You have to love Jaclyn believing that her piece's shortcoming was that she hadn't developed enough contrast...yeah, that was the problem. Amazing (but unsurprising, I guess) the constant reliance on photographic sourcing for so many of these images. Can none of these guys discover an image without it being mediated and conditioned by a photo? Photography is of course a legit part of sourcing, but in most cases here the contestants seem not to be able to develop an image without one....where's the visual imagination?

I think you're going to face a huge challenge to comment substantively on this show week by week, if the pattern that is developing holds. This was a new low, the challenge's premise having essentially nothing to do with art making, and, as you say, the judging and critique, at least as seen through the editing process, weaker all the time.

What is really disappointing to me is that Bravo seems to have been unwilling or unable to re-conceive the reality show format for this show. The rhythms dictated by these quick-turnaround challenges are not allowing for any insight into art-making that I recognize. The format might be ideal for an applied-art concept like Project Runway, but it seems to me to be stifling the thinking of the (very few) actual artists of promise here. How great would it have been to design one-week challenges, and to spend extended time letting us watch the crits unfold more organically? Jerry Saltz, whose efforts are being wasted by the producers, has been offering some expanded insights into the crits on FB...gives some sense that we are missing some of the better exchanges. The show could still meet all reality TV snark requirements in this way, might even achieve untold new snark heights with more interaction.

So many problems, and missed opportunities here...