Mark Kostabi

Chris Hammerlein draws so freely, so stream-of-conscious, and for so long that he just can’t remember his own images. He draws something like twenty each day, sometimes sitting at his desk for eight hours at a time. And then they just slip from memory. One of my favorite Hammerlein drawings is of a pregnant woman sitting ...

You might be surprised when I say that some of Wim Delvoye’s work is pure shit. But when I opened my July/September issue of Flash Art, there it was: a slick three-page ad shilling Cloaca faeces.

Harry Smith is a rising art star, a painter with growing recognition and a new show-all this despite the fact that he’s been dead for more than ten years. You heard it here first, but credit the discovery to curator Raymond Foye, and artists Fred Tomaselli and Philip Taaffe.

Summer is when most galleries put on their group shows of gallery artists. So how does on gallery stand out from the rest? Give the group show a theme. And how does a particular theme show get the attention of this Shout writer? Title it Penetration.

Technically, Tom Fruin is guilty of possession. Pot, heroin, cocaine – anything that comes in those miniature Ziploc baggies. He’s not the first. Originally, there was Arman, then Fred Tomaselli, then Damien Hirst. Fruin now joins the pantheon of serious contemporary artists who use actual drugs as an art supply.

Apparently Robert Hawkins has gold fangs. According to the Gracie Mansion Gallery, Hawkins-a San Francisco native, who now lives in London by way of New York- also has a ton of piercing and tattoos, none of which I could verify visually when I spoke to him on the phone.

No more baby-doll clown killers for Mike Cockrill. In the ’80s, he was half of the ultra-controversial bad boy art team Cockrill Hughes, which was lambasted by almost all critics and accused of making some of the most tasteless and disgusting art of all time.

In 1983, standing in Sidney Janis Gallery on 57th Street, I overheard an older gentleman enthusiastically and very audibly explaining the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat and graffiti artists Crash and Daze to a throng of entranced fellow collectors.

When I lived on the 64th floor of Cityspire, on 56th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, in the early 1990s, I was determined to build the world’s tallest building—Kostabi Tower, in Brooklyn. It would have been totally devoted to art, I hired a famous architect, Eli Attia, to design the “vertical art city”, and ...

Every since the World Trade Center’s destruction, art looks different to me. Everything takes on new meaning. Some artists are changing their whole approach to what they do. And much art suddenly seems strangely prescient.

The moment I walked into the Williamsburg, Brooklyn art studio of 26-year-old painter Jay Davis, I immediately knew I was in the presence of a winner- a very professional, highly organized visionary who is more than adequately informed about the discourse of contemporary art.

Dear Heidi: Please send Wilfredo to the Whitney Museum to buy a copy of the Wayne Thiebaud catalog that accompanies his current retrospective. One of my dealers here in Italy has commissioned me to make a painting featuring a slot machine for a very prestigious client in Milan.

Many people agree that Carla Accardi is one of the nicest people in the art world. At 76 years old, she has more energy and curiosity than most artists in their twenties. She’s friendly and welcoming to everyone, regardless of age or status.

One of my favorite TV shows has always been Batman, starring Burt Ward. Not only because of Cat Woman, the Bat Cave and the Joker, but because of those great shots where the camera was joyously tilted at a dynamic angle.

Tracey Baran’s favorite movies include Frankenstein, because “it was so beautiful,” and American Beauty, because she “was in it” – metaphorically. Baran was initially known for painfully real, intricately detailed photos of a bluntly dysfunctional family. Hers.

After having puffed the bright-eyed, young art star Will Cotton in December 1998, when he only showed at the modest Daniel Silverstein Gallery – before he signed with the legendary Mary Boone – the typical hack journalist in me didn’t want to write about him again for Shout.

When I called ArtNet.com writer Charlie Finch from Rome the other day to get my monthly fix of New York art gossip, I was surprised to discover that he was not familiar with Luigi Ontani, whose retrospective exhibition at P.S.1 runs from March 11 through April 22.

