Defend the indefensible - Thomas Kinkade

Certainly true, but I still think possibly there might be an unintended good effect that comes from the scam.

Maybe.

Kinda.

Probably not.

I'd never heard of Kinkade, but my prairie relatives reacted like I'd shaken hands with Elvis' personal syringe-filler.

Jaq, I've read about that community that he designed- it's in CA, right? It sounds so weird.

(tee hee!)

Yeah, something like "Kinderbrooke", outside SF I think.

(post-google) - It's Hiddenbrooke, here's a Salon article: http://www.salon.com/mwt/style/2002/03/18/kinkade_village/

I did some work for a guy who collected Kinkade - it was very unnerving to be in their house with all those light-filled pieces.

Event: Disneyland 50th Anniversary Product Release & Signing with Thomas Kinkade
Event Date: Saturday, September 10, 2005
Event Time: 3:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Location: The Disney Gallery, New Orleans Square, DisneylandÒ park

Event Information:
As part of our Disneyland® Resort 50th Anniversary Celebration, we are honored to unveil a breathtaking rendering of our transformed Sleeping Beauty Castle by famed “Painter of Light,”TM Thomas Kinkade. One of the most collected and beloved artists of our day, Thomas Kinkade emphasizes simple pleasures and inspirational messages through his paintings. Disney and Thomas Kinkade collectors alike will be enchanted and engaged by the luminous light and tranquil mood of this delightful release: Disneyland 50th Anniversary.

Limit TWO (2) Disneyland 50th Anniversary items per Guest. Special Guest Artist will only sign their respective item. We ask that you bring no personal items to be signed.

I find that Disney thing very disturbing. Also the DNA signature business; that is very ick.

and more garish color schemes? i find his work looks very similar to a lot of fantasy art style-wise. if it weren't for the dull subject matter, he'd be airbrushed on the side of every other ford van. his "collectors" should share the blame equally.

-See you on the links! Thomas Kinkade

I know I've seen Kinkade-like scenes on several RVs on the freeway.

Hmmm...

I actually kind of like the fact that he's making people who otherwise would have no use for art of any kind aware that there is contemporary painting, and even more so attepting to make painting into something like a mass medium that could have the kind of cultural significance that pop music or TV do. If only the stuff he was using to do it wasn't so fucking trite and godawful.

I think a lot of the people who like Kinkade would probably consider Warhol just a homo junkie scumbag. Not that the Kinkade audience is the only wider audience art could and should be pitched to, or that Warhol is (in the work you're referencing, at least) about as accessible as Kinkade is. The thing is, I think since Pop Art's heyday the art scene has become even more insular and less a mass medium than it was before. So in that sense, Pop Art failed and Kinkade seems to be the only one taking painting to the mainstream. I happen to give the mainstream a lot of credit in terms of what they can handle. I think the (previously) experimental techniques used in music video and film attest to that. Why not take GOOD art to the mainstream? When Andy Goldsworthy's show came here to Austin last spring, I dragged as many people as I could to it, and every one of them loved it.

This does a grave disservice to Rockwell!

Kinkade yaoi, now there's a whole new market. I like the Disneyland picture, I confess, partly because it's the best giggly kitsch ever, partly because it really does exhibit what "Disneyland" signifies to many Americans in the 20th/1st century, partly because it looks like an Alma-Tadema painting (whom I love for his giggly kitsch).

I admire Kinkade on a conceptual level, on the level where what he's doing becomes pure modern art. You may argue that this is accidental, that's he's not self-aware, but I don't see how it COULDN'T be self-aware. He's the bastard son of PT Barnum and Andy Warhol. And actually Warhol is the perfec comparison: an emphasis on flash over depth, the use of multiple prints that are only different enough to make them "unique," the creation of a place that identifies with his artistic vision (TS: Hiddenbrooke vs. the Factory), etc.

Well, I meant in the sense that he's just 'giving the suckers what they want' and not neccesarily painting what he'd like to do most. You know, that he wants most is their money, not to paint gloopy scenes of candle-lit cottages in snowy forests.

But on the subject of b) I doubt very much that his paintings will continue to be good investments. There are simply too many of them and they're too much alike. What we've got here is a speculative bubble based on fiendishly clever marketing.

I don't think that the Warhol comparison is totally fair. Warhol was smarter about his art in a different way. TK comes off as a business more than an artist. He uses gimmicks to increase value & sell more crap. Warhol seems to me more like a running commentary.

also, my parents buy the Kinkade.

and they buy books advertised on the radio.

It was while growing up in the small town of Placerville, California that these important values were nurtured. It was also during this time that Kinkade began to explore the world around him. He spent a summer on a sketching tour with a college friend, producing the best-selling instructional book, The Artist's Guide to Sketching. The success of the book landed the two young artists at Ralph Bakshi Studios to create background art for the animated feature film Fire and Ice. It was also during this time that Kinkade began to explore light and imaginative worlds with abandon.

HE WORKED FOR THE DUDE WHO MADE THE NOTORIOUS X-RATED ANIMATED FILM "FRITZ THE CAT"!

i dont like his work aesthetically or poltically but then i am not supposed to, art historians and art critcs have taken a vow against sentiment and against romance, and that vow kind of saddens me--i waonder what happens when we can again make solid arguements about the poltical and social implications of sentiment.

warhol is a non starter here, because warhol always positioned himself in the critical mainstream, his work is beloved by art critics because of its disavowal of sentiment, his pyschosexual ruthlessness is an anthema (sp) to kincaide.

kincaide isnt as interesting as he was 10 years ago, even his fans think that is work has become played out, and the 9/11 peice is the worst kind of patrotic kitsch, and i find him interesting conceptually (the lack of people, the "i come to the garden alone jesus shit, the sheer money, the extension of an artists aura, the mobile assitant and studio, the ahistorical nature of his work, the pyschogeographic sense of place, the cultivating of audience, etc)

i also find his constructions much closer to lets say poussin, then to rockwell (rockwell is harder, more political, more concerned with the everyday life of people).

poussin is v. interesting to compare him to b/c of the political simliarities to their time and place, and the back to the garden arcadian shit that they have so much in common.

kincaide is against most of what i stand for as a critic but most of what i stand for as a critic is so outside of the mainstream, and academics dont seem to fucking realise that, it behooves us to play his game for a while, in the same way it behooves us to listen to whatever is on the top of the pops.

currin is way for high end motherfuckers to say, oh i love craft and painting and the tradition and all of that, w/o engaging in it. the ugly, almost misogynst/homophobic paintings are really a way of constructing oppostion, they are self negating.

wow my kinkade/fantasy art connection is validated

ok, i'm gunna need help with this one

How emotions and behavior are affected by the geographic environment, apparently.

oh, ok. at least the term makes sense now...

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000084HZX.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Ugh.

Has anyone actually seen one of the original paintings? Is there even anywhere that his originals are on display? I'm wonder what scale he works in ... if the originals are much larger than the prints.

argh argh argh

You'd think that a professional printmaker like Kinkade might be aware that other artists also make prints.

...when he was twenty he experienced a Christian awakening, and that it changed his art -- it stopped being about his fears and anxieties and became optimistic and inspirational, with themes like home towns and perfect days and natural beauty, and millions of people responded.

...even the bad parts of the story are good, because it's easier not to begrudge Kinkade his fortune when you are reminded that he was a poor kid who had to struggle, who rejected the smarty-pants liberal establishment to follow his heart, and who is proud of having earned his way into the ultimate American aristocracy of successful entrepreneurs.

