You gotta read this. William Powhida on Bravo’s Work of Art. I’m no fawning Powhida fan, but reading this gave me a little faith (in what exactly, I don’t know). Made me feel glad I never watched an episode of that show, and stupid for having felt a little guilty about that fact. A small excerpt below; the entire lengthy diatribe found in full on the artist’s website.

“As the summer wore on I wished I could just say, “fuck it. It’s the Jersey Shore of the art world,” and watch the show. The problem is, I can’t. It’s not really the show I’m pissed about. I’m pissed off by it’s very existence and the promise it offers its contestants. I’m sure you all understand the basic fucking premise of the show; respond to an assignment, win, and get a 100k and a museum show. Sweet. All you have to do is crank out some art that is marginally less terrible than what everyone else is making. It’s not that you actually have to make anything good. My friend Letha used to explain that meeting the hottest guy in a bar is always a relative proposition. Sometimes, she would take home the hottest guy in the bar and still be making out with an ugly motherfucker. Despite this, and unlike the broader market where critics can ignore mediocre and bad work and collectors can chose not to buy it, someone had to win the show by default. It would have been way riskier and far more interesting if there was no guarantee anyone could win if the work wasn’t good enough. I think this one of the most obvious flaws in comparing the show to life. In fact, even the losers on the show are still winners if we count recognition as a form of payment.”

An online catalogue is available for William Powhida’s upcoming show at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles (in Chinatown, this Friday, October 24th, to be exact). You can access it here (click “catalogue” under the artist’s name). Unfortunately, the images in the .pdf catalogue aren’t of high enough resolution to allow for full magnification, so you can’t really read a lot of the text…which kind of defeats the purpose…sigh…I’m just bummed because I won’t be in L.A. during the run of Powhida’s exhibition and I’m eager to see exactly how he’ll tease/toy with/skewer some of the art world biggies and Hollywood celebrities  in my hometown–the press release offers “apologies” to Eli Broad, Michael Govan “(and everyone at LACMA)”, Jeff Koons, John Baldessari, Christopher Knight, Javier Peres, Steven Soderbergh, Mickey Rourke, New Line Cinema, The Sunset Marquis, Tony’s Restaurant, TMZ, 944 Magazine, the LA Weekly, and the City of Los Angeles–so you know this should be good.

And if you haven’t listened to Amanda and Tom’s interview of William Powhida on the Podcast, you should do that too – it’s definitely on my ever-lengthening list of ‘not to be missed’ Bad at Sports episodes.