Mark Kostabi and "CON ARTIST" : The Quest for Love In The Age of Confusion.

The reason why Mark Kostabi DID what he DID in the 1980s is quite evident when one takes into consideration what has really been going on in the world of Modern Art Collectorship! I will not elaborate on WHAT has been going on, because anyone with any real intelligence can figure that out for themselves, but what matters is that Mark Kostabi VIOLATED most of the RULES and UPSET most of those who SET-UP the RULES or who RE-ENFORCED them! Early on Mark realized that REAL ARTISTIC TALENT did not really matter as much as other things which had less to do with REAL ART and more to do with the BUSINESS of SELLING (and re-selling) so-called REAL ART and selling Art In General! Mark Kostabi began his FACTORY, inspired by Warhol and stimulated by Basquiat (all three people I have met/known), hoping to cause a MAJOR RIFT in the world of Modern Art Collectorship and hoping to DEPOSE the BIG BUSINESS 'ART' DEALERS! Anyone who cautiously reads his early interviews, and especially his Self-Interview in his book "Sadness Because The Video Rental Store Was Closed" can clearly see what his real motive is! You just have to READ BETWEEN THE LINES! Kostabi had discovered Picasso's and Warhol's not-entirely-secret AGENDA! And Kostabi sought to become the one who would deliver what Picasso and Warhol had ultimately failed to achieve! The AGENDA! What is IT? Well; one might say it is what Dali and Basquiat would have ultimately wanted! Hint: use your IMAGINE-ation, as John Lennon would say! Unfortunately; Kostabi has also failed to do what he set out, and because he realizes he is running out of time he figured he might as well GO FOR BROKE and do WHATEVER IT MIGHT TAKE to regain momentum! Is "CON ARTIST" the answer? Will Kostabi manage to achieve what Picasso and Warhol could not? A look at the Condition of The World in general should make it clear that the ODDS are OVERWHELMINGLY against success!

Is this to say that there is NO REAL HOPE? No. There is HOPE, but chances are there is a group of Extra-Terrestrials who adore Kostabi's "slick" Kostabinoids (the vague, androgynous humanoid forms that are basis of his style of paintings), and it is more likely that it will be THEIR ARRIVAL that will achieve what Kostabi has been seeking to achieve!

In the meantime; we must continue to remember the past as if versions of it could happen in the present. As Santayana might have put it: "Those Who Forget The Mistakes of The Past Are Condemned to Repeat Them" - J.P. Fenyo, Philosopher. What George Santayana actually wrote ( in his "The Life of Reason" ) was: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." My Free Advice to Mark Kostabi is this: Remember this; those who really had a significant and relatively positive impact on Human History, whose impact furthered Progress Towards a Truly Enlightened and More Peaceful World were people who had no qualms about sharing their stage with others and actually making that stage a Mutually Beneficial Collaborative Effort! So: How about it Mark? Are you willing to let me too benefit from your fame and fortune?? Or will you IGNORE my Free Advice and treat me the way people 'higher up" have treated you? Or as Lao Tzu said to Confucius: You Know That I Know That You Know That I Know That You Know....etc....

Jean-Pierre Ady Fenyo, Philosopher & The Original New York City Free Advice Man (written-up in The New Yorker, Aug. 17, 1987).

About "CON ARTIST": "CON ARTIST" is the World's Greatest documentary ever made (and the only one so far) about The World's Greatest Pseudo-Con-Artist Artist, Musician and Game-Show-Host Mark Kostabi who rose to major fame in the mid-80s New York Avant-Garde Modern Art Scene. The movie, superbly Directed and Produced by Michael Sladek, is a viscously self-referencing movie about a viscously self-referencing artist-turned-real-life-Don-Quixote who is on a mission to attack the windmills of viscously self-referencing artists, dealers and critics in a viscously self-referencing world full of viscously self-referencing mediocre-minded wannabes! All in all; it's a smashingly entertaining, inadvertently funny and even shockingly brutally sharp psychological expose of raw emotion and contrived self-reflection on the part of a highly creative and brilliant Philosopher of Art masquerading as a lover of money! You will be glued to your seat and pee in your under-alls and if you are really, really lucky the movie-theatre usher will blame you and not the movie! So be sure to wear Pampers filled with plenty of 500 Euro bills to help absorb the mushy-ness, if not the shock! Truly a shockingly honest self-promoting self-confession of a blatantly straightforward artistic contortionist! - Review by Jean-Pierre Ady Fenyo.