I’m participating in Art Table’s panel discussion BLOG THIS! at X Initiative tomorrow night, representing artists who blog. I’ve never been a prolific blogger, and I’m probably averaging about two blog posts per month. Recently, most of my efforts have gone into #class project with with artist Jennifer Dalton and our collaborative blog for the show. As the panel approached this week, I felt compelled to update this thing and I probably should.
So what’s been going on?
Jerry Saltz tagged me 2nd in his Best Art of 2009 in New York Magazine coming in behind Velazquez and ahead of late Picasso. Say it. “Picasso, Powhida, Velazquez.” It’s one thing to write “Picasso, Pollock, Powhida” in one of my drawings and something else entirely to see something similar written by Jerry Saltz. Jerry broke his silence on my NuMu drawing in rather spectacular fashion, and someone pointed out to me that he’s willing to broker my participation in the L’Affaire Joannou. I think I will be well represented, read on.
Ben Davis also implicated me in his Best of 2009 list on Artnet by saying that the best thing to come out of the New Museum affair was the profile boost it gave my work.
Stephen Kaplan shocked me senseless with his sharp and insightful take on my work, I mean it’s Steve Kaplan. His reputation precedes him.
Edward Winkleman, who now generally holds the opposite opinion from me on just about everything, offered Jen Dalton and I a chance to do something about the art market to possibly answer Damien Cave’s questions in the New York Times piece. Amazingly, the Wall Street Journal was interested and interviewed us for an article on our show #class.
I’ve also started working in earnest on my residency for the Lower East Side Printshop. I am working on a large silkscreen version of “Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell” and am starting a series of etchings. I’m all also finishing up a new drawing for the Brooklyn Rail, which will be the beginning of a monthly series for the Artseen section. While the drawings are my own, they are also coming out of discussions with the Rail art editors, John Yau, Thomas Micchelli, Ben La Rocco, and Claudia La Rocco. Ideally, at the end of the year we will be-releasing a book of all the collected drawings. My co-conspirators also suggested the idea of doing a limited edition of 666 “Howdy Koonsy” t-shirts that we will encourage people to wear to the Joannou/Koons opening. Tom Micchelli said the image called to mind “Rosemary’s Baby.” I take that as a compliment.
Jade Townsend and I are working on the “ABMB Hooverville” drawing, a small snippet was shown in the NYTimes article, that we hope to exhibit during Armory. The drawing is 60" x 40" and only a detail was presented in the paper. It’s far more ridiculous than you’re probably thinking.
Finally, Jen Dalton and I are working daily on making #class happen, and we really welcome you’re ideas whether you just plan to come in and hang out or do something fucking bizarre. We want both/and. Please email us at hashtagclass@gmail.com or post your thoughts on the blog.
Jennifer Dalton and I will be organizing a sort of think-tank at Edward Winkleman gallery in late February to explore the often uncomfortable class differences in the art world as well as the intangibles that keep us making art despite minor commercial success. It’s part of broader question about the structural excess of labor in the art market, and why artists still persist to make art despite a star system based on branding and reputation. Why are there so many of us hopelessly competing for a limited number of spots in the market? Do we hope to win the lotto? Do we have to wear blinders and ignore the statistics that coldly tell us to stop and get a job?
This is just one of the questions I have about a market selling luxury items to the wealthy for absurd amounts of money based on minor differences in talent or conception. There are many, many questions and my problem is not the art world’s problem, just one of them.
Please help us undermine our own efforts, deny commercial success/self-promotion, and roll the dice with our new project #class. It’s not an exhibition, group show, or performance. It’s just a think/work/market space that bends rules and breaks others in an effort to say ’this is not that’ to borrow Jen’s inner thoughts about our collaborative platform.