Shout is getting better every issue. One of my biggest fears is losing my column and being replaced by some other great looking artist who hangs out with all the popular people. I mean my column is a total fraud. A hoax. I basically write about my friends, people who are nice to me or ...

So why shouldn’t I just write about myself this month? After all, I have two shows up in our beloved city this month. The manipulative politician in me would rather faux-selflessly write about many other great shows currently visible: Fred Tomaselli at James Cohan; Will Cotton at Mary Boone; or Robert Williamson at Tony Shafrazi.

When I first moved to New York in January 1982, my favorite new artists were Cindy Sherman, Walter Robinson and Robert Longo, all of whom showed at Metro Pictures.

Mimmo Rotella invented the technique of using torn posters to make art in the early 1950s. This technique, known as decollage, has subsequently been widely employed by innumerable artists world-wide, including, in recent years, the young Williamsburg artist, Michael Anderson, and the East Village new-expressionist, Rick Prol. 1980s art legend David Salle devoted an entire exhibition ...

I get credit for being the first writer to publish a text about Jonathan Feldschuh’s first one-person show in New York. Hundreds of other serious writers will follow my lead over the next decade.

Whether you like Damien Hirst’s work or not, his show at the gigantic Larry Gagosian Gallery is a must-see this month. One of the most controversial artists working today, Damien Hirst is a powerful artist showing in a power gallery on the power block of Chelsea.

The great New York painter, Will Cotton, e-mailed me to say he had just seen a great Chardin show at the Met. Lucian Freud, the famous British figurative painter, recently scored some points with the press for his homage to a Chardin painting. He said he did not want to copy the Chardin: “I simply ...

There’s a great new painter in Chelsea: Leemour Pelli. Hitherto, she’s been known for haunting, translucent, rubbery relief sculptures of starkly exposed yet enigmatic human bodies and her latex casts of ornately framed mirrors which contain intriguing, personal, ghostlike portraits.

Many art dealers are not nice people. They can be pretentious, dishonest snobs. Fortunately for artists and collectors, they are no longer necessary. Thanks to the Internet, artists and collectors can now deal directly. But there’s more to art than buying and selling.

Two years ago I had never heard of Inka Essenhigh. Now I am convinced that she is the best artist to have emerged within the last decade. She entered the art scene like a lightning bolt, appearing in numerous group shows, one-person shows (at Stefan Stux Gallery and Deitch Projects), a museum show at the ...

Maurizio Cattelan is considered the best living Italian artist, according to art critics surveyed by Flash Art (Italian edition), when they compiled their top 100 in March 1999. Now, exactly one year later, at the Marian Goodman Gallery, New Yorkers can see for themselves what the fuss is all about.

The last time I saw a major Paik piece was a half decade ago or so at the Soho Guggenheim. A huge wall of hundreds of television monitors blasting the viewer with an endlessly fascinating, changing collage of sensuous imagery and bright colors. I stood mesmerized for hours. Well, maybe just under an hour. But ...

Cecily Brown’s fiercely beautiful, erotically charged paintings are further proof that in the historically male-dominated artworld, the best artists of the 1990s have been women: Sue Williams, Inka Essenhigh, Louise Bourgeois, Tricia Keightley, Alex Bag, Pipilotti Rist, Janet Preston and Cecily Brown. Often compared to de Kooning (as is Sue Williams, interestingly) a good Cecily Brown ...

Boone Gallery is truly fascinating and an absolute must-see for anyone interested in the contemporary art scene and its players. A truly remarkable achievement, with 700 portraits taken over a span of 20 years, Greenfield-Sanders has amassed the most comprehensive photo collection of important art-world people ever taken by a single photographer.

After performing an informal Saturday night surprise outdoor piano concert in front of my permanently installed bronze public sculpture here in the center of San Benedetto del Tronto called “To See Through is not to See Into,” I am thinking constantly about Lee Bontecou, whose work from 1958 to 1972 is currently visible at the ...

