who kidnapped and murdered almost all of them. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, it was the worst attack on journalists since the Committee began keeping records in 1992.

The Maguindanao Massacre, named after the province in which it happened, serves as the foundation for “Requiem for M,” an artistic documentary shown at the University of the Philippines, Dilliman, Quezon City, this month.

Directed by artist Kiri Lluch Dalena, the video begins with the cries of an anonymous woman responding in anguish to the massacre. It then transitions into a funeral procession, which we realize is moving backward, slowly. Balloons fly back down into the hands of mourners, and cars and trucks drive backwards. They soon cross a sign for travelers: “You are now leaving Datu Unsay Municipality, Maguindanao Province.”

“I went to a lot of funerals, because there are so many of them”, said Dalena, who visited the site of the mass grave where the bodies were found. “This work is about two funerals, two family members.”

Erased Slogans, a series of edited photographs Dalena exhibited at the Lopez Museum in Manila.

Also on view is Time and Place of Incident, which is part of a video series organized by the nonprofit art project Visual Pond. Curated by Clarissa Chikiamco, Dalena’s solo exhibition focuses on sites where journalists have been murdered.

“There is something very charged about her work, which comes from the intertwining of her political and social subject matter (which is certainly not a new topic) with her methods,” Chikiamco told me over email. “I think this is also due to her other practice as a documentary filmmaker which I can see as having crossovers to her artistic work.”

Incident opens with slides of grave stones, each one meticulously photographed by Dalena or volunteers. The slides move forward automatically, clicking with each turn, an aural register of each journalist who died.

As we descend into the darkened space beneath the University of the Philippines’ Vargas Museum, we find multiple projections. The first projection shows Dalena’s excursion to the now infamous grave site in Maguindanao. The others show the different locations where journalists have been murdered. The only element that feels out of place is the sound of a beating heart, which I feel distracts from the images’ quiet power.

Chikiamco writes the following about the installation in her catalogue essay:

The projections blink to such spots as in front of a school, at a bridge, in a bedroom, at a home, by a motorcycle shop and the now easily recognizable location of the Maguindanao massacre … Nominal persons sometimes captured in the footage take secondary positions to the installation’s focus on sites — showing that, in some places, life simply went on, though limned with its history of homicide.

Dalena transferred the erased slogans to gravestones, which she commissioned from an actual gravestone craftsman.

Not able to personally visit each site — they’re scattered around the Philippines and are often difficult to find — Dalena relied on volunteers around the country, who felt moved by her work. One volunteer, Augustine Arevalo, blogged about the experience of visiting one journalist’s gravestone, which had been neglected for years.

This isn’t Dalena’s first artistic foray into political and social issues. In The Present Disorder is the Order of the Future, she exhibited a series of metallic gravestones at Mo Space in Ft. Bonifacio, Manila.

The gravestones, commissioned from an actual craftsman, contained protest slogans and language pulled from actual protests in the Philippines. At the same time, she projected video of her visit to the massacre site over the disembodied limbs and hands of a previous sculpture she had made.

Installation view of the gravestones installed at Mo Space, with her sculpted fragments of a human body.

“The fervor and urgency in her work is something which both local and foreign audiences can appreciate,” Chikiamco told me, noting Dalena’s broad range of work that extends beyond “straightforward narration and didactics.” Her videos speak to the human impact of these events with both a journalistic and artistic eye.

Dalena’s decision to ground the work in the deeply personal gives the work a quiet dignity. She described the editorial decision to reverse the footage in Requiem:

When you interview the family, when you talk to them, of course they say they want justice. But they always go back to that wish that it didn’t happen. There’s always that guilt and that feeling that they already had a paramdam — a foreboding. Before it happened, the wife was more sweet, said goodbye longer. It’s so difficult to understand how it happened. You try to get so much from something that could have been an ordinary gesture.

Time and Place of Incident runs until December 10 at the University of the Philippines’ Vargas Museum (Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, Roxas Avenue, UP Campus,Diliman, Quezon City, Manila). Requiem for M can be viewed on YouTube, along with footage of Time and Place of Incident.

