Mark Kostabi: Andy Warhol had nothing on this guy
The headline and excerpt below are from a fascinating article in the Daily Telegraph. The idea of having two teams of people - one creating the ideas / concepts, and the other creating the actual painting - is similar to how we’ve worked with several clients in the past.
Anyway, here is a bit of the article -
“Kostabi runs an ‘art factory’, with teams of assistants thinking up ideas and turning out art which, like a modern-day Andy Warhol, he then signs. He claims to sell almost 1,000 paintings a year at between $5,000 and $80,000. To do that, he has hawked his art in malls, and now also sells on eBay and even on a specialist shopping channel on Italian TV. Kostabi, who attracts equal amounts of admiration and venom from bloggers and gossipers on the New York art scene, has a column on artnet.com advising other artists how to make their work pay. And pay it does - he employs 13 assistants, three ideas people and several others who run his operation, called Kostabi World. He himself divides his time between New York and Rome: last year BMW gave him a free car and $150,000 to promote their 3-series coupe in Italy.
Kostabi’s paintings - often featuring faceless figues in surreal environments - can be found in museums and galleries from the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to the Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna in Rome. He cites his influences as Caravaggio, Hopper, Picasso and Warhol. Yet there are those who question the validity of his art. ‘The work is very simple,’ one art-industry insider told me. ‘The themes are easy to figure out, and he often drops in an obvious reference to another painting, which makes people feel clever.’ Almost as clever as Kostabi, who is regarded as a talented self-publicist, networker, salesman and businessman. He’s certainly charming. Speaking to him is, for the most part, pleasant, even fun - not something that can be said for many in the notoriously po-faced New York art world.”
The rest of the article is viewable here - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/09/16/sv_markkostabi.xml
The question is, does Kostabi really create art? He provides much of the inspiration - 50-99%, according to the article - but as he is not putting brush to canvas, is it okay that he signs the paintings and claims them as his own? Opinions differ, naturally, but from my point of view he can certainly claim “ownership” of the piece if one is to judge him by historical precedents - many of the best known artists in history had “assistants” in their studios, doing much of the work - and by modern copyright law.
Copyright law covers “derivative” works; that is, works based on earlier works that are still under copyright. So, technically, if we were to create our own version of Kandinsky’s squares and circles piece, we’d be in breach of copyright. To quote from the copyright.gov website -
“A “derivative work,” that is, a work that is based on (or derived from) one or more already existing works, is copyrightable if it includes what the copyright law calls an “original work of authorship.” Derivative works, also known as “new versions,” include such works as translations, musical arrangements, dramatizations, fictionalizations, art reproductions, and condensations. Any work in which the editorial revisions, annotations, elaborations, or other modifications represent, as a whole, an original work of authorship is a derivative work or new version.
A typical example of a derivative work received for registration in the Copyright Office is one that is primarily a new work but incorporates some previously published material. This previously published material makes the work a derivative work under the copyright law.”
I am no lawyer, but this seems to ascribe a great deal of value to the concept or idea behind a work of art. It is not the act of painting the piece that counts, in the same way that Kodak doesn’t own the copyright to every photo published using their “tools”. They, as with Kostabi’s artists, simply facilitate the creative process.
In the past, we’ve created paintings for clients where they have provided little more than the idea and some guidelines. In one case, they submitted a photo of their little girl that was to be in the painting, along with information on which style they liked, their preferred layout etc. We then worked with the client to create a painting that brought their vision to life. I won’t show the finished artwork here - we respect their privacy, as the painting was very personal to them - but this kind of project is as rewarding as it is challenging.
We’ll be offering this service as part of a promotion soon…watch this space.
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