De Pury and Neumeister. (Courtesy PMC)

Two Fridays ago, just before the art world split for the holiday break, news broke that has had even market insiders, in vacation spots from St. Moritz to St. Barts to Aspen, scratching their heads: Simon de Pury, who has been very much the public face of the Phillips de Pury & Co. auction house for the past 12 years as chairman and head auctioneer, was parting ways with the company, effective immediately. Mercury, the Russian luxury goods firm that bought a majority stake in the company in late 2008, had acquired Mr. de Pury’s remaining shares, a press release announced. In January, the 200-plus-year-old company’s name will go back to Phillips. An e-mail sent to art world colleagues by Mr. de Pury’s wife, Michaela Neumeister, a specialist at Phillips for 12 years, indicated that she, too, was departing.

The press release came with statements from Mr. de Pury and Phillips’s CEO, Michael McGinnis. But still, many were puzzled. One person who saw Mr. de Pury shortly after Art Basel Miami Beach, which ran the first full week of December, told Gallerist, “Surely I would have gotten some vibe from him. But I didn’t. I’m baffled.”

Last Friday, a week after the news was announced, Gallerist spoke with Mr. McGinnis, Phillips’s longtime head of contemporary art, who was promoted to CEO in early October. Mr. de Pury’s departure, he said, did not come as the result of any agreement to leave after he stayed for a period following Mercury’s initial majority stock purchase; it simply coincided with the final buyout of his stake. “As a partner myself in that transaction,” Mr. McGinnis said, referring to the initial purchase by Mercury, “every partner had an obligation to stay [for a certain period of time]. The expectation was that everyone would continue working and being productive. None of the partners were given a time line according to which they then had to depart.” His understanding is that Mr. de Pury even stayed longer than he was required to. It was a friendly parting, he said, and there may even be projects Phillips works on with its former chairman. “He left on completely amicable terms,” Mr. McGinnis added. “There is nothing to say we won’t collaborate going forward. We’ve had an amazing relationship.”

Mr. de Pury’s stint at Phillips has been an eventful one, as the company struggled to find its niche. He made his first appearance there in November 2000, as a guest auctioneer. The company had been purchased by the Bernard Arnault-owned French luxury goods conglomerate Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) the previous year, and Mr. Arnault clearly had plans to make the house competitive with Christie’s and Sotheby’s. In June 1999, LVMH hired Mr. McGinnis away from Christie’s to start a contemporary art department. (“I left there on a Friday and started at Phillips on Monday,” Mr. McGinnis recalled.) Bringing in Mr. de Pury was another sign of ambition: he was a powerful, charismatic figure in the auction world, a former chairman of Sotheby’s Europe who had left in 1997 along with a Sotheby’s colleague, Daniella Luxembourg, to start De Pury & Luxembourg, a private art dealership in Zurich.

Phillips turned out to be anything but a temporary gig for Mr. de Pury. A few months later, it was revealed that at the time of that November auction, LVMH had already been in talks with him about acquiring De Pury & Luxembourg and merging it with Phillips. The new company was christened Phillips, de Pury & Luxembourg, and Mr. de Pury was appointed chairman. There would be a full roster of sales in Impressionist and modern art, contemporary art, jewelry, watches, 20th- and 21st-century design, photography and European furniture. Some high-profile sales were staged, and a snazzy new headquarters opened on 57th Street, but all was not well. The bursting of the dot-com bubble and the aftermath of September 11 resulted in an art market slump—and LVMH was rumored to be losing money on its investment in Phillips. In 2002, the company sold its majority stake, and Mr. de Pury and Ms. Luxembourg acquired a majority stake of 72.5 percent. Mr. de Pury named his then-girlfriend, multimillionaire Louise MacBain (now publisher of Art+Auction magazine), as CEO.

It was a tumultuous year. In July, the French and Continental furniture division was shut down, and in December Ms. MacBain departed. A month later, LVMH completed its financial pullout, with Mr. de Pury and Ms. Luxembourg purchasing the remaining 27.5 percent of the shares. There were layoffs—mostly of administrative staff—and the company left its posh 57th Street building for a warehouse-like space on 15th Street in Chelsea. In early 2004, Ms. Luxembourg left to start her own firm as a private dealer. She sold her stake in Phillips to Mr. de Pury, and the company’s name changed once again, to Phillips de Pury & Co.

Under Mr. de Pury’s leadership, the house, holding sales in photography, design and contemporary art, has turned its focus in large part to young artists—and young collectors. To tempt newbie buyers, he introduced the Saturday@Phillips sales, with lots that started at a mere $500 and were capped off at $20,000. In October 2006, the height of the market boom, during the annual Frieze Art Fair in London, Phillips opened a 40,000-square-foot space there. Without the high overhead and bureaucracies of the big two, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, Phillips has been able to be a bit more nimble. At Mr. de Pury’s direction, the company began representing the estates of deceased photographers Guy Bourdin and Helmut Newton, as well as a living one, Annie Leibovitz.

But in fall 2008, with the onset of the global financial meltdown, Phillips, like the other auction houses, stopped offering guarantees—financial agreements with consignors that essentially ensure that an artwork will sell—and grim results followed, along with speculation that the company’s days were numbered. Mr. de Pury, however, always seemed able to pull something out of his hat to help keep the company afloat. Along the way, he made some unconventional arrangements, such as one with London’s Saatchi Gallery whereby Phillips sponsored the gallery in becoming admission-free and proprietor Charles Saatchi apparently informally agreed to consign artworks he wanted to sell to Phillips.

When the financial crisis hit, Phillips was still, as The Art Newspaper put it at the time, “a private company majority owned by Simon de Pury and ten partners.” In November 2008, the company announced that a majority stake had been sold to the Russian luxury goods company Mercury Group; Portfolio magazine reported that some $60 million was rumored to have changed hands. Shortly after acquiring its shares, Mercury brought in Bernd Runge, formerly of Condé Nast, and at one time a spy for the East German Stasi secret police, as CEO. (Mr. Runge stepped down to an advisory position when Mr. McGinnis was promoted to CEO in October 2012.) Those guarantees returned. In November 2010, Phillips opened new headquarters at 450 Park Avenue with an eyebrow-raising contemporary art auction called “Carte Blanche,” with lots handpicked by art adviser and former Christie’s department head Philippe Ségalot.

