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 we had kids, and kid art that was better than most of the art that was made, and Tewz was eliminated (bye Tewz!  I didn’t like your name either).   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.  Not art-related this week, but still hilarious and awesome:

“Since artist vulnerabilities are coming out, I’ll share one of my own. An hour before taping, I’m standing in my underpants in front of the show’s gorgeous twentysomething stylist, Zoe, thinking to myself, Drink in the macho, baby! Zoe quietly looks me over and says, “Um, Jerry. Do you like spanks?” Wow! The old male magic is still sizzling! I heard this generation is kinky! She wants to spank me! Here. In a reality TV dressing room! With the door partly open! Then she holds up a teeny-weenie doll-sized elastic undershirt thingy. “This is a Spanx,” she says. A girdle. My ego retracts, turtlehead-like. Ditto my genitals. Reality TV isn’t just making me look fat. The free food I’ve been grazing on for weeks is showing! I ask Zoe if this garment is “a fat repressor.” Carefully not using terms like “muffin top” or “s’more,” she says, “Spanx are trimming.” I wedge myself into it. I had no idea what kind of constricting strangulation goes on under some women’s clothes.”

I told Jerry in the comments section that I wear some form of Spanx almost every day, and he said to me, and I quote: “WOW! You are God-like and string [sic]. I found it unbearable, like putting a tee-shirt on a cat…  ”

Aw, Jerry called me God-like and string.  I mean strong!  Thanks Jerry!