Previously: The absolutely repellent Judith's pants-shitting tantrum left even Nao's rampant narcissism looking classy by comparison, while Miles tricked the cutest boy in school into asking Trong to Prom, just so he could douse him in pig's blood before setting a pack of wild dogs loose on his family. This was viewed by the judges as a truly transgressive comment on the New York art world, and was captured on film for his exhibition later this year at MoMA entitled For Aspies Who Have Considered Suicide When A Nap Would Prove Sufficient, in which the artist will sit brazenly naked -- skimming classic literature to himself and humming contentedly at the brilliance of it all -- while a queue of viewers stand across the room wondering if maybe he can score them some Adderal.
Proud Pussy and that awful hipster dude proved themselves illiterate, Abdi can do no wrong, and Pomegranate sent herself into yet another Etsy-frenzy. Erik's white-trash meltdown came booming closer and closer to fruition, while his brother in not-belonging-here Mark nearly won with his usual balance of commercial appeal and total lack of a point of view. In the end, he lost to Quiet Gay John's total adorableness and ladder to the sun, while Judith was sent packing for hocking a loogie at this entire thing once again. Don't let the door hit your old pussy on the way out, you complete asshole.
morning, Proud Pussy's doing uncommitted crunches on the floor and Nao's wearing a couch formerly owned by Ambrose Bierce as a nightshirt, completing the look with a small black plastic bag on her stupid head. This is actually a performance piece called Not Before My Second Cup: A California Raisins Costume Remembers, which is meant to provoke questions about the treatment of free-market shade-grown coffee suppliers, as well as conversations about how totally interesting Nao is.
While Abdi thinks about all the art he's going to be arting, John picks through his collection of American Apparel shades of clothing, and Miles asks if he can help him pick out the best costume for the day. Genuine concern, or act of sabotage? Considering John's temporary outfit is a bright pink tankini from Muscle Beach, maybe a bit of both. I know if I was working what Miles is twerking with, I'd be sleeping chastely beside John at this point each night, just to get inside his head. Also because I imagine he is very comforting to be around, and Miles needs some kind of comfort. Or help, I guess, is the word we're looking for.
Miles tells us that Judith being gone has finally given him that night of rest he's so desperately needed since... I'm assuming fifth grade. (You know, in 2008.) But without Miles skitzing out about her obsessive over-attention, what will he worry about? Last week definitely gave the impression she was up his ass pretty much constantly -- for art-school reasons that are quite easy to understand, if hard to acknowledge -- and the almost tearful joy with which he has realized Judith's leaving means she'll never bother him again... It's something I have a lot of compassion for.
I'm not an artist, but in similar situations I've been that kind of target -- of the Naos rather than the Judiths -- and I can't say he had it easy, but can you imagine if Nao had been the one? Gathering him under her skirts like the Sugar Plum Fairy, drawing him into long conversations of sexuality and gender and What Art Means, mentoring him to death with her breasts and opinions? All Judith wanted was to micromanage his eating and bathroom schedule, and explain her unhinged theories while he cried.
Ryan stands at the microwave, letting its rays do to his balls what his tiny pants aren't already doing, and admits his plan to "make another piece of shit today." It's good that he knows, but also bad that he knows. Mark says Ryan can't leave, he's Mark's muse, and again: It's good that he knows, but also bad. "I want to make art that stands up to the test of time, like Ryan's egregious Artist Persona surely will."
Junebug Erik drinks Vitamin Water and smokes his fifth morning cigarette out the window and, as usual, makes this whole thing seem like a halfway house for meth addicts and not an exploration of the world of art that Sarah Jessica wants it to be. "I think some area of the art world will accept me," he says. I just think it's frankly cruel that, after three rounds of this, nobody has told him about Outsider Art yet.
"You know how your goal is to live all alone in the desert with a soldering iron and just your sculptures of baby heads and Nazi paraphernalia to keep you company? As you slowly spiral down into patrolling the overgrown property with a shotgun and administering your own home trepanations? That's your market, Junebug."
On the caravan to China Chow's secret location, Peripeteia is wearing a homemade Donnie Darko/American Flagg!-style silvery set of bunny ears. (Why are you wearing that stupid bunny-ear hat, Purplenurple? "Why are you wearing that stupid person-face... person?") I see merely being the sole heir of the Thain of the Shire is still just not interesting enough for old Pierrot, but at least she's still in there fighting. So many people tragically give up trying desperately to be interesting well before you want to kill them.
Secret Location: Phillips de Pury & Company in Chelsea, where a batshit crazy old Frenchman is standing around in black tie yelling at passersby about art while he waits for his opportunity to kill James Bond. Simon de Pury has made batshit crazy into its own kind of art, hasn't he? Jaime Lynn tells us what auctions are, and pronounces the gallery's name all crazy. Inside, there is a shocking bunch of intense shocking giant photographs courtesy of shock-monger Andres Serrano, who is a cottage industry specializing in intensely shocking giant photographs of intensely shocking things.
