From Booklist
Kostabi's hermetically pristine, cartoony paintings feature featureless figures engaged in either allegorical or utterly prosaic activities that reflect the futile busyness and trivialized romanticism of our postmodern lives. They are at once comic-book funny and intellectually shrewd, but Kostabi's true creation is his artist persona and what he calls "Kostabi World," his art-making enterprise. Kostabi doesn't make his artwork himself; instead he employs "committees" of idea people, writers, other artists, and random contributors. In toying with the concept of art by asking, "Is it the object itself, the process of making it, or just the idea?" Kostabi anoints himself the court jester in the realm ruled by Duchamp and Warhol. Here he conducts a provocative and very clever self-interview that illuminates his interest in the long-standing tradition of artist's assistants. An artist unconcerned with "fine" art and a media darling (he's been on a number of prime-time news shows as well as appearing in everything from Playboy to Artforum and People), Kostabi is a truly liberated talent. Donna Seaman
Review
... what makes Mr. Kostabi the artist more interesting than his conceit of creating assembly-line art is that many of his paintings... are genuinely funny. Despite a few bouts of pretension ("my creation of Kostabi World is like Gaugin's move to Tahiti, or like van Gogh's cutting off his ear"), Conversations with Kostabi is a genuinely honest view of a distinct artistic vision. -- The New York Times Book Review, Steven Heller
