Plan Ahead

I love Mark Kostabi. Let's set aside his paintings for a moment; I just love Mark's advice column. Mark is part of why I'm here, typing this blog. I'm basing my approach to the world of art and a career in it on his advice.

And not just his advice column. Who he is. A few years back when I started down this fine art road I wrote to Mark about how I was selling drawings on eBay and how well that was going. He reprinted my letter in his column and put up one of my drawings which was, at the time, for sale. I was thrilled, of course, because I'm easy like that. Shortly after the column ran Mark had an opening at the Stux Gallery and I went. I gathered together as many courage molecules as I could and went up to Mark to introduce myself.

A quick note: If you've read this blog you probably think I'm the kind of person who can talk to anyone. I'm always writing about how I met this painter or chatted up this gallery director or whatever. But what you might not realize is, that's not me. That's someone I'm pretending to be. Oh, sure, I can talk to people. If someone introduced us, if you were a friend of a friend, say, then I'd talk to you so much you'd take to drinking wood alcohol just to get my voice out of your head. But to walk up to a stranger and talk to them? I hadn't done that since freshman year at college when I was away from home for the first time surrounded by strangers and I had no choice. I'm much more likely to ignore every human in the vicinity and try to pretend I'm invisible. Which at my size is very hard. Talking to people I meet in galleries is, for me, really difficult, but I do it by pretending to be someone who can do it, and I do it because I believe -- based on Mark's advice -- that it's the key to making it in the art world.

So I had to gather as many courage molecules as possible to go up and talk to Mark. And it turned out to be nothing I needed courage for. Mark was gracious and open. As soon as I told him I was the guy with the drawings on eBay, Mark started talking to me like we were colleagues. He began to introduce me to other people at the opening, and he did so saying, "This is Chris Rywalt, he sells his art on eBay." Just like that. In fact I remember he introduced me to Helen Garber; I promptly put my foot in my mouth when I said, "You can sell drawings on eBay cheap! I mean, how long does it take to do a drawing?" And she replied in measured tones, "It takes me a long time to do a drawing."

So that, ultimately, is why I love Mark Kostabi: He didn't have to be nice to me. He didn't have to make me feel welcome. But he did. Between his column and how he behaved when I met him, Mark made me feel that the art world was something I could understand, something I could enter. He made it clear that art people are approachable, that the doors aren't closed.

At the beginning of this I said we should set aside his paintings. Now let's get them back out here.

I won't say Mark is my favorite artist of all time. But I will say that I like his paintings. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a sucker for technique. And Mark's paintings are technically well done.

Of course with Mark there's the question of whether he did them or not, and how much he did. I like that aspect of Mark's art, in fact: It's not just about his paintings, but also about his concept, which was to simply bring out into the open something artists rarely discuss. When Mark claimed he had hired assistants who were paid by the hour to paint "his" paintings, with Mark's only addition being the signature, he was just making explicit a practice which has been going on for about as long as there have been painters. No one talks about it, but with any painting you can ask yourself, how much of this was done by the guy whose name is on it and how much by unknown studio gremlins?

For example, Salvador Dalí, near the end of his career, painted a number of these enormous works, almost two stories tall. They're beautiful examples of technique, massively gorgeous, resplendent with detail, overwhelming in size and scope. Every time I'm in Florida, I stop by the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg to pay my respects and to absorb some of the wonder that is Dalí.

On one of these trips the museum's back room was given over to photos of Dalí. One of them showed Salvador in his studio, making that pop-eyed wacko face he always made any time a camera was pointed in his direction. In the background you could see one of those giant canvases along with some nameless somebody painting on it.

No one else is credited with painting these Dalí "masterworks." No other names are associated with them. They're not attributed to the School of Dalí or anything like that. No, these are Dalí's paintings, and his alone. Except apparently other people did work on them. No one's supposed to talk about that, though.

So when Mark opened up Kostabi World and had his assistants turning out paintings by assembly line, he was just being open and honest about something which everyone else wants to keep hidden. He's written about having a committee to determine what concepts get turned into finished paintings. And of course now he has a game show on local cable where contestants vie to name existing paintings.

I'm not normally one for conceptual art but I find this endlessly amusing. I think I enjoy it because, first, it pokes fun at the art world, and that's always a good thing. And second, because, in the end, I like the paintings. As I said, I wouldn't call Mark my favorite artist ever -- I'm still partial to the customs clerk Henri Rousseau -- but I like the paintings that have Mark's name on them. Who painted them? I really don't know. I can't tell if Mark is kidding about having a small army of assistants. Maybe he really does paint all his paintings and his assistants are just for show. Maybe they don't even exist. I guess I could drop by Kostabi World and see -- does it even still exist? Did it ever exist? Help, I'm trapped in an epistemological nightmare!

And I'm okay with that, again, because I like the paintings. Dismiss them if you will -- too "retinal," boring, repetitive, don't advance any art theory, whatever. I like them. They look good. Sometimes they make me laugh.

All of which is simply to introduce where I'll be on May 4, 2006: At Mark Kostabi's opening at Adam Baumgold Gallery. Can you tell I'm looking forward to it?