A Klansman! Conjoined twins! Corpses! Poop!
Pachyderm explains that she was inspired by Serrano at eighteen, when she saw him give a talk. Well, that explains it. By 1995 he'd already gone full meta, which probably impressed the young Patagonia as much as it does any of us at that age. I hope she takes a picture of herself taking a picture of a picture of Andres Serrano; double points if she does this dressed as a mime-faced lawn jockey.
Everybody runs around "responding" to the art and informing each other of fascinating (and shocking!) facts about menstrual blood, urine, feces, mimes, lawn jockeys, conjoined twins. Surprisingly enough, Nao wins for grossest immediate comment, about God knows what: "It's, like, the one that scares me the most somehow." She has twisted something into her hair that is not a small garbage back, and put on a cute purple sweater over her print dress. As you can imagine, Nao is all over the menstrual blood and urine and feces, but most of all the intoxicating fame of Andres Serrano.
Standing in front of Piss Christ, Mark and Abdi try to understand the '90s and/or why Andres Serrano is famous. Mark, of course, has no response to any art because he is not an artist, but Abdi likes the colors. Mark explains to him about the pee here, and Abdi's like, "Is this being provocative for its own sake?" (Yes.) Jaime Lynn gets right up in his grill about how Andres is very religious and so it's a commentary about blah-blah-blah, basically repeating verbatim things everybody knows about Andres Serrano, but in that angry arrogant art-student way where she's scoring a point. Abdi gives in, and says that's just like so powerful, and she hisses, "That's what makes it art."
Coincidentally, this conversation is what makes Jaime Lynn awful. It's too bad, because I was rooting for her before this, but that angry-face art-crit appalled-jaw over-it act is just about the most unattractive dealbreaking thing you can do. It's not your art, you are not allowed to be incensed on its behalf like some kind of Linux nerd scoffing angrily because somebody, somewhere, bought an iPad. I mean, I get that JL is religious, it's one of the things I like about her, but to get all "Christ's message has been demeaned by culture," while at the same time snotting around about the Nature of Art, is... Pretty shallow. Luckily, Abdi is a class act, so he just agrees that he has been educated in the nature of art, and we move on.
China Chow, what on earth are you wearing, sweetheart? A rigorously constructed black bubble skirt and cute lacy top. I bet that thing's got chicken-wire in it! She busts up in there with Andres, who looks great, and Simon introduces them. They clap and I think Nao curtsies, and Erik stares at him and identifies with Andres Serrano because... What else does he have? Erik is aware of one more artist today than he was yesterday, and this one likes pee. Ryan says he's not "shocking per se," but that housewives don't get him; John just says exhaustedly that being gay is in itself shocking and people are always bugging you, so no big deal.
Andres says the word "shit" one million times, which... Yep. They all laugh and wonder why he keeps saying that word "shit." Simon gets on board at end, which elicits actual shocked laughter, and makes the whole thing worth it. On their way out to hit Utrecht, Presbyteria pulls some kind of Namaste bullshit at Andres. Good Lord that girl.
Okay, let's be shocking already, with a $100 budget. Abdi consults a tiny cute art-store elf about how to make candles, I guess out of his own fat or something. He admits he's always looking to be shocking, if not sexual. Ryan and Nao -- there's a pair of assholes for ya -- giggle and roam thinking about shocking things, while JL in her leopard-print scarf decides that in fact she's been subtly referencing Serrano all along and not Gilbert & George like she clearly has been. Although I guess it's hard to hit that NEA-friendly mix of "creepy" and "accessible" just right, so maybe that's the influence.
Oh wait, no, what she's saying is that she's been invoking him in her own defense. Maybe that explains her weird defensiveness about him. She talks at length about hypocrisy and Christianity and faith and all that, and it's pretty compelling because you can see why she would be so attached to Serrano, and I guess it was just her affect in that moment that bothered me so much. Still, she gets pretty pissy, and when I like her work it's generally not for the same reasons she seems to think it's worthwhile. Like, the vacuum cleaner thing was my favorite piece besides John's in the junk challenge, but only because it was aesthetically pleasing, whereas she seemed to think it was Exile In Guyville. I imagine her shocking art will be a self-portrait of herself wearing white shoes and a calendar proving it's long past Labor Day.
Quiet John is busting out! Auto-fellatio! He just went there, immediately. "What's shocking? Sucking your own dick. What else ya got?" I'm sure Nao will beat him there, though.
What's Nao going to pull? Well, problem number one is that nothing shocks her because she's seen it all. And I don't know if you know this, because she doesn't really mention it very often, but her absurd amount of fame mostly comes from performance art and video pieces. Very shocking, generally. In this case, she has no idea what's going to happen.
Abdi is shocked by the futurelessness of the black urban male, which is sort of a Mark way to go for the person who will probably win this whole thing. I mean, valid, and I love the idea of disenfranchised kids as bombs, but it seems a little on the nose, like Mark's calaveras... Although I guess the same would go for John's dick-sucking masterpiece, come to think of it. And I'm sure Proud Pussy will find a way to get naked, and Miles will no-doubt have buttholes involved somehow, so maybe we should just take "on the nose" off the table at this point.
