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What will art world success mean now? Will the ability to sustain one's self and one's work on art earnings alone define success? Will the days of art-star life-style decadence be remembered fondly or will today's financial hangover leave the art-world feeling remorse over recent excesses? What are the memories we'll take into our new, moderate, modulated art milieu?

For anyone needing to be reminded of art stardom at the apex of its assholeness, Brooklyn-based William Powhida is happy to provide a demonstration. As a spitfire art critic for the Brooklyn Rail, Powhida eloquently articulates his gripes, but in his own work he shows instead of tells. Over the past heady hedonistic years, Powhida masterfully crafted a fully formed douche-bag fame-sucking "art star" performance persona straight out of Bret Easton Ellis's oeuvre. His drawings, performances and writings depict Powhida as a mutant toddler who ingests intoxicating substances and spews out emotional crap. Everyone in an urban art scene knows a few artists who confuse success through excess and convince others that giving them coke and a paintbrush will enable them to create something of 'genius.' But Powhida is not just mocking any particular jumped-up egotist artist. He is lambasting the whole community for confusing coke addiction with creative energy.

'Genius' is a word Powhida sprinkles through his hilariously breathless website bio that peppers his backstory with sparkling adjectives in bold like "brilliant" and "sensation." The artist, who was born in New York in 1976 and lives in Brooklyn, attended Syracuse University and then Hunter College. He is exhibited in New York City by the innovative and intelligent Schroeder Romero gallery, pioneers on the Brooklyn art scene, and also at Seattle's Platform gallery and the Hanes Gallery in San Francisco. Seattlepi.com describes him as: "a high school teacher with a grudge. While he's working for low wages in a Brooklyn classroom, other artists his age (30), without his brains, wit or devotion to theory, are producing painterly bonbons that sell in double digits. Instead of giving up, Powhida turns his frustrations into art."

For "Air Kissing: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art about the Art World" at Philadelphia's Arcadia University, Powhida presented a handwritten version of a New York Times Arts Section article entitled "When the Art Really Lives with You." In Powhida's manuscript, real-world hedge-fund-billionaire David Ganek and his wife Danielle (whose chick-lit novel, 'Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him' was the ultimate air-kiss to the art-world) buy William Powhida as a kind of performance art slave/living art sculpture. But as the article explains, when Powhida's bad-boy artist behavior gets too actual and offensive for his collectors, he is consigned to storage (i.e., a luxury suite in the Maritime Hotel) where he languishes in a temporary social time-out until he is put up for auction.

On Nymag.com's savvy, sassy Culture Vulture blog, Rachel Wolff writes, "Why should you check out William Powhida's solo show tonight at Chelsea's Schroeder Romero gallery? Because New York Magazine told you so. At least that's what the Williamsburg-based emerging artist imagines in "This Is a Work of Fiction 1", a gouache-and-graphite drawing of a fictional cover story dated January 15, 2010. The nine-page, handwritten feature, entitled "Genius: Could this man be the GREATEST artist ever? (FUCK YES!)," is an elaborate portrait of Powhida's background and future successes - and likely a play on Ariel Levy's January feature "Chasing Dash Snow." (A second cover line reads: "Dash Snow More? By Ariel Levy.") What's the motivation behind it? "I can't keep sitting around my studio getting drunk and yelling at my assistants forever, can I?" Powhida says in an artist's statement on the gallery's Website. "I need some affirmation of my BRILLIANCE." Is this commentary? An open letter to our editors? A desperate plea for coverage? In any case, we're flattered." Within limits, Powhida's pomposity earned him a real coup.

I became familiar with Powhida's work when a friend informed me that my name was listed in an ungenerous way on the site's "The New York Enemy/Ally Project." I read the comment, misunderstood the project and felt bruised, mostly because I'd also looked up Powhida's other work and thought he was fantastic. I then contacted our mutual friend Eric Doeringer, who explained to me that the premise of the project was to create an open forum for New York art folk to vent their community gripes and herald the people they like. For the exhibition, Powhida then created a ballot with the top nominees so that visitors could vote for their top 10 allies/enemies to have their portrait included in a series of 20 drawings. Relieved of the worry that this appealing artist wasn't picking on me, I saw the generosity in offering others (even my anonymous bully) an on-line open house to articulate their intra-community concerns. And the results offered illuminating, funny and oddly touching insights into the incestuous New York art scene. On the surface, Powhida's project was catty; but underneath that surface layer of superficiality, "The New York Enemy/ Ally Project" was a benign gesture offering a little transparency to the art world's muddy interpersonal machinations.

