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INTERVIEW WITH LEO COSTELLI 7-7-7

So they have a big advantage. I advance the money, but nevertheless I do not say, "this is mine" what we share is [[strikethrough]] not in names [[/strikethrough]] what remains. What we share is actually [[strikethrough]] a sixth part [[/strikethrough]] the sales price of the work.

MRS.V.: What if the piece does not sell? Then you just pay the bill and that's the end of it.

MR.C." What we do is one of two things: I can either buy the piece in which case I give the artist half of what it is worth, in which case he gets exactly the same thing that he would get if he sold it. Or else I can debit him. Let's say I charge him whatever the cost was, say $5,000. and he can pay it, in which case the piece becomes his, or he can work it off as we sell pieces and he gets into a credit situation.

MRS.V.: You, what about advertising? You mentioned catalogues, but I've never seen your catalogues.

MR.C.: My catalogues, I don't make them. I only make announcements. I couldn't make a catalogue, it's : very simple.

MRS.V.: I have [[strikethrough]] en [[/strikethrough]] never seen your announcements. I only get a Xeroxed copy. And it seems to me that ought to be very expensive. Isn't a Xerox copy about twenty cents a copy? I wondered why you did that. I think it would be cheaper to multi-lith or something like ...

MR.C.: No, this, there are only about twenty, twenty-five people who get an advanced announcement.

MRS.V.: I'm interested in...I am going to have a contemporary poster show, and this is, the New York State Council on the arts has become interested in it...

MR.C.: This is the Oscar Peters show. It is in four parts, all the data on the back, people like to put them on a bulletin board, and this I invented several years ago. Posters are now become quite fashionable.

MRS.V.: When it's folded and the information is on the back, the data doesn't show up when it is on the bulleting board.

MR.C.: We practically invented the posters here. People didn't use posters back in 1963 or so. I started using Lichtenstein, and Rauschenberg and Johns posters. And that idea was to little by little have three or four hundred [[strikethrough]] plants [[/strikethrough]] printed signed by the [[strikethrough]] audience [[/strikethrough]] artist, and what we would do
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