AN ENERGETIC MAN in his early 60s, it seems unlikely that Mr. de Pury will leave the art world; he has spent his life in it. A 2011 profile in W magazine describes how, as a young man, the Basel, Switzerland-born Mr. de Pury wanted to be an artist, but couldn’t get a foothold with the big New York galleries like Castelli. He began his career in the art market at Sotheby’s, then became curator for the powerful collector Baron Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza. He returned to Sotheby’s in 1986, and worked his way up to become European chairman.

In 2006, The Art Newspaper characterized his auctioneering style as “pure theater. Bounces onto the rostrum and brawls the bids, bobbing up and down, occasionally dropping to a hoarse rasp to vary the pace. Auctions in three languages.” His speed was assessed as “breakneck. Stay alert or you’ll miss the bid.” The article praised Mr. de Pury for maintaining his confidence and professionalism during a low point for Phillips, in November 2002, just after LVMH had sold its majority stake, when he conducted an auction estimated to bring in $49 million to $62 million but that ended up totaling just $7 million.

His flair for drama has not, of course, been limited to the auction room. A June 2010 party in London for some 600 art-world insiders to celebrate his marriage to Ms. Neumeister came complete with interactive performance art by Jennifer Rubell that featured bride and groom getting ready in transparent glass dressing rooms (and Mr. de Pury smashing the glass walls of both with a hammer) and food served on unmade beds. Shortly after Mercury bought its shares, Mr. de Pury appeared in the short-lived Bravo competition reality show Work of Art, for which he served—somewhat improbably, given his European formality—as a Tim Gunn-type mentor figure.

Mr. de Pury has not announced his future plans and did not return a request for comment (a tweet he sent out on New Year's Eve seems to indicate that he spent the holiday in Punta del Este, Uruguay), but it is hard to imagine him putting down the gavel for good. It seems likely he will at the very least continue conducting sales for charity. During his time at Phillips, he became well-known for his dramatic performances on the charity auction circuit, notably at the annual summer fund-raiser for Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center in the Hamptons. And then there are his creative pursuits, such as his regular deejaying and his photographs, which he has shown most recently at luxe retailer Colette in Paris.

As for who will replace Mr. de Pury as chief auctioneer, “we are considering the options,” Mr. McGinnis said. “We have some good ideas.” Asked whether Ms. Neumeister would be replaced, he said that Phillips is “always looking for talents who can add a benefit in terms of revenue. It’s not an objective to replace anybody,” but there is an interest in hiring “people who can bring in key business.”

At Phillips, according to Mr. McGinnis, it’s full steam ahead. They will soon roll out a website that “simplifies and clarifies who we are.” Overall, he said, the objective is “to provide the best auction experience in 20th- and 21st-century art.” As CEO, he said, he will be “streamlining operations” and “making sure we can offer clients impeccable white-glove service.” In addition to opening a building on Berkeley Square in London, Phillips plans to expand its office and gallery space at its headquarters at 450 Park Avenue, a move that Mr. McGinnis characterized as a consolidation. “We still have the majority of our colleagues in the 15th Street space,” he said. “It will be great to have everyone under one roof.” Creating additional galleries, he said, will allow the company to better handle its “day sales and volume of design and edition sales.”

Mr. McGinnis added, “I want to bring the company to a profitable level for our shareholders.” That is something that has been a struggle for Phillips since the LVMH days. As for competition with the big two, “It’s always been my perspective that we can compete and in many cases offer better service,” he said. “Once we can get traction and win market share, we have a chance of being the preferred choice for auction.”

http://youtu.be/2uYV3gRbl4U

De Pury. (Courtesy PMC)

Come January, auction house Phillips de Pury & Company will be simply Phillips, following news today that chairman Simon de Pury is stepping down after 12 years on the job. The departure, which takes effect today, comes as a result of Mercury Group, the Moscow–based investment firm that first bought into the house in 2008, acquiring his interest in the company.

"During the wonderful and exciting years I had the privilege to spend at Phillips de Pury & Company the firm has become a major taste maker in contemporary art, design and photography," Mr. de Pury said in a statement. "I embark on new adventures comfortable with the knowledge that the company is in an excellent position and has been going from strength to strength."

Phillips also announced that it plans to take more space in 450 Park Avenue for galleries and offices. The house first signed a lease there in 2010.

Update, Dec. 23: Michaela de Pury, Mr. de Pury's wife, who has been with the house for 12 years, announced that she is also stepping down from her position as a senior partner and senior director.

Update, 11:10 a.m.: Clarified that, though the house's name will not change until January, Mr. de Pury is stepping down today.

McGinnis. (Courtesy Patrick McMullan)

Simon de Pury, the chairman of Phillips de Pury & Company, announced today that Michael McGinnis, the company's worldwide head of contemporary art, has been named its new chief executive officer. Bernd Runge is stepping down from the position, but will stay on as a special advisor to the company's shareholders. Mr. Runge, a spy for the East German Stasi secret police in the 1980s, was named CEO in early 2009, shortly after the Moscow–based luxury goods company Mercury Group took a controlling share of the auction house.

Mr. McGinnis joined the company in 1999 to start its contemporary art department.

“I am honored to lead Phillips de Pury into a bright future,” said Mr. McGinnis in a statement. “We are poised to excel in all aspects of our business and to offer our clients an impeccable level of service."

“Michael's promotion presents an exciting opportunity for the company,” said Mr. de Pury in a statement. “It has been my privilege to work with Michael for the past 12 years.”

Congratulations, Mr. McGinnis.

Vinny Reunov, 'Movie,' 2011-2012. (Courtesy Phillips de Pury)

Browsing the Twitterverse this morning, we stumbled upon an image of a painting by Vinny Reunov to be included in the upcoming Phillips de Pury contemporary art day sale, and lo and behold, it features an image of the one and only Simon de Pury in a smart gray suit behind a podium with his arm up as if in the throes of a heated auction battle.