"I like the idea of a writer being haunted by his own creation," Bret Easton Ellis explained while promoting his meta-autiobiographical horror story Lunar Park, "especially if the writer resents the way the character defines him."

Here, in the spirit of Easton Ellis, Powhida answers my questions in two guises: Bill - The artist and William - The Fictional Genius.

ANA FINEL HONIGMAN: How do you feel the art world could function better, more honestly or more effectively?

BILL: Right now the first thing that I think the art world needs is transparency. What is happening in the art market is a mirror of the larger economic turmoil that has put the country into crisis mode. The art market operates largely on perceptions, whether or not there is any truth behind those perceptions. In the economy, when consumers and investors lose confidence in a particular company, Washington Mutual for example, they pull out their money. WaMu had enough capital to cover its debts, but consumers pulled out $16 million from the bank, causing it to go bankrupt and get bought out by Chase. When the fall auctions come, and people who have seen their investment wealth withered will be looking to unload some of their assets, which include a great deal of art. I just read on Artnet that the former CEO of Lehman Brothers just put up $20 million dollars worth of art to be sold at Christies.

AFH: Do you think collectors' tightening their belts will help purge the art scene of lesser talents and over-hyped "stars"?

Bill: This will be a really interesting moment in the art world as we see who gets snapped up as a solid long-term investment and what art simply goes unsold, which will push art prices back down to earth. This is nothing new historically, but it is new to many of the artists who didn't have careers five years ago like Dana Schutz or Jules DeBalincourt. They are going to be the litmus tests. I just did a small drawing on the odds of mattering in ten years, and I actually think Dana will be fine. She's been heavily invested in by collectors like Saatchi and made it into many museums with the help of her dealer Zach who aggressively pushed to solidify her place beyond the boom. I think Zach is an incredibly savvy dealer who understands this wasn't going to last forever. Other artists whose work has reached Dana's price point might not be so lucky. While I've been fortunate enough to have the support of some great collectors, they have relatively little to lose, and hopefully, a lot to gain in the long term.

AFH: So, will the "meaning" of art change now?

Bill: When the dust settles this fall, I think there will be some serious clarification about what really matters as art, not just investments. We are probably looking at a prolonged period of assessment of the art of the last decade and trying to figure out what is important. We've been through a period where the only rule has been money, which has propped up a lot of questionable work.

WILLIAM: I totally disagree about transparency. If you start looking at the books or how the art world works, the whole thing will fall apart. When a dealer looks you in the eye and says 'we're doing fine,' you better check for red dots. Everyone is fucked right now, and my career is probably going down in flames. Half my collector base is unemployed or broke. There's no one to do coke with and they fucking closed Scores West. Party over. I'm done with paintings, I'm going to recontextualize some major feminist works and get back to ideas. I do agree that it's going to be a bloodbath when the economic meltdown catches up to the art market. People's careers are going to evaporate, and CAA is going to be busy as hell with artists scrambling for the security of a teaching gig. It's going to be a great time to be heading to school, and totally awful if you are about to graduate. The days of graduating with your MFA and selling out your first show are over. Sorry kids.

Bill: Well, there's a lot of truth about how the gallery system mirrors the economy; galleries are in debt, not paying artists, and gambling on future sales, but it's not a regulated industry and it's run by artists and dealers who are a pretty dysfunctional group with massive egos. I just hope my galleries survive the contraction and continue to exhibit strong work because it's more like a family than a business. I care about the careers of my dealers and fellow artists. In a lot of my work, I've called for the destruction of the art world, but the reality of economic collapse is painful. What I am looking forward to is the critical debate that will fill void that money has filled during the boom. I will probably start writing criticism again, if anyone will have me after the work I've made.

AFH: Are you concerned about antagonizing people within the tiny and emotionally tender art community?

William: Seriously? I don't exist without antagonizing people within this little community. I am a mirror of the dysfunction, the greed, the lack of originality and innovation. I'm a fucking monster, and I hope I piss people off whenever possible. We have been pretty disgusting and self-congratulatory about our success during a prolonged period of gross economic and governmental mismanagement. I mean seriously, two wars have been raging for nearly seven years, the Bush administration expanded executive authority, and banished oversight while giving the richest motherfuckers in the country money to buy my shitty paintings of strippers and decadence. It's actually been great for my career. Fuck it, we all deserve to get out asses kicked for making pointless, derivative, pro-cultural work funded by imaginary dollars. Awesome.

