About the Polemics with the Consumerist Civilization in Mark Kalev Kostabi’s works

Bibliogr. s. 53-55

In Gillo Dorfles view the pictures surrounding people who live in the contemporary civlization announce them prescriptions, advertisements and attractions. Therefore, the pictures transform themselves into new gods who hypnotise us and accompany us constantly. Considering his conception he developed in "The multiplied man", the Author is trying to prove that we should treat Mark Kostabi’s paintings as example of polemics with the consumerist civilization. One of the main problem of article is how visual reality and consumption influence on character’s perception of much of Kostabi’s paintings. In the Author’s viewpoint characters of Kostabi’s works are eyeless what implies that the sense of eye in not the most important in the image culture. His paintings unmask an eyesight as useless because in the consumerist civilization it does not functionate as instrument of cognition. The eyelessness symbolizes the critisizm of desire the things which makes the subject feel more valuable, but also turn him into slave to materialism and consumption. Therefore artist focused on body expression and show body as a source of unmediated instincts which can help one free from obsession of identity and unnaturality. An important part in analysis of Mark Kostabi’s paintings is Constance Classen study of touch. According to her the sense of touch is the most unquenchable sense for the postmodernity. In fact, Kostabi’s obssesion of human body justify that the desire of touch is symptomatic for postmodernism.