Tuesday, January 29, 2008

caucus results: no division on race

William Powhida's caucus results have been posted. It was a nasty contest, but evidently there is no problem of racial division in the New York artworld.

Here are some pictures of the installation.

12 comments:

  1. Martin could you share with us what you like about Mister Prowhida's(sp.?) work? You might have done this already in an earlier post.

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  2. [Powhida you shmuck!] Sorry for being so lazy about checking spelling. I guess I have sunk down a few notches on the intellectual's totem pole.(Doesn't Boxer talk about how apologies are a key component to blogging culture? I guess she means disengenuous apologies).

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  3. Cripes. I meant intellectuals' not intellectual's. I am still a bit fried from the work day.

    Eric -(x) 2- previous anon. comments.

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  4. hi eric - that minty green charlie finch piece you did is so good.

    about powhida... i've never seen any of his shows, so can't definitively say yet how much i like his work... but i'm into paying attention to it.

    - i like the sense of provocation, although i don't know how much of an act that is.

    - i have a love of research... and respond to all of his charts, tallys, diagrams, etc.

    - i enjoy art about art, art about the artworld.

    - i like big personalities. there are so many falsely modest artists, pretending they don't care about stuff, acting blase... can't stand that. if powhida's persona is an act, at least it is an act closer to reality than the act of so many others.

    supposedly i am getting a powhida soon... i sent him a copy of his AiA review to "authenticate". don't what that means, or what he will do. did anybody else see that invitation?

    http://williampowhida.blogspot.com/2007/12/art-in-america-review.html

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  5. No one pays attention to or will ever link to my site (you are the exception Martin) and I really appreciate any attention I get, especially when it is positive. Thank you for the compliment.

    I like Powhida (in the only format I have seen in him to date which is jpeg) because of his relationship to comic art, illustration, and the drawing styles of male adolescents. I am a librarian so I appreciate the pseudo-encyclopedic or archival methodology of his conceptual art. I like his subjective systems of organization. But aside from all of the intellectual and insider trappings, you are still left with drawings that are really clever and fun to look at, qualities lacking in so much contemporary art. His art reminds me of late Golub but Powhida is not as nihilistic and dour. He has fun with the petty squabbles and superficial relationships in the art world, much like Balzac did in "Lost Illusions".

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  6. His work is entertaining and I like his execution. But it all seems a bit too fashionable and dated.

    Does he make work outside this reactionary(?) genre?

    disclaimer: this a perspective from outside the "art world"

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  7. Aren't 'fashionable' and 'dated' contradictory terms?

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  8. sorry, i meant that it will be dated.

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  9. Well I am not Michel de Notredame or Nostradamus so I can't argue about what will happen to his art in the future. If you meant to say that Powhida's work seems 'of the moment' and not timeless that is fine. Cartoonish drawing styles and scattered collage like compositions are very prevalent in the art world (J. Blake's drawing's come to mind along with a slew of others).

    Eric

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  10. "If you meant to say that Powhida's work seems 'of the moment' and not timeless"

    yes. but for the subject, not the style/execution.

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  11. That makes sense. The figureheads he focuses on will come and go like the seasons. I guess the subjective networks he builds will always have historical value because they will be a reflection of a specific time period.

    Eric

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  12. a_christian posted a little more about this on his/her blog, with william powhida joining in the comments.

    http://achristian.blogspot.com/2008/01/meme.html

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