Kostabi Quotes

#1. Do what you love. Go to a good art school and study with the best teachers. Move to New York and read Ask Mark Kostabi.

Mark Kostabi

#2. I counterfeited Mark Kostabi's artworks. During the eighties, Mark didn't paint his own paintings. Instead, he had other artists painting them, and he just added his signature. So what I did was to use some of the same painters, and signed his name myself.

Andy Behrman

#3. The press needs stories constantly. No need to bleed, just feed. Branding will keep you standing ... Get press not stress.

Mark Kostabi

#4. A female artist friend of mine recently told me that she was advised to 'look more slutty.' I asked her boyfriend what the equivalent advice for a man would be. He said to be more muscular. That made me rush to the gym.

Mark Kostabi

#5. Share your enthusiasm with the collector's enthusiasm for the work, and discover things together. Be nice and appreciative and at the same time give them the hint that you're a winner so they believe they've made a good investment. It's simple common sense ...

Mark Kostabi

#6. Many artists and critics see collectors like kids see their parents: as the ones with money and power who just don't get it. Once they start to mingle with the collectors and learn that they are people who have achieved something who then expand into art, they change their minds.

Mark Kostabi

#7. Look at the reputation they gave him. [Giordano] Bruno without the pyre is a whiskey priest laying waste to the maids of Umbria.

Terence McKenna

#8. Out of routine comes inspiration.

Mark Kostabi

#9. Ending lending is beginning winning.

Mark Kostabi

#10. If I didn't think and feel the way I think and feel, I couldn't sing the way I sing. And I like singing the way I sing.

Holly Near

#11. Artists of the world arise - it's time to dump your dealers.

Mark Kostabi

#12. As a comic book artist, once you become a master, you end up a slave. In fine art you're always free ... since I couldn't make it at Marvel, I made my life a carnival.

Mark Kostabi

#13. Yon foaming flood seems motionless as ice;Its dizzy turbulence eludes the eye,Frozen by distance.

William Wordsworth

#14. For the art-historically informed, no art has truly shocked since November 19, 1971, when Chris Burden had himself shot in the arm by a friend, at F-Space in Santa Ana, California. Sliced cows and surgically altering one's own face is aftershock art.

Mark Kostabi

#15. I really believe in my work and in no way think I'm taking advantage of anyone. I feel generous when selling my art.

Mark Kostabi

#16. There's too much negativity in the world. Staying positive is a better investment.

Mark Kostabi

#17. I'm an artist because that's what I was best at as a kid. It was fun ... I continue to be an artist ... for the freedom that an art career can bring. I don't need an alarm clock and I am my own boss.

Mark Kostabi

#18. Things don't get tough in the studio. Sometimes things get tough outside the studio and going in the studio is a relief, a sanctuary, therapy.

Mark Kostabi

#19. That was the purpose of habit, in my grandfather's view: to render memory unnecessary.

Michael Chabon

#20. Give up the belief that mind is, even temporarily, compressed within the skull, and you will quickly become more manly or womanly. You will understand yourself and your Maker better than before.

Mary Baker Eddy

#21. One secret to my success is that I am faithful to my dreams and don't cheat on my dreams by taking drugs or blaming others when things don't go right.

Mark Kostabi

#22. No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important.

Mark Kostabi

#23. I've gradually fooled myself into becoming a real painter ... I really just like to sit in my air-conditioned Rome painting studio surrounded by Medieval and Renaissance architecture and to hold a tube of Alizarin Madder Lake in my artist's hand and marvel at the shiny goop inside.

Mark Kostabi

#24. My colors are logically chosen.

Mark Kostabi

#25. I'm not sure what [my latest works are] about but I'm convinced they're the best things I've done and I'm going to the world's best museums with them.

Mark Kostabi

#26. Teaching, the most noble profession, should be rewarded based on merit alone, not seniority.

Mark Kostabi

#27. It's very true that an artist who networks well will have better opportunities than one who doesn't network well. But great networking skills without great art won't change art history.

Mark Kostabi