Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT In The Pink
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 4 | Aired on 06.30.2010
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 next round. It's not like Erik's next 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