The artistes with car parts (via bravotv.com)

We open with our artistes bonding on their bonding couch that they always bond on. They mourn the loss of the Sucklord, until they remember that Dusty had promised Young that if their team won the previous challenge, Dusty would wear Young’s short shorts. A disturbingly sexually charged montage follows. This show is so fucking weird.

Challenge time! The artists have to make pieces incorporating at least one element of a Fiat. They show work and inspiration stuff. I am getting to the point where I look forward to the commercial breaks featuring the demon fetus of the “Twilight: breaking Dawn” trailer.

Dusty covers his entire face to make a mask and tells Kymia to come get him in seven minutes to peel it off. And Kymia forgets about him for an extra five minutes, depriving him of precious oxygen. It is far more hilarious than it should be. Later, wild high school photos of Sara J. are revealed (eyeliner less impeccably applied), and Lola is revealed to be a witch. Like, an actual witch, who’s Grandma teaches her spells. I change my mind. This is the best episode ever.

Simon comes by! His accent always makes me crave Brie cheese. this is not good, as it was just Thanksgiving. He likes Sarah K.’s, which is nice because her piece is A) good, and B) deeply personal, and dedicated to her father who recently died. He tells Lola that “as usual, I am not impressed by most of you at this stage.” Understatement of the year. Anyway, he totally bums out Lola who hugs Sarah K. and it is all very sad.

They show a Pier 1 commercial with talking Christmas ornaments that gives me nightmares. And the trailer for the new Diablo Cody movie! It looks really good, almost as good as Jennifer’s Body. Sexy porno Armani ad!

Back to the art! Simon hates everything. Shocker. A lot of the artists start to change things. Lola traces a picture of herself. Isn’t that sort of poor form for an art show? Everyone talks about how Young has made the most money, and Lola says she “feels like Tonya Harding.” A witch who channels Tonya Harding? Someone please get this woman her own reality show.

Michelle is struggling and sad. This makes me sad, as Michelle is talented and very nice. Sleep. Then more art! Artists, assemble! Everyone works, work work work!

Works by Sara (left) and Michelle (right) for their product placement challenge (via bravotv.com)

Gallery show! Liz Cohen is a guest judge, which is pretty appropriate. Dusty and Young are safe! I’m kind of surprised, considering Dusty’s tire on paint thing was really boring, and Young’s robot thing was weird and great.

The Sara/h’s are on top! Both pieces are lovely. Sara J.’s sculpture, which as Bill Powers says, “looks like the exhaust from Superman’s car,” wins! Yay! She can afford to go to grad school! Wooooo!

Lola, Kymia and Michelle are on the bottom. Oh no. I smell drama. Lola cries when Jerry tells her she’s repeating herself. Which she is. Kymia is on trial for her machine that didn’t work with it’s pretentious title and overwrought explantation. Shockingly, there are no tears.

Michelle’s silly paper car sculpture is also up for elimination. Her alternate piece where she painted foggy windows of a car from couples making out was way, way better. Jerry attacks by declaring that it was surprising that she out of all people, considering her traumatic car accident, made such an impersonal piece. Whoa Jerry. Way to stick the knife in. Someone had his panties in a twist.

Michelle is sent home. The lovely, talented, beloved Michelle. I don’t want to talk about it.

Stay tuned for next week, when the artistes do some sort of crafting fair and Lola and Kymia continue their bitch war. Hopefully spells will be cast.

Work of Art: Season Two appears on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c.

Simon de Pury in casuals an China Chow in something (via bravotv.com)

OMG guys, the artistes have arrived in Brooklyn. China Chow announces the challenge. They artists have to do street art! In DUMBO! So hood. It’s a team challenge, too. Apparently art is the new Quidditch.

The artist then get to spray paint China Chow’s dress, which looks like a hoopskirt from the future. Sucklord and Simon both sexually harass her. The winners get $30,000 smackaroos! I thought print journalism is dying! Where the hell is Blue Canvas Magazine getting all this money? Do they have a deal with the demon that lives inside Andy Cohen or something?

Dusty is paired with Young Sun Han, who he was jealous of winning last week. He comments that he and Young have had different life experiences. No shit, Sherlock.

