Every week Jerry Saltz writes a recap of Work of Art for NYMagazine.  In case you forgot, Mr. Saltz is one of the judges on Work of Art and he is also the senior art critic for NYMagazine.  I enjoy the recaps almost more than I enjoy (or hate-enjoy) the show.  They help explain the reasoning and critiques of the judges and also de-mystify the reality show process.  For instance, the judging committee is told nothing about the contestants.  Everything they learn they learn via the critiques or by watching the television show.

I also love the recaps because of the comments section.  Mr. Saltz (okay, I’ll call him Jerry, because that’s how I talk to him in the comments), takes the time to read all of these comments and often responds to them.  He encourages his readers to talk about and write about and think about art; I love how he wants to make art and art criticism less scary and more popular.  I hope that he succeeds.

Each week I’ll be posting the link to Mr. Jerry’s recaps and I’ll also be quoting a selection from the article.  This week the Yale MFA graduate Kathryn was eliminated, mainly because she had locked herself into an ivory tower.  You can read my thoughts on all of that in my liveblog.

So, here is the link to Jerry’s recap and here is some good stuff from it:

“There are many kinds of artists and numerous definitions of artistic success. We can’t all be, or want to be, a Takashi Murakami. Kathryn is clearly a real artist. Possibly, a very good one. I’m told she’s done photographs for this magazine. She lost last night because as a highly cerebral, narrowly focused art-school-trained artist — Yale MFA; Photography, it turns out — she had no business being on a reality TV show. Here she seemed like some kind of out-of-place orchid, an illogical presence more like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa than someone on a bizarrely twisted, pressure-compressed reality TV grad-school game show about art. It was right to send her home. “

PREACH JERRY PREACH.  I am so glad I never have to hear the phrase “visceral tableau” again!