...His paintings were selling well, but he decided that he wanted "to engulf as many hearts as possible with art," a goal that would be hindered by selling only original work.

Based on that article, he embodies an entire worldview (self-help books, 'pretend the bad things don't exist,' gated communities) that I find slightly less appealing than Islamic fundamentalism. I have a difficult time putting my aversion to those people into words, they just give me hives.

I think my parents like him.

Also, all you rockwell hatas are crazy, he is the best (NB: I know nothing about painting whatsover).

The antidote.

http://www.diacenter.org/km/usa/most700.jpg

this goes along with the artic wolves, waterfalls, unicorns, the creepy ghost of Dale Earnhardt, white tigers, etc.

Nothing in this painting is 'from life', not even the air.

That's not a judgement, btw.

A bird that craps lightning probably would, though.

7. THOMAS KINKADE Top print-selling U.S. artist Thomas Kinkade ("Painter of Light") paints the American dream deluxe in jaw-dropping color. Thankfully absent from his rustic scenes are poverty, hunger, disease, and horror—we get enough of that elsewhere. Here, American hometown life of the good old days is rendered painstakingly pretty, illuminated with a gaslight-and-sunset glow, and I believe you can even add customized highlighting (should you prefer) when you buy a print. Like Kathleen Turner's character says in John Waters's Serial Mom, "Life doesn't have to be ugly."

two words that probably don't go too well together...

yeah, those houses look like they're on fire.

And then there is Kinkade's proclivity for "ritual territory marking," as he called it, which allegedly manifested itself in the late 1990s outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim.

"This one's for you, Walt," the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Sheppard, a former vice president for Kinkade's company, in an interview.

WHERE THE TITTAYS AT?!!?

They had these things not for any kitsch value, but because it was pretty stuff. While their appreciation of good food seemed geniune and refined, their concept of art was based in its being a commodity, another decorative aspect of their home, like wall paper.

Bleh.

http://www.highlandarts.co.uk/cjohntaylor/paintings/girlsth.jpg

I think his style is really neat & i would for sure want to live in one of them villagez.

Lovely parodies. Metafilter had TK as a subject today. Weird?

The FBI is investigating allegations that self-styled "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade and some of his top executives fraudulently induced investors to open galleries and then ruined them financially, former dealers contacted by agents said.

Investigators are focusing on issues raised in civil litigation by at least six former Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners, people who have been contacted by the FBI said. Among other things, the ex-owners alleged in arbitration claims that the artist known for his dreamily luminous landscapes and street scenes used his Christian faith to persuade them to invest in the independently owned stores, which must sell Kinkade's work exclusively.

Oh please let this go to court, please please please...

this is an odd bit of writing. "The power of Christ compels you!"

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~bmauer/PARTFAM1.JPG

He is like some sort of bad delillo-esqe near-future satire of american society.
this is a good comment.

i'm sad to hear that the empire is crumbling because it changes the context. there's incredible schadenfreude, naturally, and i don't begrudge such a horribly smug man this wonderful comeuppance, but his continued success is an important part of what he is and represents. i guess i'm generally sad about the end of the myth. thomas kinkaide, painter of light big jerk.

A: We hired Mark Ouellette, a Lynden-based building designer. We supplied him with a number of Thomas Kinkade pictures and a sketch of the floor plan on a piece of notebook paper. It took about three months of trading ideas back and forth because it was an unusual design. We got so much help that we really appreciated from so many people along the way. I'm not a custom-home builder - this is my first - and I understand the value of listening to people's ideas. I worked with some contractors who were used to working on million-dollar homes, and they came with a wealth of ideas that I was able to tap into. We built this house to last a couple hundred years.

he's everywhere you want to be.

-- derrick (briochesqu...), October 28th, 2006 9:57 PM. (derrick)

they say "east Axton Road", looks like it might be bellingham?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=E+Axton+Rd,+Bellingham,+WA&ie=UTF8&z=14&ll=48.850428,-122.433872&spn=0.024286,0.083342&om=1&iwloc=addr

Roffle.

This is one of my favorite threads.

In his memo to the film crew, Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template and volunteers an idea for keeping spirits high during the shoot: “Perhaps we could make large posters that simply say ‘Love this movie’ and post them about.”

To get an expert opinion on Kinkade’s manifesto, I showed it to cinematographer Ellen Kuras, best known for her work with director Spike Lee. She points out that he confuses focal length and depth of field, and questions his overall approach.

“I’ve never seen any of his paintings, but I have to say, he’s very cheesy in his descriptions,” Kuras says. “The whole gauzy, cozy feeling, darkening the edges to make your vision more myopic, I think is about trying to draw the larger metaphor for the way to heaven. But reading all of this, it’s a prescription for a bad ’60s porn movie.”

6) Hidden details whenever possible, References to my children (from youngest to oldest as follows): Evie, Winsor, Chandler and Merritt. References to my anniversary date, the number 52, the number 82, and the number 5282 (for fun, notice how many times this appears in my major published works). Hidden N's throughout -- preferably thirty N's, commemorating one N for each year since the events happened.

Weird. Maybe he's a numerologist? That's disturbing that he has a movie..

http://mtblog.vanityfair.com/online/culture/2008/11/14/christmascottage.jpg

I like O'Toole's expression. "I'm in this movie? Really?"

oh marcia gay, hope you got something nice

loooooooooooool

“In the age of Photoshop, anybody can do this kind of crap.”

trailer!

holy shit it's got Chris Elliott!

Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template
Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template
Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template
Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template
Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template
Kinkade twice cites Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon as a working template

Gyah! The only possible redemption would be a remixed trailer ala "Shining" right?

This thread is supposed to be "defend the indefensible" so let me just say that as terrible as Kinkade's 16 directions sound in general, they seem perfectly appropriate for the kind of movie this obviously is. They're selling the movie with Kinkade's name on the front -- what, you thought he was going to reboot the franchise and make it look like Eraserhead?

Kinkade Kills

I like O'Toole's expression. "I'm in this movie? Really?"

oh shit that was supposed to be the phantoms trailer, fuck

http://www.thomaskinkade.com/htmlroot/tk/images/daytona/daytona_500_painting.jpg
Would hang

I mean yeah it'd be really predictable "irony" but come on, it's like a highlights for children "spot the popular subject matter" game.

oh shit that was supposed to be the phantoms trailer, fuck

― the head werewolf's girlfriend (latebloomer), Wednesday, 19 November 2008 03:48 (3 months ago
your text

Well frankly I'm in your debt for introducing me to SHAKMAAAAAAAAAA, and of couse the respected actor bemused to find himself in this picture theme could apply to Roddy McDowell, so..

Haha, I kind of love that image.
So he's painted a view from the crowd at a Nascar event.
But the image still needs some pizazz. Ah! Add FIREWORKS!
No, still not good enough, still not fast enough! JET PLANES!
<3

the planes are flying out of the fireworks!

I mean yeah it'd be really predictable "irony" but come on

He has to be on to this. How do you paint a cultural artifact like that and say, Oh How No One Shall Ever *Roll Their Damn Eyes* at This?

wow.

the planes are flying out of the fireworks!

