Question:
Do you celebrate the loss of authenticity and critical representa-
tion in today’s society? If so, do you believe art has triumphed as a
commodity and sign?
Kostabi:
I never think about stuff like this, I simply commodify my signs
and
sign my commodities
(from
the column, ‘Ask Mark Kostabi’, at www.artnet.com)
Kostabi is a tireless self-promoter, recognizing quite clearly that he – as the artist –
is the brand. A business executive like Steve Jobs, in his second coming at Apple,
wants to be viewed as chief aesthetic officer; Kostabi, on the other hand, positions
himself as a ‘mass communications industrialist’:
My painting mimics the industrial process and I’m the chairman of the board.
Just like Walt Disney I also devolve responsibility to my subordinates to come
up with the goods. I just guide things in terms of supervision and public rela-
tions, in terms of manipulating the media, in terms of communicating what my
corporate image should be.
(Shanes 1989: 37)
There is a trickster persona on display, which is underscored by deliberate refer-
ences to being raised in Whittier, California, home of Richard Nixon, the disgraced
American president.
Kostabi has taken both Duchamp’s and Warhol’s diffidence about how a work
of art is made, and their ironic view of the cultural purpose it serves, to even greater
extremes. To understand Kostabi as an artist, one needs to understand that it
involves an entire system. In 1988, Kostabi World – references are the European
tradition, with Warhol’s Factory being a more recent model – was established as a
studio, gallery, and office complex in New York. According to art critic Thomas
McEvilley:
A Kostabi picture openly asserts the complex memory of the process of its
production. The structure of Kostabi World, its hierarchies of relationships,
and the formative project of working these relationships out in the hard, high-
contrast lighting of capitalism – all this hangs invisibly suspended around
each picture.
(Kostabi 1996: Foreword)
Kostabi’s method is to employ assistants – a means of creation that consciously
parallel the production lines that form the basis of manufacturing plants – to create
works in his name. ‘It does not necessarily matter when Kostabi’s assistants fin-
ished painting, nor who they are, and so on, since it is Kostabi’s meaning that sus-
tains their result as his art work’ (Bailey 1989: 226).
‘Cash in on passion’ is one of the slogans proclaiming the thoughts of the artist on
display at Kostabi World to encourage workers (Shanes 1989: 35). Kostabi World
emphasizes commodity production, artist–assistant relationships, and raises questions
38
Cultural entrepreneurship
regarding originality and authenticity: a painting not painted by Kostabi may be a
work of art by Kostabi. Economic value is assigned to his works by a self-referential
art market system (e.g. artists, dealers, critics, collectors) with its hierarchies of rela-
tionships. Not unlike other owners of ‘aspirational’ brands, Kostabi relies on
customers who crave new products, customers–collectors who want to be cultural
pioneers. Kostabi – in a
Flash Art
(January/February 2000) advertisement – recog-
nizes that a closer relationship with the artist can be charged at a higher rate:
It is true that I charge 100 times more for a commissioned work done entirely
by my own hand but not because I believe it is necessarily worth 100 times
more. I believe any painting priced 100 times more than any other should actu-
ally be 100 times better. But if a collector is willing to dole out the extra for
‘the aura of the master’s hand’, I’ll do my best to make a masterpiece. The
truth is, frequently I can paint a better painting than those of my assistants but
sometimes theirs are better, because we all experiment at Kostabi World.
Fine art, as Kostabi knows better than most of his contemporaries, offers its owner
social capital. To capitalize on this, Kostabi realizes that he should never detract
from his corporate image.
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