Bill: I don't share that opinion. I do worry about the people that I have called out in my work misreading the critique as personal attacks. Generally, I work on public perceptions, gossip, and the personas of the people that I specify in the work. Artists' reputations play an incredibly important role in how their art is received. It's all part of the external narrative around the work of art they produce. I'm not a big believer in the sanctity of the work of art existing in some pure state. Dash Snow's career is probably the most visible example of the artist's story driving the interest in the work that is produced. I'm not sure it was the art that intrigued so many collectors, including Saatchi, who bought into the colorful, new-bohemian lifestyle the artist projected. I've never met Dash Snow or his clique, because the art world is very much like high school and I'm not in that circle by choice and by status. I'm still an outsider in a precarious position, despite whatever attention I've been able to create through the work.

I do find that people who have some self-awareness of their privileged positions are less likely to take personal offense to the work. They realize that if they are being poked and prodded then they probably have done something that people are paying attention to and realize that they are part of the thousand people, more or less, who currently matter. I used Leo Koenig as one of the models for William's behavior after reading the infamous New Yorker profile of him, and when I actually spent a little time with him, I definitely understand more of the world he inhabits. He's a decent guy, but lives in a totally different social strata than I have experience with. I'd like to think that my work deals with how he was perceived after that article, and how celebrity culture and the media shape our identities. People think I am William, and it titillates them in some way and there is a recognition of the power that they wield. As one collector put it, I just say what they are thinking through the art.

William: Leo's a fucking cock, what are you talking about? He's a rich kid with money and can do whatever he wants. That's what I'm after. I admire the motherfucker and if I was loaded like that, I'd be a total asshole, much worse than he was portrayed in that article.

AFH: Is your work a critique of the 'art world' or more of a general critique of people?

Bill: I think the art world is just a microcosm of society and how people act in general, so the answer is both, but I think it deals more with the perception of people from different vantages points within the class structure. Tom Sanford pointed out to me that while the art world is like high school but that it's actually really easy to navigate and you can actually move within. I don't totally agree and Tom has reached a level that I am on the fringe of. For me, it's the structure of the art world that I'm interested in critiquing, while the people and their narratives provide the interest.

I'm totally outside the academic or curatorial spheres of influence, and I haven't really examined that hierarchy, in part, because it's very insular and somewhat dry. I have a sense of humor about the importance that we place on art and it's much more interesting to deal with someone like Dash Snow than Olafur Eliasson, because frankly he's a bit boring and has convinced people like our mayor that he's really serious and really smart. I think his work is some of the most derivative, unimaginative work that has been so celebrated.

William: They are inseparable really, the art world is the sum of its participants so you can't really critique the art world without getting specific. I think Eliasson is a brilliant salesman. I want to be a fly on the wall in that dude's studio and at the meetings where he pitches $200 million dollar waterfalls. That's a slick bastard right there. As long as no one realizes he's just put a new spin on the 70's he'll be fine.

AFH: Is the art world a microcosm of humanity in general? Or are artists somehow different than other people? Or are they just allowed to conduct themselves differently?

Bill: Yes, it's a microcosm of humanity, which I said before, and I don't think artists behave any differently than other celebrities. My fascination with Dash Snow is the same sort of fascination the public has with Britney and Lindsey. When a public figure behaves badly or in a transgressive manner, we gleefully watch the events unfold. It's been my experience that transgressive behavior and operating outside middle America's value system is almost expected of artists. We are supposed to be bohemian and beyond the traditional value systems imposed by religion and community. It's part of the basic hypocrisy of this country that loves its People and OK magazines as they line up to vote for a creationist, soccer mom. But like any large system, artists are incredible diverse and for every Dash Snow or Terrence Koh there are hundreds of other artists who do not want celebrity or visibility. They want to make work, they want longevity, they want to be part of a serious culture. I can't speak to everyone's motivations, but the focus of the art world has been one of celebrity within the art world and rapidly rising careers; art stars. It hasn't been a culture that promotes depth of character.

William: We are different and totally fucked up. I don't know any artists that aren't saddled with massive egos. If it isn't apparent immediately, it will come in the form of shocking passive/aggressive behavior. I think artists should be nuts, though, because anyone who spends any amount of time reflecting on their situation and the world is going to go bananas. That's why everyone is drunk, stoned, or high half the time. Most Americans live with blinders on in their communities and don't experience anything that they don't let in. They don't take the time to see themselves from another perspective and they lack empathy. That's why we have had eight years of Bush. They don't see fat, greedy pigs sucking up the world's energy supply through their cars and straws; they see entitlement. I don't give a fuck about pleasing them or representing myself as one of them. I'm happy to be a shallow, self-serving asshole as long as I'm up front about it. No bullshit, no bibles, no right. If they are right, I'd rather be wrong.

