"MOST ARTISTS STEAL THEIR IDEAS, I PAY FOR MINE."
a profile of artist/industrialist Mark Kostabi


by Gregory Klages.

Gregory Klages is Promotion Coordinator for the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario, as well as an artist and freelance curator. Mr. Klages' writing can also be found regularly in Id magazine (http://www.idmagazine.org).
"Ultimately as an artist you only have to be a genius once, because
once you've succeeded you never have to use your alarm clock again."
Mark Kostabi
The workers Mark Kostabi employs to create his paintings are constantly aware of the time-clock that clicks away at the entrance to Kostabi World. Carefully monitoring staff time, this clock signifies both the control and the unique vision at the root of the controversy around Kostabi's career. While Mark Kostabi's artwork may be distinctive, his success comes from melding the efficiency of the assembly line with shameless marketing savvy.

Kostabi rarely ever touches brush to canvas and yet sells in excess of $1 million of paintings per year. He manages this feat by institutionalizing creativity. Kostabi has an 'Idea Person' constantly generating 'Kostabi-ideas'. Once passed by a 'Kostabi-minded' committee, these proposals are converted into paintings by underlings hired for anywhere between $5 to $20 an hour.

In 1988, probably his most successful year, Kostabi had 34 assistants complete 2 000 paintings. He sold about $3 million dollars worth of work that year. Despite the recession the art market has experienced since then, Kostabi still made approximately $1 million in 1995, beyond his $500 000
Kostabi World expenses.
"Why do so many people, so many intellectual critics hate Mark Kostabi?"
Giancarlo Politi, Editor of Flash Art magazine
Kostabi purposely engages in blatant self-promotion to further his career. At the peak of his notoreity, his flamboyant post-punk garb was punctuated by an aggressive use of inflammatory one-liners. Kostabi World, the artist's studio cum painting factory in Manhattan was (and still is) decorated with banners sporting phrases like: "All's well that ends in a sale", "Lots of cash for commercial trash" and "A picture is worth a thousand dollars". When Sylvester Stallone bought three of Kostabi paintings the artist appeared on A Current Affair to call Stallone "a mindless dope".

It was his singular and self-conscious style of throwing choice verbal barbs at the people he was most expected to pander to that fuelled Kostabi's strong presence in the press in the late 1980's.

Pursued about his maligning of almost anyone involved with the art world Kostabi defends his cause as one of returning freedom and justice to artists. He feels he does this by deflating the illusion of grandeur that currently surrounds the production of art.
"I used to say 'Buy now before the prices go down'. But I was critiquing other people. It looked like I was critiquing myself but in reality I was critiquing the art world in general. I was actually warning all the people like the Japanese who were spending billions of dollars on paintings that were going to go down in value. People were shocked that I would say that about my own work but when you criticize yourself people listen. When you criticize others they tend to get defensive."
"In the art world everyone has a hidden agenda. Mark's was obvious. Later he made that obviousness a conceptual statement."
Carlo McCormick (gave Kostabi first exhibition)
In person Kostabi doesn't behave like an egotistical dictator. In fact he insists that once people get to know him they find him a genuinely likeable and truly creative person. Much of the art world disagrees. Kostabi is more often described as an upstart artist of limited technical skill who applied his strength, conceptualism, to its fullest possibility. This would make all of Kostabi World a performance, and his efforts thus far one tremendous piece.

Kostabi doesn't seem to like this idea. He prefers to see himself as a visionary; a redeemer leading a stylistic revolt out of the antiquated ways of the Modern era.

As much as Kostabi might like to cultivate this image he all too often slips into performance mode, primping and manipulating with mind-boggling finesse. Every conversation takes on a game-like quality: the real Kostabi always dancing just beyond the interviewers capacity to discover. He usually avoids committing himself to a single position, preferring instead to engage in a distracting verbal cat-and-mouse; overwhelming with his ability to introduce tangential topics or turn the question back around on the interviewer.

Like Warhol in the '60's, Kostabi skillfully uses his understanding of the mass media to forward his own ends. In the mid-'80's he deemed the art press 'below his interest' and instead appeared on talk shows and 'trash TV' like Morton Downey Jr. For this appearance Kostabi and Downey staged a very believable scuffle that of course gained the artist instant notoreity. By 1989, when magazines like Flash Art and Apollo were clambering for interviews, Kostabi could be gracious enough to indulge their seemingly slow response to his genius with mild condescension. The inconsistency of
his overall promotional program, only made more exasperating by his apparent confidence, only made for better copy.
"Kostabi is the quintessential evasive witness, the walking definition of a reasonable doubt."
Stuart Abrams, Attorney for Andrew Behrmann in closing statement for
U.S.A. vs Andrew Behrmann, Brooklyn Federal Court, December, 1993
By 1993 Mark Kostabi's evasiveness had lost its charm. Involved in a bitter court action against a former close friend, Kostabi suddenly had to explain his approach in a court of law. One of his most trusted staff members had been caught selling illegitimate Kostabis from right under his nose, and Kostabi responded with a surprising lack of humour.