Erik's pleased as much to do what he would "naturally do," which is make shocking dumb art, and... Yep, kids getting molested by priests. Timely and obnoxiously trashy. "I don't know anybody that's personally been sexually abused by a priest," he says, and then follows up that shitty little admission with the even more offensive "I read a statistic once that said there were more Catholic priests living with AIDS than there were... Anyone else." I'd like to see that pie chart, with all the priest PWA's in red and then just a big "Everybody Else" in green. That sounds real fucking scientific, you douchebag.
Proud Pussy runs right back to the bathroom and gets those fake tits out immediately, of course. Jaime Lynn is appalled and dashes away as quickly as possible. Nao opens the door , bashing it into Proud Pussy's boobs while wearing a SARS mask, and apologizes for trying to use the restroom for something other than taking skanky MySpace pix. Jaclyn explains that this graceless attempt to take sexual photographs of herself is consciously trying to evoke the sense of a girl attempting to take poorly composed sexy photos of herself. Nicole finds it funny, but also shocking! Nicole is completely vague! Number one perfect girlfriend for anybody who just wants a girlfriend!
Working, working, Mark pops balloons and goes after the sexual abuse of children as well, explaining to us along the way what a "triptych" is and then lining up bloody fucking little girl panties on various color-blocked canvases. So provocative! So terrifying! So classic Mark: All flash, no inspiration.
Taking over the other bathroom, Ryan covers himself in the usual birdshit with an extension cord around his neck, explaining himself as a "post-coital, post-bondage, post-cumshot tranny with, like, really bad makeup." He makes horrible faces into the camera, and then shows us the result: It is awesome. I mean, it's very lame and Ryanish, but still.
Nicole flirtily explains to Miles that she's all about accidental amputations, and she's making some kind of small sculpture Bento Box with casts of her tiny thumbs, which are going to be stuffed like bodily substances. This episode is really showing you the limits of art under pressure, isn't it? This challenge is the worst idea of all time. Porthos compares her thumb casts to "little kid dicks," because little kid dicks are what's on everybody's minds right now.
Miles -- poor, unfortunate soul -- got a shocking boner in a Disney movie, and discussed it with his mom: Ursula the Sea-Witch turned into a "mega-babe" and up it came. "She's a good-looking woman," he says, and Nao thinks about how to go about stealing a mermaid's voice forever. (Then she makes a video of herself stealing her own voice, in a plastic bag that once held goldfish, and calls it a day.) (Separately shocking: The fact that even though we didn't know this about Miles... Didn't we basically know this about Miles?) So Miles is doing some kind of collage with Mickey Mouse's face and a "tumorous morass" of... Yep. "Titties," penises and buttholes.
Plus, do you really believe anything Miles says, ever? Was he reading Frankenstein to his mother while masturbating to The Little Mermaid while pretending to be asleep? I mean, I find the complete disingenuous unreality of the entirety of Miles to be intoxicating, but I don't have a lot of respect for people's subjective existence generally, so it wouldn't occur to me to question this tale. "Oh, you got a boner and asked your mommy what was happening to you? Way to bring your erection into our conversation, buddy." I'm more than willing to let you set the agenda if it's working in my favor.
Ryan is unsure about the efficacy of all this, and also passes judgment on everybody else, deciding that he's the best of all time. Mark tries to form a thought, and mostly giggles about his muse, and Ryan worries that the cum on his face doesn't look semeny enough. If I had a nickel.
Pandoricum talks a blue streak about the evolution of her idea, which is basically -- from what I can gather -- "What if couture houses caught STDs." As usual, her actual art is fantastically beautiful, but one glimpse at the process and it's all too irritating to deal with. She's still wearing her tinfoil bunny rabbit outfit.
Everybody laughs at Proud Pussy for doing yet another whorish fashion shoot while talking about how she's not a whore. Ryan explains to us the few things he's gleaned about the Male Gaze, and then climbs into bed with her for Erik's boy-fucking masterpiece. Erik's mad because they're not acting like they're actually sodomizing each other, and getting all giggly because they're in flirt mode.
Nao is doing some kind of crap that involves constructing from thick cardboard shapes that could have been made "by an insect or an animal." (Or Erik.) It breaks in her hands, and Promethea tries and fails to be sympathetic. So far, yet again, Nao's got nothing.
Simon visits Proud Pussy, who tries to explain how these slutty photos -- just as in the last three challenges -- are not actually slutty photos. He shows her the boner he's getting about her naked tits, and Erik chuckles creepily. Simon tells her to get a life, or maybe try making some art, but she proudly says no.