Submission guidelines (more like suggestions), our project proposal, and comments are being hosted at hashtagclass.blogspot.com and email your thoughts about this project to hashtagclass@gmail.com
Damien Cave has written a profile about me in the New York Times today that talks about my position within the art world heirarchy. Personally, I find the article fascinating in that it takes a relatively uncommon perspective by looking at the art world from the lower rungs. This isn’t a qualitative judgement about my position or the galleries that represent me. It’s just an observation of fact that our positions are all relative to the powerful, blue chip galleries that dominant New York, Los Angeles, and Art Basel Miami Beach. I do want to qualify my characterization of Mr. Deitch by saying take a look at his gallery website ; I’m listening to the music and looking at ice cream cones right now. I was trying to make an analogy about the way he markets his artists with a whimsy that masks an aggressive business practice. The many gallery directors working for Mr. Deitch are responsible for promoting and marketing each of the artists. Mr. Deitch puts up an enticing, cheery front for the sometimes ruthless business of dealing art. Unfortunately, I have no idea if Mr. Deitch was presented with my quote or the context for it, and hats off to Mr. Deitch for taking the high road if he was aware of my sensational and satirical comment about one perception of his identity as a major dealer in the art world. At least Mr. Deitch responded on record for Mr. Cave’s article, which apparently many others were unwilling to do. Perhaps Mr. Deitch also recognizes that press is press.
Success, then, is all relative within the art world and I recognize that I am not working outside of the system, but from within the system and with galleries who’ve taken considerable risks exhibiting my work. What Cave’s article does for me is validate their early support and belief in my work. I’ve been slowly building an exhibition record largely on the support of art dealers beginning with Leah Stuhltrager and Cris Dam at Dam Stuhltrager who gave me my first exhibition opportunities. My affiliation with them led to an opportunity to show with Platform Gallery run by Stephen Lyons in Seattle that lead to two solo exhibitions and group exhibitions including The There currently on view at the gallery. Showing with Dam Stuhltrager and Platform helped me develop a relationship with Schroeder Romero Gallery run by Lisa Schroeder and Sara Jo Romero. The gallery is currently forming a new partnership with Sienese Shredder and will be opening up in a new space this spring with a new model for showing contemporary and historical work. Most recently, I’ve begun showing with Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles, and my current show No One Here Gets Out Alive has gotten strong reviews in the LA Times (along with comments that strongly disagree), Artforum.com , as well blogs like Artwhirled.
These galleries as well the secondary fairs including Aqua and Pulse have helped bring my work to a broader audience, even though that work may be critical of the commercialization of art, the emphasis on celebrity and stardom, and the stratification of the art world. When I say that there are a lot of contradictions, I mean it. The gallery system and the attendant art fairs remain the primary model for exhibiting and selling work. The thing that should be clear is that there are a lot of artists and galleries out there struggling to survive and even grow during the recession and many have not. It’s humbling to be the focus of Mr. Cave’s article and it is because of the work I’ve shown. Mr. Cave saw a print at Aqua Art Miami last year called “Market Crash” (see above) that caught his attention about the potential dangers of an art market bubble. If it seems unusual for the Times to look at Art Basel Miami Beach from the outside looking in, it’s because it is. I guess I’m writing this post to explain that it’s taken a long time to reach a point of recognition, Times article or no Times article. Contrary to Mr. Deitch’s sentiments, there may be a real difference between slowly building a reputation from the ground up than being vaulted into the spotlight. It’s the difference between being an art comet, blazing in and out of the art world, versus climbing slowly up the rungs of the system towards broad recognition. My recent interview with David Goodman for BOMB Magazine gets into more of my background and motivation for making art as we discuss the hierarchy of the art world. I can’t please everyone, and I’ve really pissed some people off in the process, but it should be a challenge for every artist to claim a unique space within the art world whatever their genre despite the influence of the market. Michael Kaiser has a great article about how money and market forces can actually slultify the arts by hindering risk-taking and growth. Read it, and then go make some art. I’m going to continue working on the Hooverville drawing with artist Jade Townsend, which we hope to exhibit this spring.
Many thanks to everyone who has reached out in support through the social web and apologies to everyone who thinks it’s a bunch of nonsense. I’m sure you’ll let me know as much, but we are all in contention in this system. The difference between criticism and sour grapes is a short step. I understand it intimately. As my friend Jeff Parker put it “Congrats, bro. Nice depiction of the artist as an angry middle-aged fuck.”
