Loophole with a View 2001

Mark Kostabi made this painting, Loophole with a View, and it’s an oil on canvas. The approach here is slick, almost cartoon-like, but there is this playfulness in the imagery that suggests a real understanding of artmaking as a process of reinvention and reinterpretation. I’m really drawn to the surface quality of this painting. The colours are so flat, so uniformly applied. You can’t see any brushstrokes, no real evidence of the artist’s hand. And the colour palette is pure pop. But there’s a tension between this kind of detached, cool aesthetic and the subject matter of the painting. Look at the faceless figure perched on one of the towers. It’s so smooth, so anonymous, but it's also kind of vulnerable, like a paper doll pasted on to a very brightly coloured stage set. This tension, I think, is what makes the painting so compelling. It reminds me a little of Giorgio de Chirico, but with a very knowing, postmodern sensibility. Art is, after all, an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time.