Lola says she likes to throw glitter in the subway. Sounds like my Friday night. She also says she is not jealous if Sucklord flirts with Sarah K. To which we say, what happened to your girlfriend, Suck?

Michelle and Lola decide to do sexually active alcoholic tigers. Sounds like my Saturday night.

Some of the "street art," including (left) a work by Kymia and Sara and (right) The Sucklord and Sarah (via bravotv.com)

Workity workity work. Lola and Michelle have charming fun. Kymia and Sara J. get serious and emotional, as they are wont to do. Sucklord and Sarah K. flirt more? Manufactured sexual tension? Young Sun Han and Dusty are not exactly working great together.

Did Bravo purposefully cut together a montage of Lola and Michelle talking about dicks? It doesn’t appeal to their target audience, but you know. They could be throwing Jerry Saltz a bone.

Young and Dusty realize they have things in common! The fact that Dusty has a wife and child and Young has a boyfriend does not mean they are completely alien to one another! They actually draw the rather touching conclusion that as Young was losing a father, Dusty was becoming one.

Kymia starts crying when Lola and Michelle take over the scanners. Lola is kind of bitchy about it. Hello, middle school!

There is so much competition between Team Tiger Penis and Team Eyeliner! Sucklord discusses Sarah K. in an inappropriate manner! Such manufactured drama. Nice one, Bravo producers.

Simon arrives. He responds well to Team Touching Emotional Connection and Team Eyeliner. He doesn’t like Team Tiger Penis so much, nor Team Sexual Tension (both are apparently “difficult to read”).

Young wore short shorts to make his street art. As Sarah K. said, he really does have great legs.

China Chow turned into a muppet for the street show. The street? Whatever you call looking at street art.

Team Touching Emotional Connection’s piece is predictably touching and emotional. Team Tiger Penis’s piece is trying way too hard to be provocative and make hot girls say “penis.” But that said, it’s super fun, and their sticker idea is adorable. It does feel contemporary and raucous, and like something one might actually see on the street in DUMBO.

Team Eyeliner’s piece is of course sad and deeply tortured. The line drawing is pretty, and Sara J. and Kymia’s styles meld well together. Sucklord and Sarah K.’s maze is kind of boring, especially considering this could have been the time for Sucklord to bust out some crazy Star Wars shit.  The judges have broken him! But I like the Banksy-ish rat and cheese.

At the judging Team Eyeliner gets sad about Team Tiger Penis encouraging viewers to tag their piece. Lola responds in typical mean girl fashion, with “I didn’t mean to hurt their feelings.” All is resolved in the back, and when Lola says, “I just tried to be naughty,” Bravo cuts in a Sucklord wink! Sexy.

Young Sun Han and Dusty win! Young is on quite the streak there. Both Young Sun Han and Dusty have excelled at making graphic work that is interactive and can speak to a lot of people with a clear, easily understood message. It’s smart for a competition like this, and both have done predictably well. Team Eyeliner/Team Sadface is also on top.

Team Tiger Penis is on the bottom, with Jerry describing it as “silly, half-canned surrealism.” But isn’t that what makes it fun? Team Sexual Tension is also on the losing side, with Bill Powers saying it “looks like a commission for someone who drinks a lot of white wine.”

The Sucklord is eliminated! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. HOW WILL I WATCH ANYMORE? Kymia predictably cries. Sucklord said, “Don’t cry for me Argentina,” but don’t worry Kymia. I cried too.

Stay tuned for next week, for more of Lola and Kymia bitchiness and some product placement.

Work of Art: Season Two appears on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c.

Simon de Pury giving advice (all images via bravotv.com)

This week, we commence with some shots of our artistes at home, followed by another Bravo tradition: an absurdly early wake-up! This is a classic Bravo tradition in which the host/mentor, in our case, Simon, comes over to whatever West Elm palace the reality show competitors happen to be staying in, and awaken them obscenely early to take them to their next hellish challenge.

They go to the New York Times factory. This is actually really cool. Lola says her mom always made her read the paper as a kid, so I’m sure Lola’s brain is much larger than mine.