My first solo show with Charlie James Gallery has been getting some amazing press over the last week, starting with Leah Ollman’s excellent review in the LA Times. Her analysis of the narrative structure of my work is what really stands out for me as the ‘maker’ of the show. She draws clear distinctions between the narrator, the character, and my role as an artist with different agendas and different voices.
Also, Catherine Taft just published another sharp and insightful review of the show on Artforum.com. She notes the importance of looking at the site-specific nature of the work. The common thread, though, between both reviews and the current controversy surrounding my New Museum drawing is social satire. Both writers refer to Honore Daumier whose cartoons piqued French society. As the New Museum controversy rages on, Jeffery Deitch recently waded in to defend Dakis, people are responding not only to the ethical issues, but how vast the divide between the wealthy elite of the art world and the rest of it. While the Daumier reference is apt for my work and position, it is also unnerving that the economic and class divisions also parallel pre-revolutionary France. James Wagner half-jokingly said the same thing in a recent blog post.
Class divisions and wealth in the art world became more of a focus in my work as the market ballooned from 2002 until 2007. In 2006, when I took my first trip to Miami for Basel and the satellite fairs, the atmosphere was one of congratulatory celebration; ‘witness our collective brilliance and the triumph of Capitalism’. Very few people I interviewed that weekend for a long-neglected performance were critical of the wealth and power associated with contemporary art that transformed Miami. The economy appeared stable and few people had reason to raise any complaints. That was before the Dow nearly halved itself and unemployment rose about 10%.
Now, when Mira Rubell is photographed licking a chocolate Jeff Koons’ Rabbit during the ‘feast’ for Performa 09, the decadence looks ugly and the mega rich completely out of touch. While I have been addressing the discrepancy between the egalitarian promise of the art world and the elite circle of wealth that supports it in my work, I think the division is far more clear now at the end of 2009. That clarity has brought some unwelcome attention for the wealthiest and most powerful figures in the art world, which they have little control over. Unfortunately for the Rubells and the Joannous there are many more people on the outside than the inside of the art world. Fortunately for me and the broader art world is that the establishment may be rigidly ordered, but it is not monolithic. There are people on the inside who have a self-awareness of their positions of power and do not engage in vulgar displays of that privilege. Some of them also recognize my critique and quietly tell me “You just say what we’re all thinking.” Clearly not all, but hopefully enough who recognize that it’s not 2006 and your wealth looks a little obscene.
The recent New York Times articles about the New Museum have helped
publicize the issues that James Wagner blogged about six weeks ago at
jameswagner.com. A few weeks after his initial
post the editorial staff at the Brooklyn Rail emailed me after
they saw it. Having read it myself earlier and twittering about the
absurdity of it all I was pleased to see the Rail responding to the
post as well. When I got back from LA I met with James and Barry and
we had a great discussion about the ethical issues and the changing
direction of the museum. I interviewed Tyler Green and Paddy Johnson
so I understood their positions and concerns.
With consideration to their critical voices I made my drawing as
sensational and outrageous as I could because that’s how it appeared
considering the museum’s history and commitment to a non-mainstream
program. What the Times seems to have overlooked amid the reporting is
James’ early, provocative, and justified criticism. I feel he really
started this critical inquiry from a passionate concern over the
overtly commercial transformation of yet another alternative
non-profit space. This trend doesn’t bode well for unknown and
emerging artists without representation, especially as the gallery
system contracts.
While the interest in my particular take on the imaginary museum
series has been strong I want to make sure that it’s known that this
drawing was a collaboration with the support of people who don’t just
accept the status quo. Particularly James, Barry, Tyler, Paddy, Phong
Bui, and the Brooklyn Rail. [Note: I will be meeting with the Rail editorial staff next week to discuss an ongoing series of editorial cartoons for the Rail. Maybe I could call them the imaginary drawing series.]
William
William Powhida
www.williampowhida.com
