This week's challenge paired off the remaining contestants to tackle a series of opposing themes -- male versus female, order versus chaos and heaven versus hell. Each pair had to create a conjoined work of art that would address one set of opposites -- but the pairings produced their own oppositions in the form of interpersonal disagreement and resentment.
Mark clashed with Peregrine on their heaven-versus-hell project. Peregrine wanted to use Mark's abdominal scar as the subject of their artwork, but Mark expressed reservations, only to back down from his objections in order to be a good sport.
But in art as in life, being a good sport doesn't necessarily count for much and shameless self-promoters rule the day.
Miles, who worked with Jaclyn on the male-versus-female assignment, revealed his manipulative and predatory side by quietly maneuvering his partner into taking off her clothes for her portion of the project. As shown in previous episodes, Jaclyn doesn't need much encouragement to strip, but her initial hesitation was sanded away by her partner's smooth insistence.
One artist gets naked (again), one judge cries (a first!)
One thing that’s making Work of Art better TV with each succeeding week is that the usual reality-TV rhythms rarely occur, and unexpected emotions arise. For instance: At the start of the hour, it sounded as though Miles was trying to manipulate Jaclyn into failing. Choosing his words carefully, he said to the camera that he hoped to persuade the frequent exhibitionist to “come up with something pretty [long pause] saucy.” A bit later, Miles was pondering “how I could get Jackie to add nudity to her piece,” and after she’d decided that doing a portrait of herself masturbating would illustrate “a woman gaining control,” Miles was gleefully congratulating himself as being “underhandedly genius.” The impression we got was that Miles assumed the judges would be tired of Jaclyn’s repeated use of her own naked form. But things changed later.
Miles and Jaclyn were the winners, but if Miles had hoped to come out of it the superior of the two, he failed: Jaclyn’s portrait was praised as well. With each week, the once-adorable Miles is looking more and more like a weasel. He blithely admitted he’d coveted the now-gone Ryan’s tar, and had told him it was “really hard” to work with, “so I could use it later.” And when he sucked up to guest judge McGinness (“I adore your black-light installations, man”), well — ick. I know, I know, it’s a competition, one must be ruthless; but that doesn’t mean I can’t separate the work and the game-strategy from a guy who’s increasingly shown to be unpleasant.
Source:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/07/opposites-dont-attract-and-china-chow-cries-in-bravos-work-of-art.html
http://watching-tv.ew.com/2010/07/29/work-of-art-season-1-episode-8/
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