Mature Audiences! Oh yeah. is JL, who has done a really cool-looking cartoonist's rendition of the Last Supper as a punk-pop cocktail party full of weapons. The business of all it reminds me of Spiegleman's illos and endpapers for The Wild Party, that New Yorker kind of thing, but the iconic nature of the setting -- and the very Archie cartoonishness of it all -- makes it really lovely. Simon says it's not shocking, even after she's explained how this is her version of Piss Christ: Her frustration at, essentially, having Lindsay Lohan invited into pop juxtaposition with Jesus as media objects. As usual, I love both medium and message, but -- as usual -- not even Crazy Simon can see the connection. He tells her she better figure out how to explain it in a way that will fool the judges into thinking it's relevant.
We're not even allowed to see John's picture of the guy blowing himself, but he explains that his friend who sucks his own dick no longer leaves the house. Simon wonders about the Dick & Jane style in which he's painted the picture, and John worries that maybe autofellatio is de trop for old Simon. Are you kidding me? Simon's sexual fantasies probably have larger and more varied casts than a DW Griffith period piece. The guy's clearly a Rick Jamesian superfreak.
From Rick Jamesian to Ellen Jamesian, let's see what's going on now with Nao. When she talks I just hear muted trumpet, but basically she has stuck some crap to some other crap and is now "going into outer space and coming back with some information," so if Simon could just chill for a sec, that would be great. Abdi worries, as does everyone, what the fuck Nao is up to. She'll be sitting inside the piece sometimes, like Miles, and mingling with the crowd sometimes, like Miles. But unlike Miles, she is not cute as a button. And nobody will buy her bullshit.
Simon informs everybody that this one comes with immunity, and another wonderful surprise: Not one but two people will be eliminated. Prosthesis is shocked. I feel like every time we see her, the bunny outfit has morphed into more of an outfit and less of an assault. Now it's like a cute mod minidress with just the bunny ears to remind you what she's capable of. Erik gets scared and immediately runs to go take a shit on his art, so that it will be more shocking. More "shocking" than AIDS-infected priests sexlessly hipster-cuddling with Proud Pussy? You don't say.
Erik actually offers Proud Pussy some excellent advice: Let the rest of the group write obscenely rude shit on her slutty pics when she's not looking. Not only is this a cool idea -- and PP is totally down -- but he even has a narrative for it: "What better way can you shock people than to put yourself in a vulnerable situation?"
And with that, Erik runs off to catch AIDS from a priest. And then shit on the AIDS.
I don't know, though: Doesn't this great "Let's be mean to Jaclyn" concept seem like a sort of terrible idea, in actual practice? Proud Pussy's main thing is being in denial about herself. I see this going to the Judy Blume place where everybody dishes up some scrambled eggs and puts Blubber in the middle of the circle and start giving her the old Mean Girl therapy session. In my experience, this generally ends up with everybody chanting "Cry! Cry! Cry!" until she cries. God, that is going to be amazing if that happens. I shouldn't get my hopes up.
Miles continues to draw his morass, John gets nervous about his Life Drawing skillz, Punxsutawney lounges around in her bunnysuit, and Abdi finally gets his molds of the little-kid heads ready. Nobody even bothers to register an opinion about Abdi's work, because they know he is going to win this shit.
Ryan and Abdi caution Erik not to actually write SEX EDUCATION on his work, because it's dorky and on-the-nose and points up his lack of sophistication and taste level so tremendously, but he goes, "I know the popular consensus is I should avoid text but I'm just putting text on there?" Abdi is like, "That is a valid argument." Even Ryan's suggestion, making that the title, is still taking it too far. But Erik wants to make it like an old-school PSA poster (I forgot, he mentioned that earlier) so some kind of text actually is going to be necessary. And you know what, honestly whatever gets Erik the fuck out of here fastest, the better.
I mean, to be clear, I don't hate him, he's not bad looking, he seems pretty nice overall and I would hire him to do odd jobs if he lived in the Boo Radley house down the block, but this is all starting to feel a bit mean. Like we might as well ask him to go yachting, or invite him to crack a lobster while we all watch. ("Avoid the steaming divot!" we'd say, and he'd hunker down and start taking shocking photos of the steaming divot.) It's just not entertainment. For example, here's the connection Erik has finally made to Serrano: He designed a couple Metallica covers. I mean...
Anyway. One hour left. Mark's at the computer, making art out of nothing. Miles, looking lush, tries to flirt the coffee maker into working. No dice. Lovely Nicole -- whom the show seems to be treating like a secret to be kept from us, which makes me think she'll be around a long time -- asks Pramayana to donate some fingernails to her thumb thing, which is already more than she's ever contributed. The thumb casts, we see now, are suspended in tiny glass jars. It's actually super creepy, now that she's actually doing it. She tells us that both she and her twin have always been into art, and that she's feeling good about where she's at in her process.
Tomorrow: One hour of work left. Abdi gets to it, making all his little head-bombs, and of course he's underestimated the amount of time he actually has to correct things. I love how every week he budgets his time so carefully and then uses such unpredictable materials that you can actually hear them laughing when he's not around. What was meant to be nine bomb-babies is now down to three, if that.