It seems that a one @Hollytorious was strolling through the exhibition when she spotted the work, photographed it and tweeted, "Love that @phillipsdepury have a painting feat @simondepury in their auction!"

The Swiss auctioneer, who is the chairman and co-founder of the auction house, is one of a number of pop-cultural icons—along with the pope, a Mastercard logo and Papa Smurf—featured in this oil painting, entitled Movie (2011/2012), which appears to be a faux cover of Latin Finance. The work is estimated to bring in $16,000-23,000 at the day sale on June 29, which will present 348 works, including pieces by Tracey Emin, Dan Colen and George Condo.

Still from "Collecting is an Illness" by Johnnie Shand Kydd. (Courtesy Nowness)

"Collecting is a wonderful illness," proclaims auctioneer and collector Simon de Pury in a short film called Collecting Is an Illness, which recently launched on Nowness. "It's totally incurable." In the film, Mr. de Pury is seated across from beer heiress and fashion collector Daphne Guinness, whose hair is dyed in skunk stripes and swept up in a messy French twist. The film cuts to a close-up of Ms. Guinness's glossed and firmly pressed lips. "It's an obsession," he says and the camera cuts to Ms. Guinness's legs, which are crossed in fishnet stockings.

In addition to gleaning priceless bits of collecting advice from these expansive art world gadabouts—"Art needs to be seen by more than one person," says Ms. Guinness, otherwise, adds Mr. de Pury, "It's like a house that's not being lived in"—you get to watch Mr. de Pury working his charms as Ms. Guinness fidgets and fingers her sparkling bling. And Ms. Guinness seems appropriately spellbound. Why wouldn't she be? Mr. de Pury managed to sell a painting by Basquiat for $16.3 million at the Phillips de Pury auction last night, setting a new record for the artist. He knows how to work a room.

“Simon is obviously a grand seducer," says director Johnnie Shand Kydd in a statement about their flirtatiousness in the film. “You can't fake that kind of chemistry."

Detail from Kymia Nawabi's "Not For Long, My Forlorn"

So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen™, adieu. Last night, it was indeed that time again, that tragic hour when the last of the fresh-faced gaggle of not-so-good artists must wave goodbye to the party, that art world soirée to which only the greats are invited. For Wednesday heralded the finale of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, that solemn, two-season-honored tradition wherein the future of Western culture is determined on reality TV.

In the first nine episodes, our abundantly tressed, and fancily dressed show host, China Chow, shed copious tears over the elimination of eleven contestants, leaving us with just three contenders for the preeminent title in the vast arena of competitive fine-art television programs. Young Sun Han, Kymia Nawabi, and Sara Jimenez would be the lucky artists given the opportunity to spend three months and $7,500 preparing a final gallery exhibit “to blow the art world away,” according to Ms. Chow.

Two months into their labors, super-suave auctioneer and contestant mentor Simon de Pury would swing by — driving hilariously tiny Fiats, “furnished” by the show’s auto-making sponsors — to check on their work. (One can only imagine that his home kingdom issued a special license to him just for the occasion, much like when Prince William motored away from his royal nuptials. Or else the whole driving montage was prepared in front of a green screen, with Ryan Gosling as a backup stuntman/body double.)

Eventually, each member of the trio would hang work in a final gallery show, hosted by Mr. de Pury in the Phillips de Pury & Company galleries. And then, finally, the victor would be wreathed in (non-literal) laurels. He or she would fulfill his/her destiny: To receive a solo show in the “world famous” — lest you forgot since last week how widely its renown reigns — Brooklyn Museum, a cover story in the utterly mysterious and potentially nefarious Blue Canvas magazine, and $100,000 courtesy of Fiat. One work by the winner would be auctioned off at Phillips de Pury, with all the proceeds going to the artist. Basically, if you had taken as a given that there were any stakes at all in this competition, they were as high as they ever would be last night.

YOUNG SUN HAN
“When you come back into town, don’t bring the PC parade with you,” lofty-haired gallerist/judge Bill Powers cautioned Mr. Han before the contestant headed off to Chicago, Illinois to prepare for his final showing. And he doesn’t: After nixing a project featuring some kind of road-tripping South Korean security booth — which Mr. de Pury quite rightly deemed “boring” — Mr. Han brings a funeral procession to the gallery.

He decks his allotted space with strung-up shirts belonging to his late father, to which Mr. Han affixes photographs of his father wasting away in a hospital. He also puts together a morbid shrine displaying the contents of his father’s pockets at the time of his death. Also, Mr. Han tosses in some projected photos of his mother, who is battling cancer, as well as random portraits of his hunky stock-analyst boyfriend.

“It’s about family, losing someone, and the full circle of going through life and death,” he explains. “I’m really hoping that the show puts people through the gauntlet of emotions.”

KYMIA NAWABI
Ms. Nawabi doesn’t even have to leave the borough to get to work on her final pieces: She lives in Manhattan with her boyfriend, a photographer and bartender with whom she worked at a Turkish restaurant, and his parents. And when Mr. de Pury comes calling, she whips out a photo album featuring pictures of her mom (a total babe) and her dad, who, you might recall, died in a tragic jet-skiing accident. And here’s where it gets weird: in the photos, her family is jet skiing. This makes Mr. Han’s death-candy totem look tame.

Anyway, Ms. Nawabi has, at the time of Mr. de Pury’s visit, vaguely settled on ghosts and religion and stuff as the subject of her final body of work. She shows the aristocratic auctioneer some horrible, kitschy sculptures — imagine a Cabbage Patch doll of a dead kid with diamonds balanced on its eyeballs — which Mr. de Pury calls “horrendous” as Ms. Nawabi weeps. “It’s the last thing I would ever want to own,” he adds, winning our best slur of the season award.

