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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thank God for Vanity Press,
By Arnold Van Fossen (Honolulu, Hawaii) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kalev Mark Kostabi: The Early Years (Hardcover)
The man is so Daliesque it is unbelievable. That is not a bad thing to be. Many years ago I met the Dali and he did not exggerate one iota. Kostabi is a magnificent artist who self promotes knowing that the many who come to laugh will also come to buy. Artists are laughed at. Most hang their heads and collective sigh. Kostabi only becomes more outrageous and his work expands to meet his ego. This book is as highly priced and as explosive as a Stealth bomber; smooth and grandoise to the eye with a million miniature inventions hidden from general view. If you do not have this book and love it, you will surely hate yourself in the morning. After all, what will you have to talk about.
6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
most apalling idiocy ever disdorged,
By A Customer
This review is from: Kalev Mark Kostabi: The Early Years (Hardcover)
Mistah Kostabi, he yesterday's boiled cabbage. This book, laughable monstrosity, as weird and uncategorizably nutty as a momument built by Kim Jong Il in praise of himself, or Nero forcing Roman nobility to listen to him warble, or perhaps Rupert Pupkin kidnapping Jerry Langford so he could insist that America to listen to his jokes. This massive display, and massive it is, of egotism and lack of proportion, could only have happened in the unhinged atmosphere of the '80s, when folly and excess ran amok, and the general level of taste in all things aesthetic hit a once in a millenium low point, most probably as a result of the sunspot cycle interacting with transits of Pluto, or something equally beyond human comprehension. To give Markie some credit, the context of his moment was aptly described by Hunter Thompson's title, "Generation Of Swine", an understatement if there ever was one. Once the wild pigs had stampeded elsewhere, to tear up the earth with their SUVs and bloatburger homes, the general public lost all interest in the Kostabis of the world, those silly quasi celebrities who confused being in the right place at the right time with actually having chops. The day of the locust having passed, all that remains are bizarre momentos such as this. In the intervening years since it was published, Kostabi's market moved from the upscale art collectors world to the gamey sweathog underlayer of poster shops and schlock galleries, and from there to total oblivion as far as anyone can tell. There really is no nostalgia for Kostabi's '80s ; the age of Tina Brown, wads of loose cash, Vanity Fair profiles, Reaganomics, post modern tastelessness and incomprehensible academic detritus, Deconstruction or Whatever. Kostabi was fond of Beaudrillard, the great contemplator of the Simulacrum. If Mark had a philosophical bent, which I think he did, it was directed towards the commodification of all human conduct. He obsessed over the alienating and dehumanizing effects of money, yet he was ruled and imprisoned by those same obsessions. He would not be an artist, but a Simulacrum of an artist, like Andy Warhol declaring that he wanted to be a machine. Kostabi the Warhol simulacrum, as it were. In the final analysis, he was removed from the game by his sheer tastelessness and complete lack of subtlety in human interactions. Early Years was the gambit to be art's Comeback Kid. Instead he became a confirmation of Scott Fitgerald's quip, "there are no second acts in American lives". That's not a universal truth, witness the many comebacks of the real article, such as Frank Lloyd Wright. It is true, however, that America has a fascination of Icarus figures, especially as they fly too close to the sun. Julian Schnabel could pull himself out of free fall with a brilliantly acrobatic career switch, from painter to director of films about artists. Kostabi has proved himself no such an adept counterpuncher, soldiering on with the hope that the old magic will strike again. Perhaps his one hope is that Schnabel will make a film about him, which is about as likely as the sun rising in the west. The likelihood is that he will be a case study or a footnote in the history of his time, but little more than that.
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