Everybody bleeds into Nicole's jars, squicking everybody out. Mark -- and get a load of this stunning lack of self-inventory -- calls it all very "amateurish" and unshocking: "Are you a freshman in college?" he asks, rhetorically, and then goes right back to Photoshopping his little girl's bloody panties rape piece.
We knew Mark was a shallow artist, but the arrogance with which he disses somebody else's work -- and not even for the right reasons! -- is a huge turn-off. She's not being shocking because of the blood and spit, you halfwit, she's making art about amputated thumbs. The materials are just a little extra grossness on top of the actual idea, which, for an artist, a sculptor, actually has merit. But then I guess you don't really need thumbs for Photoshopping spooky pictures of clowns, now, do ya.
I just got my Goop email, which means this recap is officially 45 minutes late. On the upside, rest easy: Gwyneth's on top of this whole "fossil fuels" thing.
Miles worries about the shocking, unstimulating nature of his piece, and decides to do something truly horrific... Oh, Miles. Don't. I know what you're thinking, don't do it. Do not masturbate onto that art.
Miles runs off and masturbates all over the art.
This episode is sort of about my stuff with Miles. Firstly, I bet you one hundred dollars that he was born in or near the first week
of December, because my weird Boy Powers are not useful in any real way but they seldom go awry. Secondly, I would like to ride a unicorn over to his house and pick him up so we can go make out in an arcade. But mostly, he makes me feel like Jean-Luc Picard that time he accidentally lived an entire life as an old Frenchman, but instead of a winery it's an East Austin hipster bar and instead of being an old Frenchman it's getting stuck in a seriously complicated mess that damages both of us irreparably.
The first time we watched this show at TV night he became "The Great Victim of Spiritual Annihilation," because they recognized in him that thing that makes me immediately put my sunglasses on and get the fuck out of there before they go all Near Dark and I start getting weird crying phone calls. Some people chew Nicorette and some spit Copenhagen; I collect Mileses. It's something I'm working on.
Simon comes to check in with Ryan, who relishes explaining the cum on the face and his tranny sexiness and what have you, which is still pointless and fake. Simon laughs at Miles's Disney hard-on, saying he got his first one from a Renoir. John gives a great "whhhaaaa?" sort of face to that, as does Miles, but: Congratulations on singlehandedly out-pretentiousing everybody in the room, Simon.
Although he's so old and creepy probably he means Actual Renoir gave him a handjob during the Paris Commune, when things weren't so limited and people weren't so obsessed with labels. Also, if I never hear another goddamn thing about Simon de Pury's dick it will be too soon. Miles, impressed with the shocking nature of this business, quickly jumps back into being uncomfortable and awkward and nodding: Yes, Renoir is good porn too. It's like Miles can't be within a foot of anybody without them wanting to rub their stuff in his face. I'm sure even Trong was like, "Bitch move, but those shoes are really cute on you." Is he asking for it? I don't think so. I think he's doing his best to survive, most of the time.
China Chow introduces the judges, but I can't pay attention because Nao is Naoing Out in a giant trashbag with a face painted on it that looks like the guy from House Of 1000 Corpses and covered in probably her own menstrual blood and feces and pee. She is just the fucking worst.
Abdi's piece is called IED (Improvised Explosive Device), and he's arranged three head-bombs on a piece of plywood before spray-painting them entirely in black, so that the paint is also all over the otherwise natural wood. He explains his concept to us again while China Chow crawls around it on her knees in some no-doubt ungodly expensive couture.
Ryan's self-portrait -- which really is quite beautiful, supersaturated to the point of having a sort of painterly thing going on, like that comic artist Fegredo -- is called, enigmatically enough, My Tranny Porno Fantasy. He describes it to the people as evoking Marilyn Monroe, and Jeanne thanks him sort of backhandedly for giving us the obligatory cumshot.
Unsurprisingly, Andres seems intrigued by Erik's finished Sex Education poster, which looks pretty great. It's been aged and tattered, and affixed to the wall with some rough-torn red tape. Over the bed hangs a huge cross, and then in post he's scratched it all up and smeared part of it with red stuff. The perspective makes Ryan's feet huge and Jaclyn's feet tiny, which is fine, although there's nothing particularly aggressive or scary about their positioning, which is a problem: Without the effects and weird lighting, they could be taking a nap or something equally innocent.
All in all, it's got a preciously produced feeling, but maybe that's just because we saw the process: It definitely feels old, and reminds me somehow of the Nightmare On Elm Street posters when we were little. That sort of knifey washed-out aesthetic. As expected, the text is a bit distracting, and done in a scratchy self-conscious style that seems tacked-on. I was not expecting to vote for him to stay, but given the work itself, minus the intent, I'm pretty pleased.
John's The Recluse is lacking in the colors and design sense that have made his things so gorgeous. No neon pinks or orthogonal lines in this one: Just a dude suckin' on his dick, with some words written around him including the top caption "Auto-Follatio [sic] ... Why Not??" The art itself is clumsy, with weird fringe anklets on the man's ankles, and one can only imagine the genitalia are not that well-crafted either. Knowing that John's not a primitive artist in any real sense, he's really putting his line skills on shout here, and altogether it's disappointing. Of all the times to win without immunity.