Andrew Behrmann, as the public relations person for Kostabi World from 1988 until 1991, had sold fake Kostabis to German and Japanese galleries amongst some real ones and pocketed the money. Two years later he would be indicted on one count of conspiring to defraud and on four counts of wire fraud.

Kostabi only discovered the scam when he accidentally noticed some out-of-place works in an exhibition in Japan. The artist promptly fired Behrmann and other staff, changed the locks to Kostabi World and instructed his lawyer to take action. Kostabi's singular pursuit of justice resulted in Behrmann being found guilty only on the charge of conspiracy to fraud.

For once, the spotlight had strayed out of Kostabi's control and moved off his garish antics. Art theory and promotion diverged momentarily, and Kostabi was forced to adopt a consistent and credible position on the philosophic questions his work presented.
"He must be a marketing genius if he can get that schlock sold or people to buy that junk, or get people to buy stuff that he didn't even paint."
Mark Kostabi, putting words in the mouths of his critics.
Kostabi's concepts are fantastic. His conceptual activism preceded a renewed interest in culture as protest while embodying a very timely, apparently tongue-in-cheek desire for capitalistic gain. By the early '90's however, the art world had turned against Kostabi. They vehemently rejected the unpredictable and seemingly self-destructive grandstanding of Kostabi-ism for less dangerous and theoretically less-challenging fare.

Although his antics have a definite way of discouraging analysis of his work, Kostabi appears genuinely troubled that he is seen more as a marketer than an artist. As much as he usually evades offering definitive explanations, Kostabi can show that his efforts are carefully considered.

Referring to related production models from animation and architecture Kostabi observes that no one questions the singularity of vision behind a Walt Disney film or a Phillip Johnson building. His carefully calculated, in-your-face manner also makes a strong and deflating comment on the Modern cult of the artist-as-tortured-self-abuser.

Much has been made of Kostabi's use of cheap labour to produce his price-fetching paintings. Kostabi's view towards his employees, though, comes across as surprisingly realistic.
"In Kostabi World it's all work for hire. Even when they're doing creative things, even when they're pouring their heart and souls into an idea...that's their prerogative to do that. They're just doing their job description. I mean it's their prerogative if they want to pour their heart and soul into it, which I appreciate, but there's no obligation to do that. I just want them to do a good job."
He also puts a creative spin on his use of a time-clock to monitor his staff's labour. Far from seeing it as an unnecessary ordering of their efforts, Kostabi points out that painters can come and go as they please, as long as they work their required number of hours each week.
"...he possesses a gift for surrealistic fantasy that his adolescent hotdogging in and out of the studio only serves to obscure."
Ken Johnson, reviewing a 1988 Kostabi exhibition
In the end, will Kostabi go down as a great artist? Will he even care?
"I'm appearing in textbooks, art history books and encyclopedias and usually they talk about my factory system. To get it right one of my art historical contributions would be that I was one of the first artists to speak openly about how a studio works with assistants, thus allowing other people to talk about it."
Most writers have refrained from substantial critical evaluation of Kostabi's style, although he does have pieces in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum and Groninger Museum in Holland. Reviews of exhibitions in the major art press publications are generally not glowing, if ever appearing. Most prefer to talk about Kostabi's personal style over his artistic one. Reviewers have astutely observed, even in the late '80's, how Kostabi's posturing has forced the artist to paint himself (or would it be get painted?) into a corner. Anything he attempts in the way of innovation away from his former confrontational approach has to be viewed cynically.

Despite the doubts of the art establishment, Kostabi has persevered. The fact that he continues along his path of investigation; exploring the dynamics of schlock culture, fast money and crass self-promotion, is testimony to the credibility of his interests. Unfortunately, no one seems capable of consistently championing Kostabi's work, not even the artist himself.
"If you end up writing that I'm a has-been or a fading star then that's beautiful too because I like the image. The only thing that's constant is the eternal waves and the latest crop of babies that are going to put up new sandcastles."


Kostabi World is located at 600 Broadway, New York, N.Y. and includes regular exhibitions of the artist's work.