China Chow! She looks like a freshly wrapped Christmas present. She gives the artistes their challenge: to create a piece inspired by a headline from The New York Times, and incorporate the newspaper into the piece. Bravo standby take two: no more immunity. Bravo standby take three: $20,000 AND an exhibition of the winning piece at the NYT headquarters. This prize is CRAY!

Our artistes in the New York Times plant.

Kymia picks a headline about the Long Island Serial Killer. Hell yeah, Kymia. Young Sun Han goes with an article on Ai Weiwei, because he is a Serious Artist who cares about Issues. Michelle chooses an article on a personal injury case, which affects her on a personal level due to being hit by a car in a horrible accident last year. Lola gets emotional, and Sara J. comments that she’s sick of her “suffering artist” persona. Nice one, Sara. Talk to me when you haven’t spent an entire episode crying over your traumatizing childhood.

The artists go to the workroom. There is dramatic music. There is creation of art. Simon comes by. He is concerned about the Sucklord, yet again, who is being too literal. He is concerned about Young Sun Han. He is concerned about Bayeté. He is concerned about a lot of people. He seems to enjoy Michelle, Lola and Dusty.

Sucklord, after hearing a less than positive response from Simon, asks the other artists if he can change his headline. No one cares, except for Michelle, and “Suck” says she’s being petty. But she was totally right! It would have been changing all of the rules of the challenge!

In more bitchy artist news, the Sucklord goes after Young Sun Han and says his piece kind of sucks. Lola says she feels like she is in competition with Kymia. Battle of the winged eyeliner!

There is a montage of Sarah K. laughing! It’s pretty adorable.

Kymia makes a coffin sculpture based on her headline about the Long Island Serial Killer. And the Sucklord was too literal? Dusty and Sucklord end up having to help Kymia lift up her giant million-ton plaster coffin. She should write them and their backs a thank you note.

Gallery show! Adam McEwen is the guest judge, and Michelle is right, he totally rules. China Chow looks like a sea anenome? Maybe crashing waves? Something overly dramatic involving the sea. Bayeté, in a comment on his own piece, says, “Since it’s so bad, is it good?” This could be the new tagline of the show.

This week's works by Young Sun (left) and The Sucklord (right).

Crit time! Michelle’s moving realistic painting about her own experience with injury is cruelly ignored, and Dusty, Young Sun Han, and Lola are up for the win. Jerry Saltz was right in that Dusty’s giant newspaper sculpture of the United States with it’s darkened silhouettes was “graphically striking.” It was a successful design, and it clearly (maybe too clearly) evoked his headline on moods darkening across America. I actually really liked Lola’s piece this week. Her editorialized drawings were charming. I don’t know how I feel about the paper sculptures, but they did deal with her headline about Libyan rebels using useless weapons.

Young Sun Han’s headline was about the disappearance of Ai Weiwei post-arrest. Watching Jerry Saltz vigorously bob his head up and down as Young Sun Han (clearly forced by producers) explained who Ai Weiwei was. You could basically see him thinking, “I know, BITCH.”

Young’s piece, a series of blocks of newspaper painted black with his headline atop them, won the day and the $20k. Maybe I’ve stopped being able to pay close attention to this show, but I didn’t really get it? But whatever. Young Sun Han said he was going to use the money to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment, so this win is nothing but a good thing.

Onto the losers. Oh, my beloved Sucklord. Your piece this week did kind of suck. You didn’t know what you wanted to say! Your voice did not shine through! You needed some Han Solo, goddamit. I did appreciate the turtleneck-suit combo.

Sarah K.’s piece looked like it had fallen off the wall. The cutouts were cool, but I didn’t get how they had anything to do with her super cool article about “descending into madness.” But it was Bayeté who got the boot, with his sloppily made gold doors that were somehow meant to evoke hatred for organized religion. He was pretty gracious on the way out. I will miss him and his adorable baby photos.

Join us next week, when the artistes do some graffitti. It looks like there are going to be some pretty sweet girl fights. Rawr.

Work of Art: Season Two appears on the Bravo TV network every Wednesday at 9/8c.