Hot! Work Of Art

' Work of Art : The Next Great Artist' review: Bravo's latest reality competition may yield greatness

David Hinckley

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One irony in So in a sense, the TV show itself becomes the art, and there's nothing particularly deep, sensitive or esoteric about it. The question is whether 14 aspiring artists and a half-dozen hosts, judges and mentors can create enough drama to keep us entertained once a week.

This " Work of Art " season holds out some reasonable promise this can happen. The artists aren't a particularly loud, melodramatic or flamboyant crowd, and that's good, because once in a while even reality TV can benefit from understatement and focus on the task.

While the idea of discovering great art through a reality TV competition still may strike many people as absurd, no law precludes a great artist from using reality TV as an avenue to exposure and recognition.

Unlike neurosurgeons, artists have no well-established path. Considering all the odd ways different artists have been discovered, hey, why not throw reality TV into the mix?

The prize for this year's winner is substantial: $100,000, a magazine cover story and a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum , where the first episode begins.

The artists are taken to a room whose walls are lined with mediocre art - the kind of things, one contestant correctly observes, that might hang on the walls of a motel.

Their challenge is to take one piece of this art, deconstruct it and shape it into something more interesting.

Watching them through this process turns out to be surprisingly interesting. Okay, the woman who turns everything into what looks like a bloody pile of internal organs may not entice us to linger, but several of the reimaginings offer thoughtful insight into the progression of creativity.

Some viewers may not want to delve too deeply into the back story of the artist whose "self-portrait" is a picture of him naked in a room with his mother and his dying father.

But when you ask for art, you get what you get - and we can all share the exhilaration when the artist named Sucklord finds a painting from "Lord of the Rings ," which he considers the greatest work ever.

That he says this in a charming, matter-of-fact voice makes it almost a little eerie.

And that's good. This is, after all, reality TV, where unusual vibrations are as welcome as the next Mona Lisa.

dhinckley@nydailynews.com