Mark's In An Instant is, if you'll recall, a triptych: There's a little torn dress on a red-pink field, the soiled pink panties on yellow, and a popped red balloon on blue. Based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer, by Manipulate. The judges are like, "Is that a photoshopped photograph?" Um, yeah. Have you met Mark? That's the limit of what he's interested in doing. He explains all about how innocence can never be regained, blah blah, and generally comes off exactly as disingenuous and sheltered as he's actually being. It's like Marlon Brando sending that little fake Indian girl up to get his Oscar, only in this case she's just been pretend-raped. Just egregious.
Nicole's Vial is about "taking a phobia [of hers] into a communal space." Glad to know she was paying attention when Simon told her to make up some old crap to say. Steve Coogan (!?) suddenly appears and says he approves of this one, because it's aesthetically attractive. I agree: The jars are lit up from beneath, so the stark colors of her various gross thumb-fillings are really vibrant. I mean, apart from the blood I don't know what we're looking at -- some hair, I guess fingernails -- but it's gross without being grungy, like a Saw poster. There's something cerebral and clear about the whole project, which I wasn't expecting. I mean, it's not that interesting overall, but it's styled very well.
Nao's Barely Standing is one of those things that only performance artists ever do, because they're so stuck in their own heads that they don't really care about how anything looks. There's a tumbldown structure made of strips of cardboard, like a falling-down hut, on a green rubber sheet. In one corner of the floor piece, you can see the original thing she was doing, the calamari or whatever they were glued to it. There's a chair in front of the thing, where Nao is sitting, and she is dressed like a total jackass. Black body suit, face covered in plastic with some shit stuffed in there on top like a fecal-sample version of Carmen Miranda, some big beads around her neck just for fun, and what seems to be a merkin. She is covered in maybe real shit, maybe fake shit, but whatever she is doing to the shit is really creepy. Stop palpating your bag of shit right now, Nao.
There may also be corporate logos on the white shift she's wearing over the bodysuit. Oh, no, they're bags from Utrecht. In short, whatever random crap she found lying around at the last second and thought, "Yeah, I can bullshit my way through this one." Which, art school is not a no-BS zone, but when your whole career is based on just acting weird and doing weird shit with weird things and then getting rude with anybody who wonders what the fuck you are doing... That's just a waste of your life. It means you are broken and have nothing to actually say -- the self that you're expressing so obnoxiously is not your actual self, which you have not yet discovered yet because you've been so busy creating, I mean, it's not a coincidence that people like this also generally tend to be pretty shitty as people -- so you end up performing "creativity" instead of actually being creative, which is why people who are not artists should find another field instead of art.
Proud Pussy's Triple Self-Portrait In Bathroom is just as boring as you might think, having seen it not only in the last three challenges but also in her pre-show materials, right down to the Perez-esque stars over her boobs. They haven't written the mean things on them yet. Somebody writes "Yes, they're real!" pointing to her hard fake tits as she voiceovers about whatever the hell.
China Chow is busy counting the penises in Miles's First And Last (referring to his erections, of course), which ends up being a Big Daddy Roth/Harvey Kurtzman sort of mishmash of cartoonish line drawings making up the Mickey Mouse icon. Nothing too interesting -- though his work with pen and ink are pretty gorgeous altogether -- or special here... Unless you count the jizz drooling down the thing. Abdi is shocked by the cum once Miles explains whence it came, and pronounces this a faux pas. I admire once again the way Abdi refuses to dignify anybody else's affectations.
But is it a faux pas really? I mean, I can see why one might think it's gross and all, but I don't really see why it would be a huge deal, anymore than blood or Nicole's parts. I mean, the stuff is readily available. We are not, as a global society, running out of it. And chances are mighty high that in your lifetime you have been in a situation where it ended up somewhere it didn't belong -- in fact, the very nature of its delivery system problematizes its location much of the time, if you see what I'm saying. Not all the time, but more often than is really convenient. Especially if, like Miles, you have OCD.
up Jaime Lynn's Church In The South gets a good explanation, as she discusses the way that the work starts out iconic and beautiful, but the more you look at it, the more you realize everything is gross. I know her deal is basically being frustrated with glitzy shallowness and trying to bring that together with her spirituality, but that would be a lot harder to take if she didn't make such attractive things when working on it. The judges don't have much to say.
Peggy Sue's Herpes For Chanel/Syphilis For Prada is more successful than I'd imagined. It's lovely, of course -- what Mark would explain to us is a diptych, of gigantic fashion sketches with various gross flourishes -- and also unnerving. Especially for China Chow, who notes that the Chanel dress and collar are something she wore in a episode; in effect Peregrine has given her syphilis. Lucky girl, wearing some kind of knitted helmet in addition to her chunky turquoise jewelry, painted cowboy boots and Anthropologie-looking knit dress and standing there with her monkey arms hanging down and weird album-cover facial expressions, endlessly blinking. Looking at her just makes me so upset.