― Bonobos in Paneradise (Hurting 2), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe those are exploding planes :(

I almost want to see a Kinkade illustration of 9/11 now.

those aren't fireworks they're bombs the jets just deployed

xpost oh god...i can almost picture it

Poll

Kid getting piggyback ride to win.

there may be one too many planes there

That's the trifecta of panem et circences gratuitous air pollution!

i like how Jimmie's leading them down in historically-accurate fashion with the yellow just right

the most air pollution comes from the fans getting to and from, as is true of a lot of exurban concerts and festivals. i'm planning to take public transportation to my first race.

well, mass transit at least

the planes are flying out of the fireworks!

― Bonobos in Paneradise (Hurting 2), Tuesday, February 24, 2009 1:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe those are exploding planes :(

― s1ocki, Tuesday, 24 February 2009 16:18 (20 minutes ago)

Or perhaps the planes have just time-traveled into the scene.

the sky sequence is like an uncle duke drug episode by someone who can draw

shinorishoes:Asian women = gabbneb:NASCAR

the dad appears to be wearing a stars n bars bandanna

everyone appears to have hearing protection except the child and the old man (who looks wistfully on at the father and son)

It looks like it says "500 YEARS" on the field.

TALKING TOO FAST

Painter of Light!
Awesome

Painter of fraud

Schadenfreude, they name is me.

I'd rather Shane Carwin worked his gut for a few rounds, but that's a reasonable start.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3235/2688560981_d10d69e124.jpg

http://sciencenotes.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/chthulu-thomas-kinkade-lighthouse.jpg?w=500&h=375

http://img91.imageshack.us/img91/57/kincaidsparody.jpg

http://images.somethingawful.com/inserts/articlepics/photoshop/01-16-04-kinkade/OlinFnard.jpg

i follow the l.a. times architecture critic on twitter and roffled when he wrote this about the late king o' pop's ranch:

"Neverland is equal parts Walt Disney, Willy Wonka & Thomas Kinkade"

http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/6026/tempdg9.jpg
Borrowed from a fine man who goes by the name of Yip.

Kinkade/KKK mash-up ftw.

Yeah that's the best one.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/17/DDI11AL7RR.DTL

I admit I was more hoping this was him being locked up for that fraud stuff.

^

My friend teaches some art 101 class at the university...she had a student, on his final, try and write his essay (on a major art movement & some of its members) on "Newmanism," the movement of "light painting" as founded by T. Kinkade.

Newmanism!

as in alfred e?

Painter of bankruptcy

A firm tied to artist Thomas Kinkade, whose light-filled paintings are equally loved and derided, filed for bankruptcy this week.

Kinkade production company Pacific Metro LLC of Morgan Hill, Calif., filed for Chapter 11 protection Wednesday in nearby San Jose, disclosing in court papers that it’s “in serious financial condition and is unable to continue without debt relief.” The filing came a day after Pacific Metro, formerly known as Thomas Kinkade Co. and Media Arts Group Inc., was supposed to make a $1 million payment to two former art gallery owners in connection with a lawsuit, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The filing will prevent Pacific Metro’s creditors, including Karen Hazlewood and Jeff Spinello, from demanding payment. Hazlewood and Spinello won a $3 million legal judgment against the company in a lawsuit they brought against Kinkade alleging that he used his Christian faith to fraudulently persuade them to open one of the artist’s “signature” galleries. As a result, Hazlewood and Spinello said they suffered such ills as being stuck with merchandise they couldn’t sell. In a long-running legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court, Hazlewood and Spinello won a $2.8 million legal judgment against Pacific Metro, some of which the company already paid off and another portion of which came due this week.

Why you should buy Thomas Kinkade Paintings

"But a beautiful work of Art, a best seller Thomas Kinkade that actually goes up by 15% to 10% annually brings you beauty and pleasure and enjoyment all year round and goes up annually to boot."

Every one of this guy's paintings looks to me like something absolutely horrible is happening just behind the creepily lit surface of the house... and they all look like that.

My insanely conservative, Michelle Bachmann-voting aunt has a couple of his prints in her house, though.

As for defending him... well, they look like exteriors of horror movie sets and some people like horror movies?

Feels very appropriate to go straight from the David Lynch thread to this.
They need to work together.

Thomas Kinkade has sold more canvases than any other painter in history--more than Picasso, Rembrandt, Gaughin, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Van Gogh combined.

lol this reminded me of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF8wLg5Asgo

alleging that he used his Christian faith to fraudulently persuade them to open one of the artist’s “signature” galleries

i wasn't aware christianity could be used like the force to control the weak minded. oh wait...

~~ Do you know the Symbols? ~~

Thomas Kinkade includes a Bible reference John 3:16 on every painting and a fish (ichthus -a Christian symbol) with his signature

He imbeds The letter N on every canvas in honor of his wife's name, Nanette. The number of Ns is indicated below the original oil signature in the lower right or left hand corner of the painting. The painting with the most hidden Ns is Golden Gate Bridge (144) and the smallest is Silent Night (2).

Bird/Eagle = peace and freedom

The "light" in the paintings = "represents God's presence and influences". It also "illuminates and guides."

Smoke of a chimney = warmth of home

Lights on in the houses = family values

Any type of movement = constant changes in life

Lamp post/light post = Reminds us to share the light or to light our way. Also, welcoming friends and loved ones

Boat = adventure

Pathways, Trails & Tracks = path of life. Also the paths are lit so God can show us the way.

Stairways = Struggles through life

Bridges = Cross over from dark to light

Gates = many passages we face in our lives everyday and the many discoveries we have yet to make. It also can mean that heaven is open to all that is faithful. They are open to welcoming us in to a house or even heaven.

Windmills = biblical symbol for the untamed human spirit.

Clouds = represents the live that have passed

Dogwoods = There is a story that has been passed down for generation regarding this dogwood. Supposedly during Jesus' time, the dogwood was a strong, thick, and straight tree. When Jesus was crucified on this tree, God cursed it into a weak and crooked tree so that no man could ever be crucified on it. When the tree blossoms, there are five petals on the flower symbolizing the five piercing. The center of the flower is a red representing the blood of Jesus. Pink dogwood represents passion, white for purity.

God cursed it into a weak and crooked tree

what an arsehole

i mean it didn't even have a choice...

"so what tree shall we build this cross to crucify the son of god out of?"
"oooh pick me pick me!"

I believe The Dream of the Rood has a different story. I'm with ledge, here – God shouldn't curse a tree for the work of "fiends" that it had no say in.

I can't hate Thomas Kinkade – without him, the world would never have had "The Christmas Cottage," his insanely bad/entertaining Christmas/biopic movie. I just imagined, in every seen, the director yelling at Peter O'Toole, "Dodder harder! You're 76, I know you have more doddering in you!" He dodders so hardcore.

'nother good reason not to hate this guy:

In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting "Codpiece! Codpiece!" at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother.

Thomas Kinkade has found his niche in life, bringing joy into the lives of millions, and in the process sucking so hard that a permanent low pressure area is created anywhere within 100 yards of him.

I can't hate Thomas Kinkade – without him, the world would never have had "The Christmas Cottage," his insanely bad/entertaining Christmas/biopic movie. I just imagined, in every seen, the director yelling at Peter O'Toole, "Dodder harder! You're 76, I know you have more doddering in you!" He dodders so hardcore.