Handily enough, when the final show rolls around, Ms. Nawabi has completed a series of well-crafted drawings portraying strange scenes of ghosts and mythological beasts and nightmare creatures. Details from these drawings have also been recreated as 3D forms in the center of the room, but these sculptures really can’t stand up to the beautifully executed works on the walls.

SARA JIMENEZ
Back in Brooklyn, Ms. Jimenez lives with some gross futons and her boyfriend, who seems wary about the whole relationship. (When Mr. de Pury inquires as to how long they’ve been dating, the cagey gentleman quickly responds “less than two years.”) But her studio is filled with a promising array of work: She’s executed a performance piece on the street, for which she dressed up as a bobble-headed, white-clad monster who solicited confessions from strangers, writing down their weightiest problems. If she approached us, we’d probably run screaming from the giant mosquito/bird/cult-leader — you know, if you see something say something — but she seems to actually have gotten people to collaborate, chronicling their lust, addictions, and desperation, which is impressive.

She ditches some of her lame early paintings and sculptures, creating a final array of works, relating to the confessions she collected, in every medium — there’s a bird cage from which 1,000 paper cranes burst, a haunting dead-skin-cell self-portrait, a mattress filled with hypodermic needles, lingerie made of human hair, and a hot-glue cobweb. It’s all kind of Tim Hawkinson meets Kiki Smith, and if I got to choose right here and now, she would win.

THE FINAL FINAL CRITIQUE
The whole gang of judges and contestants of seasons past and present has gathered for the gallery show. Everybody’s favorite former slimeball contestant the Sucklord even shows up with a gift for art critic/judge Jerry Saltz, who only recently eviscerated him on TV: a glow-in-the-dark action figure of a certain “bald Jewish art critic,” the traditional present for the second night of Hanukkah.

The exhibit, primarily, is a testament to the fact that when artists have three months instead of three hours to make work, they do a better job. But that’s not what Mr. Powers, Ms. Chow, stony-faced Mr. Saltz, and guest judge/contemporary artist KAWS (who is soft-spoken and newt-like) have gathered to discuss. Across the board, Mr. Saltz seems to applaud contestants for working outside their usual mediums, while Bill Powers — who is incidentally more tan than any other person in the history of the world, excepting Oompa Loompas — likes the more single-message, limited-medium displays.

Mr. Han’s “Bool-sa-jo” (Korean for phoenix, his mother’s nickname for his dying father) elicits the comments of “sympathetic magic” and “really brave” from Mr. Powers, but irks Mr. Saltz with its straightforward, relentless drive toward meaning. “In some ways you don’t leave a gap for mystery, and that can shut out a viewer,” Mr. Saltz insightfully comments. But of course, the piece makes Ms. Chow cry. (Mr. Han’s mother, meanwhile, offers a perfect mom-comment, with her tear-free “you did a nice job.”)

“Not for Long, My Forlorn,” is the title of Ms. Nawabi’s expertly executed exploration of a mystical afterlife, over which Misters Powers and Saltz bicker again, but the general consensus is that the works are lovely, especially the one that (ick) depicts a boat and is an ode to her father — who, let us recall once again, died jet skiing.

Ms. Jimenez’s “Anonymous Contemplations,” makes den mother Ms. Chow effuse that she’s “so proud,” and Mr. Saltz admit that the showing represents “the most life I’ve seen in your work.” Alas, Mr. Powers thinks the eclectic arrangement “felt like it was kind of a collection of short stories… a little scattershot,” and so — drum roll, please — it is not Ms. Jimenez (the second runner up), nor Mr. Han (the first runner up) who ascends to a plane of art-world greatness.

Rather, it is Kymia Nawabi who is now, officially, according to the Powers That Be (at Bravo) the Next Great Artist. To which we can only respond in Ms. Nawabi’s own words: “Not for Long, My Forlorn.” For forlorn she shall be, when season three rolls around, and the next Next Great Artist takes her place.

China Chow and Simon de Pury on "Work of Art." (Courtesy Bravo)

The art world is in Miami. The Sucklord has been booted from the rarefied realm of reality television and is lurking somewhere, probably in Miami. So what do we have left, here at home, to be thankful for? Why, the fact that the search for the next great artist continues for us on the Bravo cable television channel, of course. On Wednesday night, there were seven contestants left in the art-critical arena, and yes, they were challenged, as all artists have been since time immemorial, with the task of creating art to please car-manufacturing television sponsors.

The gang was shepherded to some kind of Fiat showroom, filled with automobiles old and new, where they were informed by vaguely aristocratic reality show mentor Simon de Pury, “The automobile has been an inspiration to artists since they were invented.” (Since artists were invented? Or automobiles? Ah, the Fiat and the ovum paradox.) “Fiat understands how important new inspiration is to the creative spirit,” Mr. de Pury explained, for those of us who were still confused. Richard Prince, John Chamberlain and similarly likeminded auto-loving artists were all, we learned, inspired by the auto-art-industrial complex.

The contestants were then tasked with crafting art using Fiat car parts—quite the serious assignment given that the winner was promised $25,000 “furnished” by the Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino (Fiat). (Some very preliminary late-night research determines that you might even be able to buy a new Fiat 500 Sport 150 hatchback for slightly less than that amount. Now we’re talking, Bravo!) “Looks like you guys took the whole car,” show host/socialite/couture hound China Chow exclaimed, just like she did in that weird dream we had last night.

DUSTY MITCHELL
Mr. Mitchell is a man. He likes wood. He does not, however—and at his own admission—know much about cars. He had an aunt who broke her nose in a crash when he was in the second grade, but that’s hardly impressive to Work of Art viewers after the episode featuring fatal jet-skiing accidents, surely. He briefly goes down the making-a-mold-of-my-own-face (eyebrow-loss-be-damned) route of artmaking well known to all desperate art students, before settling on a satisfying, if not stunning, piece that transforms tires into a rolling stamp that spells out, “going to work going home.”

YOUNG SUN
“I’m worried about this challenge… I’ve never owned a car. My favorite car when I was a kid was a limousine because someone else was driving you,” Mr. Sun confided early in the episode, before discussing making out in cars with boys—the combined revelations fulfilling a weird Judy Garland gay stereotype for much of America. Destroying this stereotype (without making particularly compelling art), Mr. Sun then constructs an Exterminator-style robot, which is limply hung from a canvas.