AFH: Are you looking forward to whatever will happen within art now that the bubble is bursting?

Bill: Only to the sober reflection about what we've all been doing. I'm terrified of the consequences it will have for everyone I know from the art handlers to the dealers. Everyone is going to take a serious economic hit, and there's going to be a lot of condolences and mourning over the loss of representation and income. It's going to be a real struggle, but I hope that artists take the long view and do what they have always done; get by and find time and space to make their work.

William: Fuck no! I'm desperate. I'm trying to make sure my fucking dealer pays me every penny before I go to the gallery and find out he's fled to South America or Dubai. Everything is going to get incredibly serious, everyone will dress in black and speak that theory talk, which I just can't understand. I'm going to miss painting strippers and selling beauty to rich people. I really hope the bailout works and I've even thought of voting for McCain just so he won't get rid of the tax cuts for the top 5%. That's my collectors bracket and I need their disposable income.

AFH: Do you really still love New York?

Bill: Have you ever spent time outside of New York in the US? I mean I could probably handle living in another major city, but after growing up in a homogenous, upstate community, the city constantly amazes me. When I arrive in a part of town I haven't been to in awhile, like Harlem or the Rockaways, I feel like I'm traveling. There's so much to do culturally that I hope I always live here. I'd like to have a small place in the country to retreat to once in a while, but I really do love New York. I hope that the economic crisis will bring some measure of reality back the housing situation here, and that people will help develop their communities instead of making gentrification a racial or class-based issue where the poorest New Yorkers are pushed further and further out. I'm also tired of Bloomberg's paternalism. He's a great manager and I give him credit for pushing through some major reforms in education, but at what cost to Democracy? I think he believes he knows what's right for the public and has the will to make it happen. I'm just not thrilled when that also means locking up demonstrators for thirty-six hours without charges and spying on non-violent activist groups outside the city. I think if he believes so firmly in his ideas, he should seek to implement a referendum system, so that when he wastes money on a public ad campaign for things like the commuter surcharge in Manhattan, the public will be allowed to vote. I'd like a new mayor. And just when I thought I had a handle on the art world, it's bound for change. It should be a really interesting time here in the next few years.

William: My love for New York took a great hit when Scores West was shuttered. That was one of my favorite places to hang out with other celebrities. I've been in a period of mourning, and I can't stand the Hustler Club. It's too trashy for me. I need a touch of class in my crass.

AFH: What are your actual artistic goals?

Bill: I would like to push the fictional William Powhida as far as I can into the hierarchy of the art world and create the arc of his career; what that looks like in the end is what I am continuously working on. Part of the goal of the project is to...

William: Make me famous, asshole.

Bill: ...is to continue to create this fictional narrative and push the boundaries of how we understand the role of narrative in art. I'm not talking about traditional storytelling, but the larger narratives that structure the art world and how people perceive art with all of the external influences. Part of my motivation to make art comes from writing, and the multiple roles the author is allowed to occupy in a given text through narrators and characters. I want to engage the audience explicitly through the structure of the work, so that they become part of the work, not something that misinterprets or hinders my intentions, the sort of model where someone doesn't get the work because they're not privy to certain historical information. I encourage the kind of active participation that my work often suggests, whether it's the Ganeks actually acquiring a painting about them fictionally acquiring me or my letter from Zach Feuer ending up in one of his collector's homes. There is a model of understanding art as a direct utterance from the artist to the viewer, an unbroken line, which is pretty outmoded but seems to be the fall back position for trying to understand art. I enjoy the role uncertainty plays in my work, and the questions it forces the viewer to ask about their assumptions and the intentions of the work of art. Who is speaking? Who is being spoken to? In the process, I enjoy injecting the work with humor, pathos, and satire to disarm the viewer and to be provocative. Every artist searches for their angle or hook to disorient the viewer and make their work seem new, and humor in art is something that stops people and makes them pay attention, sometimes just long enough for me to get under their skin and past their defenses. I feel like I've reached my goal when I hear people trying to suppress their laughter in a the refined atmosphere of a gallery or an art fair, or when they drop their pretension and point at something in the work. It's amazing to watch people interact with the work, to see their body language change and their seriousness drop away for a moment.