― breaking that little dog's heart chakra (Abbott), Sunday, June 6, 2010 11:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

<3

Ladies and gentlemen... SCHADENFREUDE

MONTEREY, Calif. – Authorities say California artist Thomas Kinkade spent a night in jail after being arrested on suspicion of drunken driving.
California Highway Patrol officials said Monday that Kinkade was pulled over outside Carmel and arrested by a CHP officer just after 10 p.m. Friday
CHP Officer Robert Lehman says the 52-year-old Kinkade was booked into the Monterey County Jail on suspicion of misdemeanor drunken driving. He was released Saturday morning.

Kinkade is famous for his paintings of cottages, country gardens and churches in dewy morning light.

The Thomas Kinkade Co. said in a statement it was reviewing the allegation. The company noted it wasn't speaking on behalf of the artist, and said Kinkade has been advised by his lawyer not to comment.

...and the mugshot!

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/ap/20100615/capt.f199ebb360f24ce9a958436990feb2ee-f199ebb360f24ce9a958436990feb2ee-0.jpg

otherworldly soulpatch.

eagerly anticipating the 'shops coming out of this story

kinkade prison-tats

tiny sliver of dewy morning soft light coming in through prison bars

the celestial blaze of christ's love

In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion ("about six years ago") Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting "Codpiece! Codpiece!" at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother.[26] Dandois also said of Kinkade, "Thom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden, you couldn't tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent, and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff."[26]

Kinkade is famous for his paintings of cottages, country gardens and churches in dewy morning light.

something about this sentence is hilarious to me

nice mugshot. i seriously would never have imagined he looked like that.

people interested in the dogwoods story should listen to "three dogwoods" by nick charles, on stax volt weirdly enough. it's sung from the POINT OF VIEW OF THE DOGWOOD.

I'm amazed he was able to pull off a double life as lead singer of Smash Mouth for this long without anyone noticing.

That SHIRT

Button-Down of Light

he looks like he should be managing a boy band or something

so for some reason Kinkade reminds me of my friend's father, who is a weirdo hippie Christian dude who writes speciality inspirational poems. http://poemsbydanny.com/index.php

Ladies and gentlemen... SCHADENFREUDE

follow-up: Thomas Kinkade's new Christmas cottage is a California jail cell

guy just seems like a dumb drunk tbh

An analysis of the Thomas Kinkade calendar for March.

anthony e's semi-defense of kinkade upthread is totally interesting and almost works but ugh ugh puke thomas kinkade almost makes me regret that visual art even exists

RIP big guy. you're in pastel saturated highlighted heaven now.

HA, I was going to make a spurious joke wondering if he'd overdosed yet

http://www.latimes.com/media/photo/2012-04/69261538.jpg

http://3weirdsisters.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/chthulu-thomas-kinkade-lighthouse1.jpg

Spokesman says death was caused by "what appeared to be natural causes"

Good job Cthulhu!

"curious amount of seawater in his lungs"

Natural Causes at the age of 54? Do we need to speculate on what he'd been consuming/inhaling?

R.I.P. sweet prints

The Los Angeles Times has reported that some of Kinkade's former colleagues, employees, and even collectors of his work say that he has a long history of cursing and heckling other artists and performers. The Times further reported that he openly groped a woman's breasts at a South Bend, Indiana sales event, and mentioned his proclivity for ritual territory marking through urination, once relieving himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim while saying "This one's for you, Walt."[27][28]

Lol

When's the documentary coming out?

In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion ("about six years ago") Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting "Codpiece! Codpiece!" at the performers.

Who among us cannot relate to that?

me and Beth were wandering around Palm Springs about midnight and came upon a Kinkade shop, with a lit painting in the window of a birds-view of lower Manhatten, with a huge billowing American flag in the foreground, like a birthday cake that Miss America was about to burst out of. It was so shamelessly patriotic, and the sugary colors so fetching, I couldn't decide what I felt-- a mixture of disgust, longing (or something), giggles, and wanting to smash the window. It uccurs to me now that he and Jeff Koons are like soul brothers of kitsch-- one is commenting on it, the other embodies it. Two sides of the same coin. Kinkade is heads to Koons tail.

OTM

http://www.register123.com/event/accounts/register123/disney/disneyland/events/kinkade2005/kinkade1.jpg

#OccupyDisney
Oil on Canvas, 2012

http://michaeljameshawk.com/blog1/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/db_make_a_wish_cottage_thomas_kinkade1.jpg

Truth Only Arrives at the Moment of Slaughter
Oil on Canvas, 1993

lol Eazy

https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/559772_10151501850225647_733810646_24279281_1098897222_n.jpg

40 Acres and a Mule (for Tompkins Square)
Oil on canvas, 1989

I really like his paintings.

i don't really like his paintings, but i always found it odd that so many made such a big deal out of loathing him. his paintings strongly resemble the little cast resin faerie cottages for sale in gift shops everywhere, and no one seems to harbor any special hatred for those. nor has he enjoyed anything like dale chihuly's undeserved acceptance in the fine art world. his work is pretty, quaint, comforting, completely unpretentious, distinctive & well-executed, pretty much entirely vacant, and undeniably kitschy. not my thing, but nothing to which i feel the need to object strenuously.

people don't loathe him, people loathe his target demographic

i mean, i know it's the conservative blandness, simpering "charm" and obvious christian pandering that gets people's dander up, but it's never bugged me much. then again, i never knew much about kinkade, other than the tales of drunken shenanigans. he could have been some foaming fundie racist for all i know...

people loathe his target demographic

makes sense

wtf @ ur sneak attack on Chihuly, contenderizer. PISTOLS AT DAWN

had a friend who was an office assistant for chihuly & his team. heard so so many funny/sad stories abt his ways. not that i was a fan to begin with. his celebrity is a plague on my corner of the world.

not nec the kitsch per se, but the dim powderpuff colors, like something might find in an oh so tasteful funeral parlour ca. 1985--yeah, that late, or even today, prob w Kinkade knockoffs. Defense: at least he didn't live forever! Although he may turn out to be the Jimi Trane L.Ron of posthumous prolific-being.

there's nothing really wrong with his paintings per se, just the pervasiveness, perhaps

i don't get too bent out of shape by him

I kinda like the glowy intensity of his palatte, has kind of a 2ci vibe.

I never cared one way or the other about Thomas Kinkade (outside of knowing that my mother and grandmother liked his paintings) until I saw the 60 Minutes piece about him in 2001. His whole operation just rubbed me the wrong way.

http://www.kungfugrippe.com/post/20663317749/cottages

he seemed like a real shithead tbh

Sure, Thomas. Picasso may seem important now, but in 100 years your roadside shlock will be the toast of art historians who have kicked Pablo to the curb.

thomas kinkade never not called an asshole

nor has he enjoyed anything like dale chihuly's undeserved acceptance in the fine art world.

Yeah so, what did dale chihuly do to you?

Ok wow I did not know he did backgrounds for Fire and Ice

So yes, Thomas Kinkade worked with Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta on awesome animated metal fantasy.

He came on like a flame, then he turned a cold shoulder.

yeah i had no idea until i listened to an interview with bakshi a few months ago that kinkade got his start on fire and ice

apparently dude was an inveterate hustler even back then

Kinkade > Norman Rockwell. That's the best challops I can muster for this thread, other than just saying that I think all the bluster about how bad this guy was reminds me of opera buffs complaining about the fact that Kelly Clarkson can't sing.

i don't really like his paintings, but i always found it odd that so many made such a big deal out of loathing him. his paintings strongly resemble the little cast resin faerie cottages for sale in gift shops everywhere, and no one seems to harbor any special hatred for those. nor has he enjoyed anything like dale chihuly's undeserved acceptance in the fine art world. his work is pretty, quaint, comforting, completely unpretentious, distinctive & well-executed, pretty much entirely vacant, and undeniably kitschy. not my thing, but nothing to which i feel the need to object strenuously.