One evening, during an art world dinner party in the penthouse of the Roger Smith Hotel, I told the famous American painter, Jonathan Lasker, that I thought his work had a slight connection to the Italian abstractionist, Giuseppe Capogrossi. He immediately replied by saying: “You know whose work I really like is Carla Accardi.”

I’m in a good mood. I’m half done eating my large, thick, moist, triangular shaped brownie from Bottino take-out. I’ve got my paper cup filled with a second load of reliable Twinings Earl Grey tea.

I am a famous artist. I am one of the world’s most famous living artists. But I want more. I can’t get enough. My greatest fear is being airbrushed out of art history or being dismissed as a has-been eighties art star.

I confess! As yet another example of the placating incestuousness that swamps all credible relationships in the art world, I am writing about “The Road Show,” partly because my work is in it. I also hope that curator Mike Weiss (that unshaven scamp who irritates art snobs, a.k.a. “the Don King of the art world”) ...

Last night my girlfriend, Gwen, bought a painting by Dot Szemiot for $70 at a silent benefit auction for Save the Teens at the China Club. The painting looks like it’s worth $5000

John Baldessari and I both got our careers started at the Molly Barnes Gallery in Los Angeles, California. As a teacher/guru at Cal Arts, Baldessari’s students included David Salle and Eric Fischl. Once John did a large black and white painting—a hand-lettered blow up of his resume, listing all of his “selected on person exhibitions.”

I’ve read dozens of articles about the late, great Beatrice Wood and they all basically say the same thing; they drop the same historical names and present the same amusing anecdotes. This article will rehash nothing. All of this is new material.

About two years ago on a sunny summer morning in Venice, Italy, while Dennis Oppenheim and I were both waiting in line to enter the press opening of the Venice Biennial, he told me that he watches and likes my cable television show, “Inside Kostabi.”

When I called ArtNet.com writer Charlie Finch from Rome the other day to get my monthly fix of New York art gossip, I was surprised to discover that he was not familiar with Luigi Ontani, whose retrospective exhibition at P.S.1 runs from March 11 through April 22.

Gary Simmons’ current show will be on exhibit at Metro Pictures. This gallery is located on the power block of West Chelsea, which is the absolute center for international contemporary art that feels like real art.

When I first saw William Cotton’s stand-out paintings in a group show at Exit Art a few years ago, I immediately wanted to meet the artist. A few days later, I visited his studio, where I was pleasantly surrounded by his unique orchestrations of current creative issues—masterfully painted, realistic images of toys emerging from a ...

The 1990s will be remembered as the decade in which women artists finally came to dominate the art world. It’s clear that in fine art photography, no male photographer can hold a flashbulb to Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Jean Kallina, Cindy Sherman, or Tracey Baran. In the realm of avant-garde sculptures and installations, Kiki Smith ...

Bravo to Sperone Westwater Gallery for striking a blow against provincialism in contemporary art! Although we are guaranteed to see much more of the Americans at the show because they are actively being promoted in the states, the gallery has succeeded in integrating Italian modern masters Giulio Turcato and Lucio Fontana with contemporary American painters ...

Shock art and installations today are as academic and routine as salon painting was in the nineteenth century. Finally, a ’90s artist with some real talent! Don Doe doesn’t need to hide behind gimmicky mixed-media installations, pseudo-political posturing, or pretentious anti-materialistic hypocrisy. Well-equipped with fluid representational watercolor technique, yet not at the expense of endlessly ...

When art hustler extaordinaire Mark Kostabi opportunistically labeled himself an “East Village artist,” he actually lived in Hell’s Kitchen. These days, the art industrialist, whose name is so linked with New York, divides his time between a duplex in Chelsea (pictured here) and an apartment in Rome where he forays every other month. When he ...