MICHELLE MATSON
Ms. Matson has almost definitely read J.G. Ballard’s novel Crash. If she hasn’t, she should, because she would love it. But, notwithstanding the fact that she was recently the victim of a grisly hit-and-run accident, she sticks to her hip, wryly cartoonish roots and crafts a semi-creepy, but mostly Disney/Pixar-ish gleaming car hood above a sad-sack car hood (the animation of which should be voiced by the ghost of Paul Newman). She ditches an early, fabulous “fetishist window-licker” balloon piece, as well as a giggle-worthy Titanic-inspired fogged window piece for her lackluster happy-car/sad-car construction. But come on, she’s on reality TV! She has to know that if she doesn’t delve into her gruesome past to create something about her most horrible life experience she’s in trouble. Also, she says, “I like how this challenge is so open; like you could do whatever you want,” which is, officially, in the Book of Revelation, the beginning of the end.

SARA JIMENEZ
According to drunken photos of Ms. Jimenez in her drunken youth, it’s good that she never learned to drive—and thank goodness for the healing power of art-on-television, which has helped her “recover in these areas” of intoxicated, debauched behavior. Anyway, for the challenge, she employs a muffler, from which she constructs an angular sculptural formation of foam. It’s better than her usual bulimia-themed twee drawings, but so is a regular, unembellished car muffler.

LOLA THOMPSON
Ms. Thompson is a witch, as it turns out, if you hadn’t already checked to see if she floats. (And not just in the way that TNT turns the word “bitch” into the word “witch” in their television-version of movies… they know drama.) She’s brewing up mineral solutions and her grandmother was a “witch and a healer” who taught her “witchy ways.” Oh wait, scratch that, now she’s making a drawing about her dad (not Al Pacino), and how they went on a road trip to the Grand Canyon. Also, she may or may not be planning to “do like a Tanya Harding” on Young, meaning she’s going to do a triple axel on his ass.

KYMIA NAWABI
Hey, Judy Garland, check this out—Ms. Nawabi is making “stardust” out of a car key. And gallerygoers are going to watch it glitter in some kind of kaleidoscope box.

SARAH KABOT
This contestant owns a bear skin and a buffalo skin rug: two more kinds of skin rugs than Gallerist has in our collection. This fact, along with her father’s very recent death, has inspired her to affix two “skinned” car seats to white canvases—a pair of Rorschach blots representing herself and her late progenitor.

THE CRITIQUE
Photographer and performance artist Liz Cohen joins the judging panel this week, qualified to weigh in on the challenge because of her series of photographic self-portraits for which she posed semi-nude near automobiles (think: Indy 500 meets Laurel Nakadate). Dusty Mitchell and Young Sun are deemed safe for their fair-to-middling art.

Meanwhile, Sara Jimenez and Sarah Kabot are commended for their top-tier works—Ms. Jimenez, because her piece reminds gallerist/judge Bill Powers of Superman and because, according to critic/judge Jerry Saltz, “It’s like a flower arrangement meets an exploding crystal meets a backfire from a car.” (Now we know, very specifically, what to get Mr. Saltz for Christmas.) Ms. Kabot because… OK we don’t remember; we were distracted by Ms. Chow’s epically gross hair extensions, which have reached religious cult-mandated lengths. Ms. Jimenez wins the cash prize, which she will use to go to grad school and cry more.

The bottom-three contestants, “ended up spinning their wheels,” Mr. Saltz jibbed excruciatingly. Ms. Thompson has too many incoherent ideas, and Ms. Nawabi’s piece is literally broken, but it is Ms. Matson’s piece that, according to Mr. Powers—who has no regard for the fact that Ms. Matson’s was recently mowed down by a reckless driver—is “caught in the headlights,” so she’s kicked off.

Artist Rob Pruitt and critic Jerry Saltz. (Courtesy Bravo)

In this week’s installment of a certain Bravo reality television show, viewers nationwide were confronted with a fatal jet-skiing accident, sexual harassment, a discussion about the appropriate setting in which to consume a Pimm’s No. 1 Cup, and lots of boobs. Surprisingly enough, however, there were no real housewives involved. The television program of which I speak is actually Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, and thankfully a real artist (guest judge Rob Pruitt) dropped by before the hour ended and steered the show in the direction of, you know, ART, albeit for like 12 seconds.

The episode opened with the gaggle of remaining contestants trekking out to auction house Phillips de Pury & Company's hallowed halls, dubbed by would-be great-artist Young Sun Han “Simon’s Place.” (But don’t forget: We’re not talking about Run’s House. That’s a different show. This is a show about ART, not about aging hip-hop icons taking bubble baths.) Upon arriving in the empty exhibition space, the artists decided to follow a trail of tin cans laid out on the floor. Because that seemed logical, and, as the Sucklord put it, someone had to “braze the trail.”

And this turned out to be not such a bad—although highly idiomatically flawed—idea, as the cans led not only to contestant-mentor/auctioneer Simon de Pury and show-host/socialite China Chow (whose hair, by the way, is getting absurdly, creepy middle-school experiment long) but also to ART. Specifically, to what looked like Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can (Tomato) of 1962, but was in such a crappy frame, we’re betting money that it was a poster that everyone pretended was real.

“Pop is bold. Pop is brave. Pop is sex. Pop is life. Pop is fun. Pop is brash. Pop is political. So make it pop,” Mr. de Pury liltingly recited (inspired, perhaps, by Gagosian's 2007 "Pop Art Is" show), as he assigned the artists the task of creating their own pieces of Pop art. Without a doubt, Mr. de Pury has been boning up on his “Simplest Seuss for Youngest Use”—aka “Hop on Pop”—but he’s allowed, he just had a baby.