William: Whatever, my goal is to be the world's greatest artist and knock that fucking Spaniard Picasso off his pedestal. I'm here to take Andy's wig and be recognized for my genius. That should of course be followed by fame and fortune. My artistic goal is have an idea and have it appear as if by magic. I want my own museum and a movement named after me. I don't think it's too much to ask. Oh, and I want Saatchi to suck it up and buy my work. I'm sorry I called you a geezer or whatever, but come on man, I am an artistic goal.

Bill: I'd like to have a museum show, or at least to get the work that exhibited for all of three days together so people can start to piece together the larger narrative that exists throughout the work.

AFH: Through your "Friends and Enemies" lists, have you come to any overarching conclusions about the behavior, or personality types, the art community likes and dislikes?

William: They like you to be funny and risky, but not too risky. For example, I can say a dealer is a 'greedy fuck', but I can't say he's a 'fat little troll'. People don't like it when you make fun of their physical traits. When Charlie Finch went from describing Becky Smith as 'Rubenesque' to 'heavy' or something less flattering, after some change of heart, it was seen as misogynistic and personal. People want their criticism leveled more at the character flaws and behavior. I get that, but damn, if you're beautiful, you've got a distinct advantage over ugly people. I mean, there are some collectors whose faces cost more than the art on the walls at Basel.

Bill: We live in a moment where everyone is being tracked, labeled, and categorized by their consumer habits and the way they use the Internet. It's a crazy time, where people aren't recognized as individuals, but a collection of beliefs and habits. What I do isn't based on data or intensive research, but my perceptions of the art world and its cast of characters. I've definitely learned whom I support and whom to avoid in the art world and like he just said what to criticize and what to leave alone. I try to deal with what exists in the public domain, and all that takes some time is the ability to actually listen to people and be observant.

AFH: Do you feel the project produced something more useful than just a forum for people to anonymously throw spitballs?

Bill: I've also discovered that I am not a fan of anonymous Internet chatter. When I wrote a satirical column called the Williamsburg Art Crawl a few years back, I used a pseudonym that was created by the editors of the site. They asked for it and wanted the writing to be funny and accessible for people who might not ordinarily give contemporary art much thought, while keeping some critical distance from my criticism at the Rail. I've been criticized for hiding behind the pseudonym, but I was always accessible as the character and people shot it right back at me. There was a layer of fiction to the writing, and a definite point-of-view that was obviously satirical. It was also a poorly kept secret and I think the writing is too stupid and ridiculous to be taken seriously, but I also generated a lot of interest in the work, right or wrong. Now, people leave comments with little opportunity to respond or create a meaningful dialog. Even as Keane A. Pepper (Cayenne Pepper) I had several important dialogs with artists and dealers who may have disagreed with the writing, but there was an avenue for airing grievances and asking for clarification.

AFH: How was the Friends/ Enemies project different?

Bill: I don't see that happening in the blog culture, and it's sort of disgusting. The New York Enemy/Ally project really brought that issue home, where the anonymous nature of the nominations and rationale was sort of appalling, and at its core the piece became about that culture, darkly mirroring the power that anonymous publishing has. I know you, Ana, were nominated by someone and you thought I was the author of the comments when it was the work of someone we will never know, or perhaps know all too well. It's the inability to communicate that undermines the crazy dialog that erupts from time to time on blogs. In the case of that project, I was hoping to shed some light on the hierarchy of the art world and see what people were perceived as having power and how they employed it, and whether there could be some consensus on the anonymous opinions. As it turns out, there were very few definitive enemies out there like Giuliani who is almost universally reviled in the art community at least, whereas almost everyone also presented a more complicated reading.

William: Giuliani is a scumbag. I'm with you on that. I'm sorry you got dragged into the muck Ana, but I got shit on, and Bill got shit on, as well in the project. He expected it, but it was hilarious to watch him squirm at being called a 'coward' by an anonymous source, which begs the fucking question about the assertion in the first place. It would have been more powerful of an attack if the person had shared their identity to repudiate Bill's role as Keane Pepper. I found the project amusing for seeing how people speak anonymously, and it tickled me that you thought I was stalker Ana. I'm glad you know I'm just a decadent, brilliant artist, not a stalker. In fact, I'd like a stalker, it would be another confirmation of my celebrity.

Bill: No stalkers, please, but if you must stalk someone, stalk William Powhida, the genius. He's really hard to find though, he's leaving for the Bahamas soon, I think.