― preternatural concepts concerning variances in sound and texture (contenderizer), Sunday, April 8, 2012 8:24 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Or basically this. I mean I don't know anything about Dale Chihuly, but artists who make empty, cynical, kitschy garbage with the right pretensions get their works into the homes of Persons of Wealth and Taste all the time, and Kinkade just seems to be aiming at the wrong class.

calling kinkade better than rockwell betrays either a real lack of knowledge of rockwell's work or just i dunno what because rockwell DESTROYS kinkade on pretty much every level
http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lqrqj9gvW11qde9vzo1_500.jpg
So this looks basically like suicide of either the unintentional or intentional variety, huh?

yeah no you're right. I knew that wasn't true when I posted it. I still like that Daytona 500 painting though!

Anyone read anything in Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall by any chance?

Cloth: $94.95 - In Stock
loluniversitypress

Is it OK to hate Kinkade if I also hate art certain art stars like Koons?

Rolling my eyes at this wierd defense of Kinkade from class solidarity POV.

FWIW it has been my experience that defenders of Kinkade often embrace Koons, etc.

PS I like Rockwell

fwiw I think Hirst is a better high art analog for Kinkade than Koons

Thing I always had about the guy is that his stuff was bleah and annoying but ultimately to be disregarded as just another stupid irrevelant thing that the world throws at you over the course of the day, but when you actually start finding out more about how the guy ran his business and the mentality he deliberately helped spread and reinforce that he becomes increasingly excreable.

Also, Oneal's obit is great:

http://www.avclub.com/articles/rip-thomas-kinkade-painter-of-light-and-moral-arti,72079/

Kinkade’s conversion to being a born-again Christian was, in Kinkade’s frequent retelling, the origin of the sea change in his career, which had truly begun with Kinkade working with Dinotopia creator James Gurney on the bestselling The Artist’s Guide To Sketching before contributing backgrounds to Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta’s Fire And Ice. His spiritual awakening also led to his smartest business move: Positioning himself as an opponent to the elitism of fine art, Kinkade rejected the entire gallery system and instead began focusing on retail distribution in shopping malls, as well as creating inexpensive prints and other mass-market copies of his work that could be produced by assistants, like a Wal-Mart version of Andy Warhol. Kinkade saw his factory-inspired creative process as part of the overall mission to bring his messages of peace and pastel beauty to as many millions of people as he could—and as he himself put it, to give them “art they can understand.”
Not surprisingly, that mission—and implicit suggestion that his audience is stupid—has often been derided by art critics who see no inherent value in producing such mail-order mediocrity, creating works seemingly expressly intended to adorn cheap drugstore calendars, and striving for nothing besides producing inoffensive kitsch. But Kinkade definitely saw the value, to the tune of approximately $100 million in annual revenue—and, by Kinkade’s estimation, being the most collected artist in America. Such widespread popular support certainly made it easy to dismiss the tongue-clucking of art snobs who turned up their noses at Kinkade, and it goes without saying that Kinkade’s untold millions of fans couldn’t care less about such opinions either, wanting only the warm and comforting familiarity (with a dash of moral righteousness and patriotism) that Kinkade so ably provided.
Of course, it was slightly harder for Kinkade to dismiss the numerous lawsuits and FBI investigations that accused him of underhanded business practices, many stemming from the owners of his Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery franchises. Over the years, Kinkade’s company was forced to answer to numerous allegations that he’d defrauded authorized Kinkade dealers—and most damning of all, by exploiting their Christianity to present their getting into the Kinkade business as a “religious opportunity,” then conning them into taking on unreasonable, unsellable quantities of Kinkade’s work at fixed prices on pure faith. Most of these owners claimed Kinkade had ruined them financially “in the name of God”—a series of accusations that Kinkade dismissed as a “smear campaign” (with no trace of irony), despite also settling some of them...

hmm

worth defending strictly for the Bakshi stuff imho

The amount of candy-coating in the average Kinkade painting is about two inches thick, compared to a light sheen of added sweetness in a Rockwell.

I like Kinkade for a number of reasons. One is his paintings are pretty mystical and have that light to it, it's a bit like that feeling I got when visiting my great grandparents in Florida as a kid. Their apartment was all yellows and whites and brass and light colors where the house I grew up in was mostly 80's brown and burgundy shag rugs wood paneling and stuff. It's a bit like shoegaze or glow-fi or whatever that term is, soft-focus nostalgia wrapped up in popular mysticism.

I also like the outlandish stories I hear about him. That story about him pissing on Winnie the Pooh is like, he's the Mick Jagger of Disneyland or something.

It's funny that most obits that consider the critical stance point out that his 'pedestrian' audience buys his paintings solely because they look pretty and make them feel warm and comforting. 1) Why on Earth is this a bad thing? 2) Aren't superficial considerations like physical appearance and emotional resonance at the core of most (non-collector/gallery) art purchases?

I'd like to see Christmas Cottage. I have a feeling I'd probably enjoy it in the same way as Opfergang or The Flower Girl.

Christmas COttage is defs worth watching because it's bonkers, and surprisingly kind of trashy.

I can't hate Thomas Kinkade – without him, the world would never have had "The Christmas Cottage," his insanely bad/entertaining Christmas/biopic movie. I just imagined, in every seen, the director yelling at Peter O'Toole, "Dodder harder! You're 76, I know you have more doddering in you!" He dodders so hardcore.

― breaking that little dog's heart chakra (Abbott), Sunday, June 6, 2010 11:54 PM (Yesterday

It's like one of those movie where a respected old actor turns a deranged performance in a forgotten piece of trash, and then they suddenly die and it's their last movie. Except I looked it up and O'Toole kept living.

It's funny that most obits that consider the critical stance point out that his 'pedestrian' audience buys his paintings solely because they look pretty and make them feel warm and comforting. 1) Why on Earth is this a bad thing? 2) Aren't superficial considerations like physical appearance and emotional resonance at the core of most (non-collector/gallery) art purchases?

it's a bad thing because they are probably bad people and things that make bad people happy are bad

I guess that's an argument against contemporary art too tho

Why are they bad people?

I guess some of the commentaries imply that people buy his art because they are being convinced that it is an *investment*, which is bad. Reminds me of those collectors' plates infomercials ("some plates may go up in value, others may go down")

That's exactly what it's like. Mass marketed collector plates!

some crossover there for real

http://img1.etsystatic.com/il_fullxfull.232616317.jpg

Currently going for $19.99 on etsy

THOMAS KINKADE...do I really need to say more? He is the most incredible painter of our generation and now he is gone.
Here we have one of his full size collector's plates.
It measures approx. 8 1/2"

I'd buy it just to have a dog shit on it.

It's not too different from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XODJyE2ucfo

FWIW it has been my experience that defenders of Kinkade often embrace Koons, etc.

i'm not really defending kincade, just saying that the vocal hatred of his work from some quarters seems overblown and a little silly. koons is sometimes funny (how could you not love a giant chrome bunny?), but not terribly interesting outside that. more than anything else, he's a milemarker in the ongoing vampiric exploitation of warhol's ideas & legacy. rockwell and warhol tower over all of these simps.

