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William Powhida: Biting All Hands

By Nic on November 16, 2009

The more I read William Powhida’s twitter, the more I like him.

That never happens.

He has long conversations there. They are both outwardly critical and self championing, but of course that’s the point. He’s honest.

Here’s a not entirely typical example of his work (but probably just go look at his website):

His work is part criticism, part illustration, part facile sweat equity, part fan fiction–

It’s a lot of things that I love and distrust mashed together. It’s so Insidery it’s hard to take it seriously at all. But he’s dead serious. Earnest I mean.

Here’s a quip from his bio:

Currently, the artist is suffering a malaise brought on by bouts of crushing doubt about the ability of the market to cope with his rash of provocations and insinuations. When it goes south, so will he. Most likely, you’ll be able to find him somewhere in South America selling paintings of the ocean to tourists.

I’m focusing energy on gift exchange; which is not inherently positive, but is always tangled up in the creative dialogue.

So what does Powhida give? Frustration mostly. And a voice to ambivalent creators melting down against the limited pool of recognition, wealth, and respectability. Controlled by the insiders, whose major crime is somewhere between market manipulation and ego stroking. His career is devoted to deciding who is how much of what and why. Then charting that against his ego. Brutal.

Respect.

Currently, the artist is suffering a malaise brought on by bouts of crushing doubt about the ability of the market to cope with his rash of provocations and insinuations. When it goes south, so will he. Most likely, you’ll be able to find him somewhere in South America selling paintings of the ocean to tourist

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  • Reminds me of John Ashbery Poem: The Painter

    Sitting between the sea and the buildings
    He enjoyed painting the sea’s portrait.
    But just as children imagine a prayer
    Is merely silence, he expected his subject
    To rush up the sand, and, seizing a brush,
    Plaster its own portrait on the canvas.

    So there was never any paint on his canvas
    Until the people who lived in the buildings
    Put him to work: “Try using the brush
    As a means to an end. Select, for a portrait,
    Something less angry and large, and more subject
    To a painter’s moods, or, perhaps, to a prayer.”

    How could he explain to them his prayer
    That nature, not art, might usurp the canvas?
    He chose his wife for a new subject,
    Making her vast, like ruined buildings,
    As if, forgetting itself, the portrait
    Had expressed itself without a brush.

    Slightly encouraged, he dipped his brush
    In the sea, murmuring a heartfelt prayer:
    “My soul, when I paint this next portrait
    Let it be you who wrecks the canvas.”
    The news spread like wildfire through the buildings:
    He had gone back to the sea for his subject.

    Imagine a painter crucified by his subject!
    Too exhausted even to lift his brush,
    He provoked some artists leaning from the buildings
    To malicious mirth: “We haven’t a prayer
    Now, of putting ourselves on canvas,
    Or getting the sea to sit for a portrait!”

    Others declared it a self-portrait.
    Finally all indications of a subject
    Began to fade, leaving the canvas
    Perfectly white. He put down the brush.
    At once a howl, that was also a prayer,
    Arose from the overcrowded buildings.

    They tossed him, the portrait, from the tallest of the buildings;
    And the sea devoured the canvas and the brush
    As though his subject had decided to remain a prayer.
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