Just wanted to take a second to commemorate this moment and welcome back dignity, intelligence, and diplomacy back to the United States. While I routinely fail to display those qualities myself, It’s an awesome feeling to welcome it back into the White House. I hope that we will have patience with our new President as he tries to deal with the horrific decisions of the previous, unnameable administration, which has thoroughly abused the Constitution and brought shame to this country.

Tonight, I also go to bed knowing that the Supreme Court will not be allowed to complete its conservative shift towards Scalia’s originalist (reactionary) thought. I hope Barack’s victory will speed that fucker’s retirement as he restores ‘checks and balances’ to our government that have been systematically dismantled and tossed aside for the last eight years. When Obama moves into the White House he should bring a young priest and an old priest and exorcise whatever demons linger there.

Cheers,

William

In addition to the book fair, I’ll be participating in Front Room Gallery’s quadrennial Ballot Show this Friday from 7 - 9 in Williamsburg. The show addresses the notion of equitable choice in the electoral process, which has been greatly undermined since 2000, although electioneering has never been what I’d call fair. When asked to participate, I tried to enlist James Kalm to debate me on the merits of political art in the context of art history, but he declined due to time constraints.
Instead, I’ve decided to sidestep the whole issue of the ballot and put the emphasis on lobbying and special interests. At the opening, individuals can lobby me to make them a work of art. Lobbyists must submit a written proposal and I will briefly listen to it personally. Based on the proposals, I will decide which one is representative of my artistic platform and the lobbyist’s interests.

So, if you are interested in acquiring a Powhida, this is a radically different way to get one than the through the market. Without directly addressing the political ideology of the left and right paradigms of Capitalism, I think there are some parallels to the way art and politics are dependent on big money, often in contradiciton of their principles.

I’m a bastard, so either give me cash or an idea that will catapault us into history! See you Friday.

For any early risers on Sunday, I’ll be signing copies of my collaboration with Toronto based writer and freintor Jeff Parker between noon and 1 at the NY Art Book Fair. My only real stabs at writing fiction outside of the confines of my art were under Parker’s brief guidance at Syracuse University, where he was a couple of years older and already had a BA. His office hours at the bar gave way to plain old drinking and we kicked around some ideas before I headed down to New York. Several years later, Parker asked me to do some drawings for a short story collection, The Back of the Line. The stories were rife with documents and the characters were all-too familiar, so I made a series of James' Drawings, which are some of my favorite drawings.

The book itself, looks like a ragged little chapbook and was designed by Stephen Lyons and John Jenkins at DECODE INC. They also published The Back of the Line as well as a new series of beautiful, art photography books including one by Jesse Burke who is signing at 4pm on Friday. If you are at the fair between noon and 1 on Sunday though, drop by and I’ll put my stamp on yer copy. If not, you can always pick one up at the DECODE booth at the fair and track me down later.

Of the text, I’ll say Parker’s narrative cracks open the inner lives of the co-dependent protagonists and peers into their ramshackle little world of laundromats, cockateil ghosts, relationship interviews, moped vandalism, and life on the verge of responsibility. If social anarachy were the rule, not the exception, James would be a hero, but it isn’t so he’s not and that’s why I like him so much. I had a great deal of fun authoring small details that extend and perhaps undermine the exploits of the fictional narrator and James, who is the kind of guy who’d date your ex-girlfriend and still come over for a beer. I’m not the most reliable narrator and neither is James.

By the way, Parker is also the author of Ovenman, a novel about a pizza cook who blacks out and sticks cryptic post-it notes on himself, which then, like the rest of his life, he must unravel and figure out each day. It’s published by Tin House, and you can find it in book stores.

I’ll be giving a brief lecture on my obsession with the art market and perhaps Marina Abramovic this Sunday at the Bidonville Cafe in Fort Greene as myself, Bill Powhida, talking about William Powhida (I’m getting terribly confused).

What I think is that a good work of art must hold prediction, definitely, and that it must have that energy which cannot be rationally understood. - Marina Abramovic

Sunday, Oct. 5 @ 7:00 pm
Bidonville Cafe in Fort Greene
Willoughby Ave. (b/w Clermont & Adelphi)
Bklyn, NY 11205
718.855.4515
G or C train to Clinton/ Washington and march north

For more information, check out High, Low and in Between who has a nice post about the series.

As the market begins its slow tumble towards oblivion it seems critics will finally speak out about the flimsy premises on which the market operates. I hassled Ed Winkleman last week over his defense of ‘squillionares’, a term Michael Kimmelman used to describe the kind of rich collectors who buy questionable art. In that case, Kimmelman suggested the collector overpaid for a late Francis Bacon of dubious quality. Now, Charlie Finch, unsurprisingly, has laid out artist Liza Lou’s newest offerings with this stinging observation on Artnet;

Well, Liza Lou, I knew you when the work of your hands sparkled at the New Museum and PPOW Gallery. Enjoy the money, because your soul has left the building.

Heaping criticism on artists isn’t unsual for Finch, but I suspect that we will see the gloves come off over the next few months as competition heats up in the art world. As lots move to auction, and they will move to auction as crippled investors seek liquidity, we should start to see who’s for real. I think critics will be right there with renewed assessments of the brief, shiny careers of boom time artists. While I have enjoyed a certain amount of success in the art world, it’s not a far fall back to reality for me compared to artists whose price points climbed over a $100,000 for new work based on crisp, new MFA degrees and gallery pedigrees.

The reality is the art market is a lagging indicator. There won’t be a spectacular crash, but how the auctions unfold this fall and sales in Miami should start to give us a picture of what the damage will be. As galleries start to close and artists lose representation, the oversaturated art market, which has produced a stunning amount of art about anything and everything, may start to develop some clarity. I wonder what will be left standing in the wake of the contraction. Whose work will still be deemed important by the critics when there is no money left to prop it up. I expect we will see a lot of discussion, debate, and movement to define what the last decade was really about. What will the story be? The umbrella of post-modernism is wearing thin.