Obviously it all depends on your stance about what art is supposed to do, and what definition of art you're using, but it's really not hard to see why things that make people feel warm feel and comfortable might be problematic to anyone skeptical of postmodern consumer culture's greatest excesses. Plus, people aren't supposed to like easy art, what with its subjecting of the masses to politically passive consumer positions, 'n all that. Also: the militant commodification of nostalgic visions, wrapped up in particular conservative worldviews.

I think the defense of Kinkade on solely formal grounds, might actually be a kind of an interesting discussion, if not a perhaps implausable one, at least given his status as a social phenomenon, more than anything you can already find on flickr, or just do yourself by scanning a calendar and putting the right photoshop effects on it.

But let us not continue to speak ill of the dea, but rather remember him as he was:

In 2006 John Dandois, Media Arts Group executive, recounted a story that on one occasion Kinkade became drunk at a Siegfried & Roy magic show in Las Vegas and began shouting "Codpiece! Codpiece!" at the performers. Eventually he was calmed by his mother.

(totally redeems him, by the way)

My intense dislike of Kinkade has very little to do with the warm and comfortable subject matter of his paintings. It's how he turned himself into an industry in the most manipulative ways, playing on faith and people's desire to have an heirloom that's worth some money in the future (which, I'm pretty sure, will NOT be the case with any Kinkade reproduction). Also, he was a drunk asshole.

lol @ kinkade apologism; you ppl are insane

or EDB otm

ime people dog on rockwell b/c he is lol naive and quaint, and kinkade b/c he is lol lowbrow; both of them are 'unsophisticated.' for my money kinkade is actually terrible.

Don't forget, above and beyond everything else, TK was a businessman, an extremely tactful one at that. The man knew how to sell people what they want, and how to make them want what he sells.

people buy his art because they are being convinced that it is an *investment*, which is bad

Is this different than the fine art world?

Yes.

Fine art is totally hit or miss, but Kinkade reproductions/prints/whatever are ALL MISS.

not really all that different from certain aspects of fine art, no.

kinkade belongs in the leroy neiman camp rather than the koons camp but the same reek of cynicism under all the perfume wafts pretty clearly from both camps.

I think what's missing from the discussion here is, what is it that takes the place of a Kinkade in the home of a more intellectual, discerning customer or otherwise patron of the arts? Holding him up against serious fine artists kind of feels cheap, they're working in different venues or something. In the words of It's Always Sunny, "What is this versus?"

I don't know, my parents have the odd Impressionist prints and mom DIY-decorates the walls with stencils and paint and stuff. My friends all either have their friends' local hipster art hanging up, or meticulously retro themed stuff curated from thrift stores. One time I knew a rich girl whose parents had lots of fine art, including a Matisse that was just randomly hanging in the bathroom.

people buy his art because they are being convinced that it is an *investment*, which is bad

Is this different than the fine art world?

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, April 9, 2012 4:59 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not like this isn't an enormous problem for fine art either.

kinkade basically reminds me of one of those "starving artist sale at the airport best western" types who read a bunch of marketing books in the eatly 70s and a chuck jones lightbulb went off.

did kinkade intern under chuck jones, too?

re: unpretentious, non hi-falutin art, I feel kinkade's stuff is totally pretentious, totally hi-falutin, considering his cartooning peers are still work-for-hire stiffs. he's no bob ross.

xposts: To an extent isn't this kind of "versus" the idea of having to hang up anything at all? Like, I'd rather have bare walls than a TK print. But I think you're more or less right in identifying that it isn't inherently better than having a real matisse in your bathroom. The purposing of a Matisse painting by an only nominally-"cultured" art market - part and parcel of a system that produces taste in accordance to economic prowess - is a different side of the same coin. Kinda. To me, both express, in different ways and to varying degrees, the same "debasement" of the social and aesthetic capacity of art (or let's just say visual culture) within a capitalist society. Of course what that function exactly is and how it is attained isn't something anyone can objectively define. Though in the end, it's much harder to read kinkade against the grain of that, when not only is that what he's directly playing into (as is Koons), but also doesn't offer anything really beyond that.

what is it that takes the place of a Kinkade in the home of a more intellectual, discerning customer or otherwise patron of the arts?

seriously, i'd love to hear dan's take on kinkade since they, ostensibly at least, share issues of faith

I think it'd be cool to host a Kinkade retrospective and just have stills up from Fire & Ice.

a good question here re. relative respectability of owning low quality prints of 'high' art vs. original pieces of folk/flea market art that you enjoy even though they are of - say - flowers painted in 1976 with acrylic on velvet. (this discussion removing the whole issue of ironic appreciation).

I read the thread title, inexplicably, as Georgie Kinkladze. Ask a Mancunian.

lol @ kinkade apologism; you ppl are insane

or EDB otm

re EDB: i don't draw a line between art and other things that human beings do, make and sell. art isn't "supposed" to be anything; it just is. i don't fault kinkade's work for its comfortingly conservative nostalgia any more than i do the drug-store calendar art (art mentioned upthread) it so strongly resembles. the values encoded may not be mine, but they seem a fairly harmless and trivial instance of someone else's. nothing i feel i have to define as "the enemy".

as far as his unscrupulous hucksterism goes, that's not something i know much about. it does sound shady, but i have an equal and more informed contempt for the forced scarcity, "superior" pretensions and abject worship of wealth that characterize the fine art world.

Painter of Shite

― tokyo nursery school: afternoon session (rosemary), Monday, September 12, 2005 7:49 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

think this was mentioned but maybe not posted? Sorry if retreading

You mentored Ren and Stimpy's John Kricfalusi. But we can never forgive you for giving Thomas Kinkade his big break.
That son of a bitch! Kinkade was the coolest. If Kinkade wasn't a painter, he'd be one of those cult leaders. Kinkade came into my office with James Gurney when I was looking for background artists [for Fire and Ice]. He's a good painter, and he did a spiel. He made all these deals. How he went out and did what he did is beyond my understanding now. He's very, very talented, and he’s very, very much of a hustler. Those two things are in conflict. Is he talented? Oh yeah. Will he paint anything to make money? Oh yeah. Does he have any sort of moralistic view? No. He doesn't care about anything. He's as cheesy as they come.

http://www.vulture.com/2008/05/animator_ralph_bakshi_on_why_a.html

I read a comment mentioning the fact that his paintings are almost devoid of people. Pretty much the suburban housewife's dream isn't it? Beautiful cottages at sunset in an idyllic setting — and no neighbors in sight.

To an extent isn't this kind of "versus" the idea of having to hang up anything at all? Like, I'd rather have bare walls than a TK print. But I think you're more or less right in identifying that it isn't inherently better than having a real matisse in your bathroom. The purposing of a Matisse painting by an only nominally-"cultured" art market - part and parcel of a system that produces taste in accordance to economic prowess - is a different side of the same coin. Kinda. To me, both express, in different ways and to varying degrees, the same "debasement" of the social and aesthetic capacity of art (or let's just say visual culture) within a capitalist society.

eh, a great deal of the art distributed to the masses in non-capitalist societies argues that the 'debasement' of the social and aesthetic capacity of art is in no way a unique product of capitalism.

lack of people in the landscape sidesteps issues of color and class entirely; ANYONE could be living in those houses don'tchaknow
kinda surprised no one's done a trayvon being followed by zimmerman in a kinkade world image mashup

Pretty much the suburban housewife's dream isn't it? Beautiful cottages at sunset in an idyllic setting — and no neighbors in sight.

this doesn't ring true at all. from what i've noticed (admittedly informed/limited by my culture), "home as a place devoid of neighbors" is the ideal of the stereotypical suburban husband. the "suburban housewives" i've known have been very actively interested in each other's lives.

