Dating & Relationship status

From the year 2000 to 2010 Kostabi wrote an advice column for artists, “Ask Mark Kostabi” for Artnet Magazine.

His debut album, I Did It Steinway was released on Artists Only Records in October 1998. Produced by Dale Ashley & Charles Coleman, the album features original compositions by Kostabi, and was recorded at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City.

Culture or Trash?: A Provocative View of Contemporary Painting, Sculpture, and Other Costly Commodities, Publisher: Birch Lane Pr (December 1993)

Retrospective exhibitions of Kostabi’s paintings have been held at the Mitsukoshi Museum in Tokyo (1992) and the Art Museum of Estonia in Tallinn (1998). Kostabi’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Groninger Museum in the Netherlands.

In 1991, Kostabi was also mentioned in the controversial novel, American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis.

Kostabi received significant backlash for his homophobic remarks during the AIDS crisis. In a 1989 issue of Vanity Fair, Kostabi said, “These museum curators, that are for the most part homosexual, have controlled the art world in the ’80s. Now they’re all dying of AIDS, and although I think it’s sad, I know it’s for the better. Because homosexual men are not actively participating in the perpetuation of human life.” While Kostabi apologized in Newsday, saying “I feel terrible for saying something that was an unfair generalization based on a few specific experiences with gay curators and critics that left me very angry,” he retracted the apology ten days later, claiming that he was pressured to apologize by Abbeville Press, the publisher of the then upcoming Kostabi: The Early Years. Kostabi told the Post’s Page Six, “They made me write all these phony apologies.” He reaffirmed his previously stated opinions on gay men, arguing again that gay men dominate the art world and “that’s why there’s so much bad art in the world.”

In 1989, Kostabi was mentioned in the cult tv series Miami Vice, in Season 5, episode 14: “The Lost Madonna”.

In 1988, inspiring extensive international press coverage, he founded Kostabi World, his large New York studio known for openly employing numerous painting assistants and idea people. In 1996 he began dividing his time between New York and Rome and consequently his work’s already strong presence in the Italian art scene became much more prominent. The influential Italian critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva, included Kostabi in several major exhibitions including at the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte di Roma. The critic, curator and TV personality, Vittorio Sgarbi, curated a 150 painting Kostabi show at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome in 2006.

In 1986, Kostabi designed the Bloomingdales shopping bag. By 1987 his works were widely exhibited in New York galleries and throughout the US, in Japan, Germany and Australia.

His work was published on the cover of the book East Village ’85 published by Pelham Press and his paintings were included prominently in numerous East Village shows in museums and galleries internationally. Matteo Editore published a book on Kostabi titled Mark Kostabi and the East Village scene 1983–1987 written by Baird Jones. During the mid-1980s he developed a media persona by publishing self-interviews which commented on the commodification of contemporary art, which led to theories on Kostabi’s cultural relevance in various sociology books including “Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality” by Neal Gabler and “Culture or Trash?: A Provocative View of Contemporary Painting, Sculpture, and Other Costly Commodities” by James Gardner.

Others include: The Rhythm of Inspiration, Mark Kostabi and the East Village Scene 1983–1987 and Mark Kostabi in the 21st Century.

Kalev Mark Kostabi (born November 27, 1960) is an American artist and composer.

Kostabi grew up in Los Angeles on November 27, 1960, to Estonian immigrants Kaljo and Rita Kostabi. He was raised in Whittier, California and studied drawing and painting at California State University, Fullerton. In 1982 he moved to New York and by 1984 he became a prominent figure of the East Village art scene, winning the “Proliferation Prize” from the East Village Eye for being in more art exhibitions than any other New York artist.

Kostabi has been profiled on 60 Minutes, Eye to Eye with Connie Chung, A At this time Affair, Nightwatch (with Charlie Rose), The Oprah Winfrey Show, Personal Life of the Rich and Famous, Nonsolomoda, West 57th, Between the Keys, CNN, MTV and numerous television programs throughout Europe and Japan. In print he has been featured in various publications such as The New York Times, People, Vogue, Architectural Digest, The Face, Playboy, Forbes, New York Magazine, The Sunday Telegraph and Tema Celeste.