Miscellaneous

Work of Art

By jeremyblachman

If you think I haven't blogged in three weeks, you're wrong, except that's all I'm going to tell you.  :)  If you find it, share it, but not in the comments please.  I hate that I feel like I'm doing some really nice blog-work over somewhere, and it's much, much harder to build an audience than I thought it would be.  I take it to mean that what I'm doing is simply not as compelling as my law school blog was, or Anonymous Lawyer was, but I want that not to be the truth.  Whether it was that much easier to build a readership a few years ago, or it's simply that the Anonymous Lawyer gimmick just happened to accidentally hit in a way that very little can, I don't know.  But I'm being humbled by the attempt.

On a separate note entirely, I'm strangely compelled by the new Bravo show "Work of Art" and I don't quite know why.  I don't enjoy art museums.  My wife and I went to the Whitney a couple of months ago and I found it very difficult to feel like I was getting anything out of the art.  We went to the Brooklyn Museum last month, and, again, I don't know, it didn't do much for me.  But I watched last week's premiere of Work of Art, expecting not to be interested, and yet I was totally taken in.  Most of it, I think, is just the general reality-show personal drama that works no matter the setting-- Top Chef, Work of Art, are they really so different?  But I think some of it is that the art works for me because I feel like I'm getting a glimpse into the artist.  I've written before about wanting to read books that give me insight into the author and how a lot of fiction doesn't work for me because I feel no connection with whoever the person behind the curtain is, writing it.  So maybe seeing the artists and then seeing the art makes the art more compelling for me.  But I also think I see artists-- perhaps especially modern artists-- as interesting people with interesting issues.  I'm drawn to slightly-tortured, melancholy people, in real life, for whatever reason.  There aren't a lot of them on TV.  Work of Art seems to have a bunch.  It works for me.  Absolutely recommended.

Not recommended, however, is Betty White's new sitcom that premiered on TV Land last night, called Hot In Cleveland.  I get that TV Land saw its original-sitcom niche as something that would feel at home among shows from the '80s and '90s.  But I wish they had decided to be more ambitious with that vision.

Full post as published by Jeremy Blachman's Brand New Weblog on June 17, 2010 (boomark / email).