Before this thread turns into a totally stupid argument on the desires of suburban housewives, I am going to endorse watching "The Christmas Cottage" once more. It's about how Thomas Kinkade became an artist and it feels like a made for TV movie.

Maybe it's like, 'this was painted the moment after everyone ascended to heaven'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhGGaHvC1eA

IT HAS CHRIS ELLIOT IN A WIG

im not sure if we should be thanking bakshi for giving us john k either

The Kinkade background paintings they show in that Bakshi book are pretty damn generic & unremarkable. I doubt anyone would be highlighting them were it not for his future as a luminist.

abbott, is it on netflix instant?

Christmas COttage? No idea.

I really really dislike bashki

I also can't spell his name

the bakshi book abbbottt mentions is pretty grand. i dont love much of his work but i respect the enormity of his legacy and career

i've always seen kincade's stuff as an evocation of "lost home". like to really appreciate these paintings, you have to feel a profound longing for home and at the same time feel estranged from it. more than that, you have to be engaged in the process of (re)creating and moving towards "lost home". you have to be a believer/participant in home as a cargo cult. that's why we're always standing just at the end of the driveway, just about to arrive. it's why the little cottages are always ancient, something inherited rather than bought, and it's why the warmth of the light is so important. kincade paints pictures of the vanished past/home/family waiting to welcome us back into the fold. they imply that everything can be made right, safe and good again by means of our arrival. there's something poignant in this, the way the garish artificiality of the fantasy subverts the comfort on offer. to feel the pull of this art is to understand that "lost home" can't ever be attained, at least not in this world. which of course makes his cozy little cottages a perfect metaphor for the christian heaven...

Here's Nabin's take on it, with clips: http://www.avclub.com/articles/commemorative-keepsake-yuletide-case-file-152-thom,36618/

Also! The fun had with his DUI:

NEWSWIRE
Thomas Kinkade's new Christmas cottage is a California jail cell

http://www.avclub.com/articles/thomas-kinkades-new-christmas-cottage-is-a-califor,49286/

http://www.avclub.com/articles/painter-of-light-thomas-kinkade-arrested-for-dui-e,42171/

the kinkade-lisa frank axis of unicorns and lampposts

people buy his art because they are being convinced that it is an *investment*, which is bad

Is this different than the fine art world?

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, April 9, 2012 4:59 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not like this isn't an enormous problem for fine art either.

― EDB, Monday, April 9, 2012 1:11 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well it exists at all levels of the art world, but it seems especially insidious at the level of inducing ordinary middle class people who REALLY don't know anything about "art as investment" to spend inordinate amounts of money on something that will almost inevitably be worth less than they paid.

But "sophsiticated customer" has proven to be kind of a misnomer in both art and finance, and there is bilking to be done at all levels. Really, art is almost never a good "investment" except at the very top levels, and preferably when it's being done by someone with enough market power or cachet to actually affect the prices of the art they "invest" in.

RIP weird dude, Lisa Frank was & is your superior in every way

xp remy!!

Well it exists at all levels of the art world, but it seems especially insidious at the level of inducing ordinary middle class people who REALLY don't know anything about "art as investment" to spend inordinate amounts of money on something that will almost inevitably be worth less than they paid.

somebody upthread compared it to beanie babies, which seems pretty apt

I have way too much to do to get into conceptually abstract and irresolvable topics, but

art isn't "supposed" to be anything; it just is.

True, but not really: This is kind of a modernist myth which conceals that, historically, art only ever exists within particular social frames that give it legibility as "art" (to hugely problematic ends). To posit art as a free floating entity that just "is" sort of radically declassifies it to the point of negating it's social and historical specificity. Obviously this is a contentious point to hold.

i don't fault kinkade's work for its comfortingly conservative nostalgia any more than i do the drug-store calendar art (art mentioned upthread) it so strongly resembles.

Me neither, I dislike both for that reason.

the beanie baby investment boom was in retrospect really one of the weirdest mini-bubbles

EDB, I agree, but I also think a lot of the criticisms of Kinkade's work come out of a very historically limited and basically modernist idea about what Art is.

What about comfortingly radical work? Can we bridge the gap between some hip 20-something buying street art cos it makes them feel cool vs. your evangelical grandma buying Kinkade cos it makes them feel holy?

What about comfortingly radical work? Can we bridge the gap between some hip 20-something buying street art cos it makes them feel cool vs. your evangelical grandma buying Kinkade cos it makes them feel holy?

that's what i was getting at earlier, but you're strawmanning the issue a little. a lot of people buy street art b/c it is what they can afford, and they'd rather have semi-crappy handmade stuff vs. pretty good mass-produced stuff (see etsy.com and pinterest et al.)

(or maybe i just like my screenprint of a grinning popsicle driving a yugo down the sunset strip)

True, but not really: This is kind of a modernist myth which conceals that, historically, art only ever exists within particular social frames that give it legibility as "art" (to hugely problematic ends). To posit art as a free floating entity that just "is" sort of radically declassifies it to the point of negating it's social and historical specificity. Obviously this is a contentious point to hold.

yeah, of course. my point is that once we've realized this and used that knowlege to repeatedly, over decades, "reclassify" art in countless different ways, and once we understand that art is made, disseminated, used and understood in many different ways by many different groups within any given culture, it becomes time to throw out any singularly prescriptive notion of what art is supposed to be. what the kinkade crowd expects of art is obviously not what fans of david wojnarowicz want.

is there really any contention that Kinkade was a capital "A" Artist? I thought the criticism was that he was crap, not that he wasn't in the pantheon.

I sincerely hope I'm not prescribing singular notions of what art does. In any case, I'm not actually so interested in whether TK is art or not, that's actually sort of counter-productive. And for the record, I wrote "it all depends on your stance about what art is supposed to do, and what definition of art you're using" in order to distinguish positions and worldviews, so as to imply that post was not necessarily an objective statement.

massive xp

Bakshi: Is he talented? Oh yeah. Will he paint anything to make money? Oh yeah. Does he have any sort of moralistic view? No. He doesn't care about anything.

This opinion is entirely backed up by looking at Kinkade's paintings, in which not the tiniest speck of sincerity can be found.

Moving on, we reach the $64,000 question: it's pretty, but is it art? Setting Marcel Duchamp aside, I would say no. If anything distinguishes art from design or decoration, it is that art originates in an idea, thought, or feeling that the artist values and is attempting to externalize. Kinkade's paintings are not devoid of content or ideas, but the content he made most available to his viewers he did not value, and the true ideas that generated them (cynical manipulation of sentimentality for profit) he did all he could to conceal. That makes him a profiteer, but not an artist.

