Word: artful
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...been cultivating a financially rewarding following as a painter and sculptor. It may seem an unlikely pursuit for a musician responsible for an entire industry's worth of action figures and lunch boxes. But the Kiss Army has grown up, has children and is now ready to buy art. And Stanley, 57, indulges them with brightly hued paintings that lean toward the abstract. (Think circles, squares and geometric patterns, reminiscent of an electric Madras plaid.) He does figurative work as well, namely the individual portraits he creates of his bandmates - in full Kabuki regalia - against a backdrop of sherbety colors...
...acrylic paintings - such as his self-portrait in makeup with a studded leather collar - can go for as much as $50,000. Last year alone, he did an enviable $3 million in sales. (Take that, Yale MFAs.) But it's a somewhat ironic turn, given that Stanley failed his art classes when he was at the High School of Music and Art in New York City in the 1960s. "I'm a very hard worker," he says softly, surveying a long line of excited, Kiss-gear-clad fans and buyers. "But it has to be on my own terms...
...Though his work is overlooked by critics, Stanley's terms suit the Kiss Army just fine: on Feb. 28, dozens of them turned up at Wentworth, inside the swank Mall at Short Hills, to buy art, meet Stanley and stick out their tongues as much as possible. As well-coiffed ladies scrutinized $2,000 totes at the austere Fendi boutique across the way, Stanley mingled with fans and clients, signing autographs, chatting amiably about color palette and pulling swooning women to his fuzzy chest for photo ops. "I met him once at a box-set signing, but this...
...gallery, which also sells pieces by a highly unlikely mix of artists ranging from Pablo Picasso to Rosie O'Donnell, Stanley's presence was a boon. By the time the show closed on Saturday evening, roughly three dozen works of art had sold, including a $10,000 bronze sculpture to a longtime Wentworth client who had never before acquired a piece by the artist formerly known as Starchild. Despite prevailing concerns about the flaccid economy, it had been a very good day. Stanley, however, says the rewards are more than monetary. "I like the idea that the snobbism is taken...
...designing and making stone tools. And at 2 million years ago what makes human is our large brains that are at least two and half times the size of a chimp's. At twenty thousand years ago, what makes us human is the ability to make beautiful cave art. It's all relational. And if you look at us today, I wonder if we are human...