For the crit: Jaclyn, John, Erik, Abdi, Nao and Jaime. Everybody else leaves, and we begin with Jaime. She explains about the debauchery and danger surrounding Christ in her adorable picture, and Jeanne quickly compares it to a New Yorker cover, which is of course what it looks like, but seems to be a big part of the point.
It's a Culture War image, brought to you by the Culture War episode, which was brought to you by the '90s Culture War, which was brought to you by... Andres Serrano. They call it a "white trash wedding," which she loves of course, and Andres says she doesn't have shock in her makeup. Yikes. "You have to have a strong character [to be shocking]," Andres says in a way that almost makes it sound less self-aggrandizing: "I don't think you really have it." Every week I feel like I give her too much credit, or they don't give her enough. I just like her.
Erik explains his intent -- he's getting better at this part every week, because essentially what this show is doing is putting him through a semester of art school every episode, presumably -- and they compare it to trashy album covers, which he loves. Jerry Saltz says, to judges' titters, that if he were trying to sandbag Erik he would have suggested, of course, the text on the piece itself. Duh. The one thing they told him not to do and he did, because he's an idiot. Andres tries to explain that hand-waving toward child abuse is somewhat less shocking than if he had somehow included an image even tangentially related to that in the piece. Without the explanation, it's a half-assed gesture that says nothing while trying to be shocking, which: Meet Erik.
China Chow's perturbed, I think, by the size of the penis John's autofellator is sucking on. We get a few more details of the writing on the thing, which John explains are step-by-step instructions that actually pull the piece together in a way the figure doesn't: Step Five is "Slowly disappear." Jeanne giggles when Jerry points out the misspelling of "fellatio," which John admits is "very unfortunate," and the judges decide that a creepy drawing isn't shocking in the same way a photograph of John himself attempting to suck his own dick would have been shocking. I agree. I also believe that that would have been awesome. Andres likes the writing more than the figure, and says that all kinds of people are illiterate, so don't feel bad.
Proud Pussy's photo, in addition to the "yes, they're real" we saw being written, also says "FEED ME" in a cartoon bubble. Nice. She talks about how they're self-consciously ridiculous, but really hypes up the whole interactivity angle. Jeanne likes that, of course, and also likes the way the unplanned-seeming shoot brought us "into the bathroom." Somebody drew a snake with an arrow pointing to her bikini bottoms, as if to say, "There's a snake in there." Everybody praises her/Erik's idea about "revealing the audience" by showing what the people had to say about her body, which is a really good way to talk about it. Andres suggests that she should have written "real shit" on there about herself, which would have been great.
Erik starts to get pissed at this point, as she leaves him out of the whole discussion of letting people draw on the photos. Every year with American Idol there's always one hick girl that gets a ticket to Hollywood and we always say she's going to end up throwing a black girl in the pool by the end of the Hollywood round. We've been saying this about Erik since the beginning. Tonight may be the night. So Jaclyn's like, "Simon asked me to make it more shocking, so then I invented Sharpies" and that kind of crap, and the whole time Erik is getting more visibly angry and snorting and hissing a little louder, and the stress is deafening. China Chow asks Erik what his problem is, and he explains how it was totally his idea, and Proud Pussy lies and says she was already thinking about doing it before he told her to do it. Andres gives him some praise for it, ignoring her total lies, and we move on after Jaclyn gets the credit for "being smart enough to listen" to Erik.
China Chow asks Nao what the fuck, as usual, she has done to herself. She doesn't know, of course, and tries to summon as many art school bullshitting-through-the-crit words as she can think of. But the judges, finally, have had enough of her shenanigans. Jerry fully takes her smug ass down, while Jeanne shakes her head: "So you don't really know what this piece is, we don't know what the piece is, and it comes off therefore as incredibly familiar, kind of adolescent-mixed-with-shock your grandmother performance art." Word! Welcome to the world of Nao!
But to Jeanne's horror, Serrano gives total approval to this bullshit, bringing in all kinds of unintended personal references to the homeless, to the objectification of the artist, to whatever he can think of, in order to give it some weight. He's been doing this for what, thirty-five hundred years? It's not like he can actually hear himself. He wouldn't have a career if not for the tacit agreements about significance in the art world that claimed the '90s. It's not that the Emperor has no Clothes, I mean, his images are beautiful, but he's not wearing any shoes, and he's part of a generation of barefoot artist-Emperors who decided shoes were the point. Maybe Nao really is just a throwback to the days of Sprinkle and Haring, just like she imagines herself to be.
Jerry admits that Abdi's bombs are, at least, attractive and magnetic, which they are. Bill Powers points out that there's a quiet reverse-shock to be found here, since we've caught the bombs ahead of time, before they've exploded: There's a threat of imminent violence. China Chow admits that she likes the piece more now that she's heard about it, which is not something I would long to hear in this situation, but frankly Abdi can coast this week. His explanations are always less interesting than the work itself, but something so small and non-showy in a week of loud screaming cum-splattered hell sort of requires more explanation, so I'm glad they took it that way. Not shocking, but stronger and better art than a lot of the other stuff.