Other important things to know about this episode before I get down to mocking the almost entirely abysmal artworks are: 1) This was a double elimination challenge, so two people got booted off. 2) No one received immunity for the next challenge. 3) The winner of the challenge got a two-page spread in Entertainment Weekly, to be viewed by 11 million readers. If you are not aware of Entertainment Weekly, it’s the magazine that has less to do with art than all of the other magazines in the world.

THE SUCKLORD
The Sucklord sucks. His art this week is not as pathetic as everyone else’s: It’s an installation “based on Charlie Sheen’s ramblings” with bottles of tiger blood, jars of warlock dust, and dolls of action goddesses. The central action figure of Mr. Sheen has busted out of his packaging, leaving only the scrawled note, “I quit.” Very funny, Mr. Sucklord. But still, he sucks. Because he’s just another misogynistic asshole on television, not unlike Mr. Sheen himself. The main revelation of this episode is that the Sucklord has a girlfriend, who’s “literally going to cut his balls off” when she sees the show, and with whom he previously “had a lot of sex adventures.” Neither of these facts, however, stop him from repeatedly asking Lola Thompson to take her clothes off, from trying to corner her physically while stating that he’s getting turned on, from commenting to Kymia Nawabi that she has “nice tits,” or from lamenting the fact that it’s not the bustier Sarah Kabot taking off her shirt in the name of art. But of course none of this televised harassment matters, because Mr. de Pury, a collector of the Sucklord’s work, likes the Sheen-ian art.

LOLA THOMPSON
Ms. Thompson, who to the chagrin of all women everywhere, encourages the Sucklord’s advances because she’s “single and lonely,” whips up a sculpture featuring overly large PDA devices displaying text messages along the lines of “Click to unfriend Mubarak.” Because the only thing that excites her more than the slimy advances of the Sucklord is overthrowing dictators.

TEWZ
Tewz “grew up on Nintendo,” so he gets pop culture, dig? He recreates a life-size tail end of a “FadEx” truck that he then tags. But what’s really important is his back-story, most notably the time he spent in a maximum-security jail after he was caught spray-painting a highway sign. (So he’s not the stealthiest street artist, sure.) “Art basically saved my ass…. literally,” he says, while laughing nervously and shifting in his seat. If that’s not enough gratuitous, irrelevant information for you, by the end of episode three he’s also revealed that he masturbates with his left hand.

KYMIA NAWABI
“Pop art to me is about art that reels you in and tries to sell you something but has also a message within the piece,” Ms. Nawabi explains. How exactly this definition differs from that of “art” in general, is not clear. Another thing that is not clear is how much nudity you can show on TV. Because Ms. Nawabi photographs her boobs, and while she’s in a state of undress, her bazooms are blurred out. But once they’re printed in their full photographic splendor, it’s just high-resolution nipple all over the place. Her piece of environmental commentary/mammary-art depicts her breasts and a water bottle filled with garbage. It also has something to do with her severe social anxiety disorder, which stems from the moment she failed to seek help after finding her dead father floating in water, the victim of a freak jet-skiing accident. Back to art, though. “It is something that you could see possibly in a subway station so that’s a good thing,” declares Mr. de Pury of the piece. What?

DUSTY MITCHELL
Mr. Mitchell is just a really sad character, least of all because of his blindingly bad haircut. “Fast food’s always a popular culture topic and it’s kind of a personal subject because my father’s had a heart attack more than once,” he reveals, in his down-and-out, Droopy-the-dog manner. For the challenge, he constructs a streamlined white trash can (insert your own white-trash can joke here, I just don’t have the spirit), with the words “How Could You?” emblazoned across the flap. “I don’t think it would look good in Entertainment Weekly,” Mr. de Pury says delicately. The last time that was someone's creative goal was the most recent time that Daniel Radcliffe mulled which button-down to wear out of the house.

LEON LIM
Mr. Lim makes everybody look stupid, per usual, by proving that no one knows anything about the American flag (e.g. distribution of stripes). But then he crafts a kind of Jasper Johns-ian spread of flags, out of which sprout McDonald’s and Facebook and Twitter logos. “I’m not making art just to make the judges happy,” he states early on in the episode, sounding his own death knell.

SARA JIMENEZ
Even though she’s in a committed relationship with a really tall guy and has never been on a dating site, Ms. Jimenez pulls together a piece about online dating, for which she egomaniacally takes MySpace-ian photos of herself mugging and grimacing.

BAYETÉ ROSS SMITH
Having settled on the theme of “identity” once again, Mr. Smith melds the faces of his fellow non-white contestants, Ms. Jimenez (whom he ambiguously dubs “part-Asian”) and Ms. Nawabi, who is Iranian and also part Russian. The resulting photographs look like extreme close-ups of a dark-haired woman with freckles. Very avant-garde.

JAZZ-MINH MOORE
This poor little hippie never even had a TV growing up (gasp… how did she learn about reality?) so she didn’t know “what was on the commercials.” How, then, could she possibly be expected to figure out Pop art? I mean, she got a BFA and then an MFA, but her professors must not have mentioned this piddling, lesser movement of art history. Mr. de Pury is less interested in any of her artistic inclinations than he is in her inner-lip tattoo, which reads, “Bite Me.” I myself don’t know whether to be more interested in the fact that her obviously cruel parents named her white sister Asia, or the fact that Asia was stupid enough to have “Epic as Fuck” tattooed inside her own lip. Ms. Moore’s two self-portrait photographs are really bad, and are supposed to be about Britney Spears. The Sucklord spills paint on one and she doesn’t even bother to reprint it, because she’s a hippie and painting is “about forces that are beyond control” in hippie-land.

MICHELLE MATSON
Ms. Matson re-envisions a Warhol Coke bottle, but it’s on an iPhone, and it’s a can, and it’s Coke Zero, which only Europeans drink, but none of that matters because Mr. de Pury is correct in guessing that everyone thinks it’s “too derivative.”

SARAH KABOT
“Sorry We’re Closed,” reads Ms. Kabot’s delicate and quite lovely hanging text piece. Less lovely is her analysis of the foreclosure crisis. “It’s a huge problem,” she earnestly explains.

