Now that television has looked for the next great singer and the next top model, it’s looking for the next great artist with the Bravo network’s very literally titled Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, set to premiere in June and produced by Sarah Jessica Parker’s company.
They should probably look, if history is any indicator, among the dead. But that doesn’t make for very sexy TV—20-somethings do. So they’ve come up with a name we hadn’t even heard of but are now intrigued by: Miles Mendenhall, a 23-year-old who claims to have sold out his entire senior show before graduating recently from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, become the youngest artist to have landed a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and, in fact, land two solo shows before he graduated.
What the show promoters don’t say is exactly what kind of art Miles does. Turns out he’s a painter, with an illustrative bent and an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Oh, and he’s invariably described as “hot” or “the cute one.” That should help ratings.
