from MAN

The art world loves Project Runway
Because we're not just about deaccessioning, strippers at the Nelson-Atkins, Polidori, endowments, Diebenkorn, and other seriousness... The art world's favorite television show is Project Runway. In the last month I've, sigh, come out about my addiction to the show. Curators, critics, and artists have laughed at me... and then have copped to their own PR obsession. (Don't think I haven't noticed the way my email stays oh-so-quiet on Wednesday nights about 10 ET.) I think we dig it because it's every bit as art world as the art world -- and here are five things that prove it:

PR represents the creative process fairly accurately. BS'ing in the studio, Tim's crits, creative types editing other creative types, jealousy and sniping. Familiar.
The way a timeline can drive or force creativity. The judges are waiting, a show opens Friday, etc.
The way the judges push the designers to take risks -- but not so many risks that their work stops being their work.
The thinness that separates creative success from middling mediocrity. (Also known as: How quickly you can go from the high-creative world to the Asheville-craft-show-world.)
We know the characters: Laura's fatalism (She'll just "throw another kid on the pile"), Jeffrey's fear of failure (as manifested by the middle fingers he flashes when he succeeds), Michael's comfy suavity (he mixes the kind of phrases you figure he learned at his grandmother's house with teaching the Oklahoma-drag-queen designer how to walk), and Uli's laid back hedonism (let's get vasted). We all know artists like this. MAN's blog here