YOUNG SUN HAN
Mr. Han builds a well-crafted pink billboard featuring the words “PROP 8,” on the back of which gallerygoers can inscribe their feelings about the contentious California legislation.

THE CRIT
First, and most importantly, gallerist/TV-judge Bill Powers has resurrected his yellow-striped sweater, a staple of season-one critiques, except this time it looks like it actually fits him! Like it grew! Or he shrank! Or like he listened to certain nagging art bloggers (ehem) and had a stern speaking-to with his dry cleaners.

Oh, but, ART. Mr. Pruitt—most recently of The Andy Monument sculpture fame in New York—finally offers a working, and quite eloquent, definition of Pop art: “Good Pop art takes our collective experience and filters it through a personal lens.” He then helps tap this week’s top artists, Young Sun Han and Kymia Nawabi. Young actually wins because, as Ms. Chow self-evidently puts it, Prop 8 “is such a political-social issue right now.” For some reason, judge/art-critic Jerry Saltz deems that Ms. Nawabi’s work is not a “gratuitous piece of nudity.” (It’s a third nipple that would have really thrown it over the edge.)

The worst pieces belong to Dusty Mitchell, Jazz-Minh Moore, Michelle Matson and Leon Lim. Poor ole Mr. Mitchell is bashed by Mr. Powers, who declares that gallerygoers “just walked right by this thing.” (Ten bucks says there was at least one plastic wine glass at the bottom of it by the end of the night—How Could You?) Ms. Moore is schooled by Mr. Pruitt for having created a work that “fails for the viewer because we can’t decipher the meaning” (the meaning being Britney Spears). Everyone berates Ms. Matson for not being creative enough, and her defense is that she’s a “huge fan of wallpaper.”

Hilariously, Mr. Powers tries to explain why he thinks Mr. Lim would be grateful for Facebook, being deaf and all. Then Mr. Saltz lets loose the most searingly mordant barb of the season thus far. “The most startling thing about this piece is how uninteresting it is,” Saltz slings. Obviously, Mr. Lim gets booted off, along with Jazz-Minh Moore. Click to unfriend Jazz-Minh Moore and Leon Lim. Comment: Bite Me.

On episode two, Michelle crafted a wood-frame person, the testicles of which you can tug to give it a sculptural erection.

When I say, “motion,” you say, “Poop! Semen! Intestinal gore! Erections! Puke!” Usually, that kind of response would be worrying. I’d suggest that you seek professional help. I’d perhaps start filling out paperwork to acquire a restraining order. That is, unless you then revealed that you were an artist. In that case, I’d recommend you get yourself onto the cast of a reality television show, stat. For you, my gutter-minded reader, have the makings not merely of a good artist, but of the Next Great One.

But let’s backtrack, way back, to the dawn of episode two of the second season of Bravo’s “Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.” It is, literally, dawn (6:30 in the morning) and auctioneer/contestant mentor Simon de Pury is rousing the remaining 13 artists by menacingly murmuring “wake-y wake-y.” Because Mr. de Pury has never adjusted to the time difference between his European fiefdom and the isle of Manhattan, he looks bright-eyed and impeccably besuited, even at this godforsaken hour.

The bleary artists blindly follow their leader to some kind of outdoor plaza, where “Work of Art” host/socialite/”jewelry designer” China Chow is wearing what appears to be a Pac Man costume. Soon some ninjas arrive, back-flipping and front-flipping all over the place. It’s entirely possible that such shenanigans always take place at 6:30 in the morning, hours before the art-world alarm clock artfully beeps at a quarter past ten, but who’s to say.

“I’m sure you weren’t expecting to see this when you woke up this morning,” Ms. Chow ominously intones, probably referring to her giant yellow tent of a sweater. Anyway, it turns out the ninjas are not ninjas at all (yawn) but rather members of New York Parkour, “first and official home of Parkour in the New York New Jersey and the surrounding Metro area,” according to their website.

No one on the show ever explains what Parkour is — I would have guessed a kind of French parka sported by Mr. de Pury on his annual snowshoeing holiday — but someone named “Oasis” has helpfully defined it on the troupe’s site as, “an art developed to help you navigate your environment from one point to another, using the capabilities of the human body.”

“You won’t catch me doing that sh**,” the contestant known as the Sucklord mutters, little knowing that excrement comprises much of what he’ll be doing in the subsequent hours. The artists are split into two teams, tasked with preparing two separate “exhibitions,” each of which will present a coherent piece about movement, made up of individual works by the artists.
Does that make sense? It makes about as much sense as “an art developed to help you navigate your environment from one point to another, using the capabilities of the human body” (we call that walking, right?). Also the artists are supposed to start things off by taking a very brief stroll through New York to find inspiration for the challenge, because otherwise it would be too straightforward.

TEAM 1

Members of team one include the Sucklord, Dusty Mitchell, Bayeté Ross Smith, Sara Jimenez, Michelle Matson, Kymia Nawabi, and Sarah Kabot. Michelle wants to do “a pooping piece.” “When you’re attracted to pooping, what is it… the thing coming out?” the Sucklord asks incredulously. “No I like the actual poop,” Michelle replies, in her eerie, wide-eyed way. “You like the physical sh**,” the Sucklord says, sounding a little too intrigued. Then he says something like “bleep bleep bleep eating bleep bleep.”

The team’s highbrow, art-theory-laden discussion complete, each member picks a part of the digestive process to represent. Describing the end of said process to a disgusted-looking Mr. de Pury, who has dropped in to check on their progress, Kymia says the art will get “shat out.” And the word does not get bleeped out. (Maybe this is because “shat” also served as a term of endearment when referring to an Irish person in the 17th century? Bravo probably consulted the OED on that one.)

Simon expresses his concerns with the project, pointing out that, as he sees it, pooping is something that happens in “very, very slow motion.” Too much information, Mr. de Pury.

TEAM 2

The second team consists of Young Sun Han, Lola Thompson, Leon Lim, Tewz, Jazz-Minh Moore, and Kathryn Parker Almanas. Young confides early on, “Before I came to this competition I worked as a curator in New Zealand, so I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing.” What exactly is “this sort of thing?” And what exactly is going on in the New Zealand art world these days?