Outside the crit, Erik goes after Proud Pussy for not giving him credit. I was prepared to come down on her side with this one -- even given the gross way she omitted him entirely from the discussion -- but her response, "You're constantly yelling out unasked-for shit day and night! Even a blind squirrel can find a nut eventually!" is so grody that I'm going to have to come onto Erik's side this time. Just give him fucking credit for saving your piece, moron. All you did was take the same naked pictures you have been taking every day since before this show even started. It's not ever hard to be gracious, you twit.
Yet still, somehow, it's more about the unspoken subtext that Erik has no place or reason to be here, and the one actually highbrow thing he ever suggested or did, he got no credit for it. Well. Maybe she'll get him so riled up that he'll actually get kicked off the show for chair-throwing or something, like the Big Brother contestant he really is. Because the key point here is that it's not about who gets approval from the authority figures and a pat on the head -- which you can easily see why this is a sticking point for Erik, whose entire existence here is largely contingent -- but merely who is going through to the round. It's not like Erik's piece of charmless crap is going to be somehow raised up by "Remember that time somebody else made good art?"
Out in the judges' room, Bill is surprised that so many of them went straight for boring old sex and jizz everywhere, because the things that Bill is surprised by are always themselves surprising. Andres wants us to know that he was not shocked, but that's only because he is basically unshockable, because he is the most interesting goddamn person that ever existed and when he drinks beer he drinks Dos Equis. China changes the subject from Andres Serrano to the pieces themselves, and he comes along reluctantly.
Jeanne and Jerry both responded to the weird mysticality of Abdi's finished product; she compares them to ritual candles and notes
the craftsmanship of the piece itself. Andres liked it a lot. With Proud Pussy, Jerry's joined by Bill in saying that regardless of whose idea it is -- and thank God the show's editors are allowing that point to be underscored, because nothing grabs a viewer's attention like the illusion of somebody not getting the praise they deserve -- she was pretty amazing for letting people touch her body with markers.
Jeanne finds Erik's "social complaints" to be numerous, but missing from the art. Andres agrees. And Nao, Jeanne explains, is a performance artist who couldn't explain her performance. Bill didn't find Jaime's piece compelling, and Andres suggests scaring her into being a better artist. Jeanne loves Jerry's idea of having John suck his own dick, and Bill agrees that it was jokey and not shocking enough. I'm really disappointed with John this week. I just can't tell if he has it or not, and I think he'd agree, and that's the problem.
Of Jaclyn and Abdi, one wins immunity: And it's Abdi. For making the only piece that was not shocking in any way, but still was better than everything else. That's so Abdi!
So for double-elimination it's Nao, Erik, John and JL. China seems a bit upset by this elimination. Jerry calls John a fake, Jeanne calls Nao a "scatological mess," Bill takes Jaime to task for once again being "not wild enough," and China Chow tries to explain to Erik that choosing a taboo subject and waving your hands toward it going oooooo is not the same thing as being an artist. A lesson they've tried to teach him each week so far. Which of these four will go home? I hope it's Nao and Erik, but I fear it'll be Jaime and... Hmm. Anybody but John, that would be the worst-case. I have no idea who the other one will be.
Jaime is... SAFE! Crazy. Erik is safe. Dammit. Although I guess given the options, his was a lot more attractive than the other two. At least he tried, as hard as he always does, which John basically did not do. And I think there's a little asterisk by his name on everybody's voting cards reminding them that he's not got the advantages of all the other artists, like for instance how they're artists.
Well, so that's John and Nao. Quite a sacrifice to make, but one I'm willing to make to get Nao out of here. I think it says something that I'm more upset about how damned cute he is and less about his bright-pink art style. Also, that thing was a piece of crap.
While John tells us that his mistake was in trying to impress Andres Serrano -- which, in a nutshell, is a mistake nobody can afford to make -- Nao explains: "Failure is completely okay in the process of making art -- we have to really push beyond our own boundaries and be able to fail." I love how even failing at art makes her a better artist than everybody else: "I don't know that the kind of work I make has been valued in a fine art gallery situation," she says, as though that proves the nonexistence of "fine art gallery situations."
I can't wait for her drunk speech at the reunion. ("Honestly I can only give him a personal critique nobody would ever know unless they personally respond to me would know what my personal response is. And that is of me. And personally I believe that you can't like push the boundaries and like Johnny Cash. Walk the line.")
I'll miss you, John, but I'm glad Jaime Lynn gets another shot. And that Penguin commission sure won't hurt. week, JL's going to do some kind of pageant queen thing, I'm guessing, while Proud Pussy will find a compelling reason to take naked pictures of herself. Ryan will explain that he is a "tortured rock star" who disdains Urban Outfitters and -- like any good hipster -- hipsters, while Miles pines pointlessly and waits for his (500) Days Of Nicole to finally start. And China Chow, O the outfits she will wear.