Work of Art: The Next Great Artist

Part of the joy of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist is thinking about how much it must annoy "I don't own a TV" art-world types that not only does this competition exist, its contestants include established artists like sculptor Judith Braun, performance artist Nao Bustamante and painter Peregrine Honig. Work of Art blatantly copies the Project: Runway template, right down to co-host Simon de Pury's Tim Gunn role as the artists' mentor and sounding board. (Production company Magical Elves oversaw Runway's earlier, better seasons.) But where Runway catches unknown designers at the start of their careers, these contestants are already producing gallery-ready work: superhero-obsessed painter Abdi Farah's first exhibit was shockingly good. Of course, like all competition shows, it traffics in shallow character sketches—painter Jaclyn Santos comes off bitchy and ditzy, and her paintings look like bad David Hockney-meets-Cindy Sherman pastiche—and there are moments of manufactured drama: the first contestant ousted was clearly booted because the guy who painted the ghastly sad clown (on an artist's palette, yet!) made for better television. But fans of the genre expect that sort of thing by now, and for mindless summer viewing, Work of Art is top-rate.