“Look at Jazz-Minh,” someone on the team gasps, “she’s the sh**.” Well, not in the, you know, “physical sense.” She’s just done a front handspring. That inspires team two to make a work about migration. This decision leads them to collect garbage (physical shit) from the streets of New York to use in their piece. This is a real thrill for Leon, because, as he reveals, all he ever wanted to do in Malaysia was pick up garbage but his parents wouldn’t let him. “That was one of the reasons I moved to the United States,” he says.

And the revelations just keep on coming, as we learn that Kathryn has some kind of digestive disorder, the name of which was not entirely clear but which sounds, not to be too rude, like “Prawns Disease.” [ED. NOTE: A reader has helpfully informed us that this is Crohn's Disease, and that Ms. Parker knew she had it before she entered the competition.] She’s decided to make her usually bloody guts photography, while Young’s going to do something about North and South Korea, Lola’s planning to make a work that addresses the phases of the moon, Jazz-Minh’s going to engage in some kind of gymnastics, and Tewz and Leon will depict the aftermath of domestic conflict. In response to all of this, Mr. de Pury freaks out in a very well mannered way and suggests that both teams start from scratch.

In a confessional interview, Leon signs, “Simon says it’s a complete failure.” Then, in sign language, he exclaims, “Motherf*#%er.” This gesture is blurred out. But still, it’s OK to say “shat.”

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

TEAM 1/SECOND ATTEMPT

The first team agrees on a kind of amusement park/playground theme, for an installation they have dubbed “Play With Me.” To address this topic Michelle crafts a wood-frame person, the testicles of which you can tug to give it a sculptural erection. Kymia makes a clay cast of her tongue that bobs up and down over a pile of brown lumps and plaster fingers. Bayeté films himself spinning around and around on a rooftop. Dusty cutely misses his wife and so feels inspired to build a see-saw, on one end of which is perched a life-size photograph of Dusty. Sara J. makes a little clay girl with a creepy carved vagina sitting on a wooden swing and Sarah K. makes some kind of minimal toothpick thing that would resemble a rollercoaster if you’d never seen a rollercoaster. The Sucklord puts together a carnival attraction, wherein you can launch rubber rats at targets.

“I want to play your game,” Lola says of the Sucklord’s rat-toss in a grating baby voice. “You’ll get to play when it’s ready,” he replies grossly, even more grossly adding, “It’s dirty.

TEAM 2/SECOND ATTEMPT

Young tries to take charge of the team’s second go-round at movement-inspired art. Unfortunately, while Leon is throwing out a bad idea — to have everyone make work about circles — Lola decides to stand up for the deaf guy, yelling, “We have to let Leon finish talking because, please, he doesn’t, he can’t, doesn’t, have a voice.” So, that’s that: the project is called “loop” and “it’s about balls.”

Things get worse for the team when the sickly Kathryn declares, “I’m just not feeling well,” so hers “won’t be an exact circle.” No, it will be more bloody organs, this time filmed while being dropped from a height onto plastic. Young’s piece is a silver version of the Japanese flag. Tewz, recognizing that a bucket is round, wraps a hose around a bucket and then affixes some plastic hands to a circle on the wall. Lola covers a big orb of shredded paper in hot glue, while screaming, “I’m double fisting it with hot glue guns… it’s so semen-like.” The Sucklord observes her, lustily.

Leon is the only person making art that actually moves — he crafts a moody tableau, with a swinging light bulb suspended in front of a broken pane of glass. Oh, and Jazz-Minh sticks a photograph of her front-handspring from earlier in the episode onto a piece of wood.

THE CRITIQUE

The judges do their usual stalk around the room, with this week’s guest, the gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn, who was a judge on season one. China Chow is wearing a pillow-case toga, which looks like it’s covered in wine stains, probably from when the judging panel was pre-gaming the crit. Ms. Rohatyn dubs Sarah K.’s piece “a ride… a ride that you do with your eye.” It looks like the Sucklord slips Bill Powers a dollar bill as a bribe to hide in his hair with all of the other bribes he’s received over the years. Mr. Powers then slightly too gleefully watches Ms. Chow stimulating the erection sculpture.

“Play With Me” beats “Loop,” and the judges single out Bayeté’s dizzying video and Michelle’s nad-groping art as the top two individual pieces. Of Michelle’s work, Jerry Saltz — who is clearly feeling spicy, as evidenced by his purple shirt — says of the penis-pumping piece, “You took the idea of movement and went inside with it.” Mr. Powers adds that “it was uncomfortable in a fun way to engage with it, be close to someone activating the piece.” Ms. Chow, not to be outdone, declares, “I’m not scared of the erection. It’s funny that the females seem more comfortable than the men do.”

The purple-shirt-sporting Mr. Saltz of course takes this as a challenge, and promptly jerks some wooden balls, proclaiming “There!” thereby dealing a searing blow to potential gender inequity on national television. However much people love erections, however, it turns out they love nauseating video loops more, so Bayeté wins. “It’s kind of hard to pin down,” Ms. Rohatyn says of the footage of a man spinning around.

The judging panel admonishes the entire losing team for choosing to make art about circles — “that’s like saying we’re just going to have the theme be paint,” Mr. Powers groans. But the three worst works came courtesy of Lola, Tewz, and Kathryn. Even with Halloween fast approaching, and even with her recently revealed mystery illness adding some intrigue to her reality-TV personality, Kathryn’s gore-filled film turns out to be the biggest loser of them all.

When Mr. Saltz dryly proclaims, “this work looks uncannily like the work you did last week,” Kathryn starts wailing, really weeping, and making hyena-like barking noises.  Mr. Saltz can’t decide whether to laugh or pat her shoulder, but Ms. Chow tries to sound nice. “Bye, Kathryn, feel better,” she drones robotically. As a catch-phrase, it doesn’t quite have the oomph of Heidi Klum’s auf weidersehen, but it did the job — Kathryn will have to Parkour it all the way back to Brooklyn.