There was a time when arts television was entrusted to scholars, critics, and people who had at least once been inside a museum without a selfie stick. Those days are gone. Now, in the grand tradition of letting algorithms decide who should speak for culture, Art with Deon and Amber has been handed to Deon Jakari and Amber Smith, a duo whose combined TikTok following eclipses the population of Belgium, but who would struggle to score any points in a pub quiz entitled “Very Easy Questions About Art.”
Deon is famous for his 30-second “History in Hats” videos, in which he wears historically inaccurate headgear and mispronounces monarchs’ names to great applause. Amber’s online empire is built on sped-up lip-syncs to famous speeches, occasionally with glitter filters. Their qualifications for hosting? The network insists their “reach” makes them “cultural ambassadors.” The culture they’re ambassadors of remains a mystery.
This week’s line-up began with a discussion of contemporary sculpture. Deon declared confidently that “bronze is basically just metal clay,” while Amber wondered aloud why Renaissance artists didn’t “3D print everything, because that’s faster.”
Yet each of them has one lone island of genuine expertise. Amber, it turns out, is a Crocs expert (the shoe not the animals). Deon meanwhile, is a human encyclopaedia on the subject of jeans and associated denims.
The bulk of the show was spent confidently misunderstanding whatever topic was at hand. A Francis Bacon retrospective prompted Giles to suggest “maybe paint was just bad quality back then,” while Amber mused that his “colour palette would look great on a yoga mat.” A symphony concert was reviewed entirely from the trailer on YouTube; Amber deducted points because “no one did the little TikTok hand heart.”
The closing interview, with a choreographer, reached a nadir with Giles asking, “Do you guys rehearse?” followed by Amber’s penetrating enquiry: “Would you ever add actual cats to Cats,” and refusing to believe that Cats wasn’t a ballet, though she did admit that she hadn’t “seen it for years.”
Art with Deon and Amber is proof that having millions of followers doesn’t mean you should present a TV Arts programme. The presenters lack insight to art, literature, or music. If culture is a cathedral, Art with Deon and Amber is the gift shop fridge magnet someone dropped in the gutter. The only thing Deon and Amber bring to the table is the table itself—because they certainly bring little knowledge to put on it.