Which allows me to come back to Duchamp, who said that if an artist says a thing is art, then it is. Although Kinkade does say these paintings are art, I hold that Duchamp's dictum does not apply, because Kinkade chose not to be an artist. I conclude that his paintings do not even qualify as bad art, but rather they are exquisitely designed mousetraps.

just my $0.02

For me the real case study here is Dali, who played this so close to this line that he was often on both sides of it at once.

hm.. i guess there is contention...
there was an essay though (I think in ArtForum?), that sort of settled the issue that Kinkade was art, though? It wasn't like a mathematical proof, but it seemed pretty conclusive, like he filled all the criteria of any reasonable definition of art. It then went on to prove he was crap.

w/e some bitter Hunter MFA taking shots at the king in artforum cuz he made half a bill.

it kinda seems like there are a lot of mental contortions necessary to arrive on the conclusion that a crass and crappy painter's decorative paintings aren't art.

after we have conclusively proven that something 'is art' or 'is not art', what has changed about anything

If anything distinguishes art from design or decoration, it is that art originates in an idea, thought, or feeling that the artist values and is attempting to externalize.

strongly reject any attempt to clearly distinguish between art and "design or decoration". kind of hate the tendency to define art in terms of sincere thought or feeling, the presence of troo art-passion. kinkade's work is art because both he and its admirers consider it art. furthermore, it's much more "like art" than a great deal of what those who are "serious about art" consider worthy of their attention. it's produced with a skilled hand, it communicates a coherent artistic sensibility, and its appeal is largely aesthetic/sensual. regardless of whether or not we think that it is "sincere" (so many scare quotes), it definitely has something to say. that's good enough for me.

Does he have any sort of moralistic view? No. He doesn't care about anything.

TBH I think the thing I like best about him is what an opportunistic bulldog he is. Total snake oil salesman.

http://moresay.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/thomas-kinkade-painter-of-light-dies-diseny-artist-00.jpg

He said something like he became a painter because the average house has 40 walls in it.

whoa, Mickey as God. That takes this to a whole new level that I was not aware of.

On the sixth day, he creates the costume characters in his own image, and on the seventh day he chills by the pool at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.

love the mickey-eared planets in mickey-god's solar system

we are all the slaves of mickey eye

Kinkade and Frankenthaler, jammin' in Heaven.

okay, whatever goodwill I tried to extend to Kinkade in death...dude wears a beret. fuck that guy.

original 1927 drawing of mickey (very expensive, and definitely respectable art)
animation cell from 1950 mickey mouse cartoon (moderately expensive, respectable but maybe not art)
vintage 1993 poster of mickey's christmas carol (collectible pricing, not art)
2010 printed t-shirt from tokyo disney (inexpensive, not respectable)

dude wears a beret. fuck that guy.

He's an ARTIST

Why Thomas Dolby wears one idk but if you paint it's like your uniform

I'm not sure if this was the reasoning in the article, but it seems like if other artists who operate ceo/factory style get to be called artists, then really the only important qualifier if kinkade is an artist is if he exerts authority over it, which he does. His motives might come to bear on how the art is judged, but not whether it is art or not. Luminous Mickey seems more like work-to-spec, though -- agree with Remy's chart.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_-u185mYr3V4/TBldH64OT6I/AAAAAAAAAUg/TLYy1-KqMhA/s1600/6a00d8341c630a53ef01348470dc07970c-320wi.jpg

Look at this guy's mugshot. He is such a smug goblin!

drawing from some things you're saying, contenderizer, in terms of consumer response i think there's something different at work between people who buy, say, jack vettriano prints and consider them to be REAL ART as opposed to whatever's going on in galleries, and people who buy kinkades. like my family don't have kinkades (because we're british perhaps) but they do have other classics of kitschy art, and i'm not sure that this kind of art is even read as being art by the people who buy it and display it. there's no underlying thoughts on what art should be behind choosing this kind of art, and perhaps no thoughts on art qua art at all, it's just something that seems to integrate with the household decor which itself seems to integrate with some kind of expression of social position.

p. sure that's actually a raspberry beret, too, so

It is probably just quibbling over which is the obverse and which is the reverse of a coin, but Kinkade's paintings are not crappy by any measure of craft and technique; they were made with all the care and detail of a Faberge egg, or an exceptionally well-written computer program. What seems to me to be all wrong is located in the space between the artist and the audience, for which the painting is just the vehicle, and that missing something is necessary to make it art, and not just a painted object.

http://www.myhdwallpapers.net/wallpapers/Anne-Geddes-wallpaper-114.jpg

that is not a raspberry beret

no way

that's um...a placenta beret

kinkade's work is art because both he and its admirers consider it art.

That's where we disagree. I think Kinkade figured his work was bullshit for a bunch of rubes and that he was working a con on them, not selling them art.

agree with remy's chart, except that a 2010 tokyo disney shirt seems like a good move to me. of course it depends on who's wearing it...

remy's chart suggests that the main difference between art and not-art is mechanical reproduction. i'm not sure i buy this completely, but i understand it. by this measure, art is the human act of making art and also the direct physical document of that creative act (the "artwork"). this can involve mechanical processes, but by the time a work is being mass produced, it has ceased to be "art" in itself. it's probably better described at that point as a representation of art.

problem with this is that there's little ontological difference between one of a run of 10 prints and one of a run of a million. and most people seem to accept limited runs of prints of cast sculptures or w/e as "proper art". which kind of breaks the distinction down, imo.

I think Kinkade figured his work was bullshit for a bunch of rubes and that he was working a con on them, not selling them art.

maybe, but i think that's too simple. from the few intereviews i've seen/read, i think he respected the shit out of his own talents and had (a perhaps envious) contempt for fine art as a shell game.

what's really missing from kinkades to call them art? he's created a worldview within the confines of the frame and invites his audience to enter. it's just a terrible, terrible worldview of false nostalgia, and a contempt for nature disguised as reverence.

re merdeyeux, some of kinkade's fans seem to be very serious about the "real art" value of his work, and the same sorts of dismissals were long lobbed at "mere illustrators" like norman rockwell and n.c. wyeth.

remy's chart doesn't speak so much to mechanical reproduction but authorial presence. at least i think it does.

a terrible, terrible worldview of false nostalgia, and a contempt for nature disguised as reverence.

nostalgia is always false, and kinkaid's "cottage" paintings (the reason he became a kitsch-star) are not about nature but the idea of home. nostalgia for home is by no means "false", even if the home longed for was never real.

Dude deliberately fucked over people who ran the franchises bearing his name and told them it was to the Greater Good. He was Sarah Palin thru different product marketing channels.

His ethical and political sins I have a greater problem than the aesthetic shit he manufactured.

I feel like the main difference between Kinkade and Hirst is that Kinkade is giving you a warm smile with his fingers crosseed behind hsi back and Hirst is giving you a "we're both in the know" smirk with his fingers crossed behind his back.

xp to contenderizer

Any good con man respects his own talents, since they are rare and hard won. The fact that he saw fine art as yet another con game tends to reinforce that he viewed his own game as the same kind of con, unfairly accorded less respect. Which definitely says things about how he viewed his products and his customers.

remy's chart doesn't speak so much to mechanical reproduction but authorial presence. at least i think it does.

yeah, that too, i suppose. the auteur theory of art in general. i see remay as drawing a distinction between mechanical reproduction and creator-as-author in the acceptance of animation cells (drawn by skilled human hands, but not really "authored" by those hands in the same sense that disney's original mickey was) coupled w the rejection of mass produced posters and t-shirts.

yeah, agree w aimless there. agree too w kingfish's critique of kinkade's venality. i'm separating all that from "the work itself", cuz i don't think it has much to do with whether or not the work is or isn't art. i mean, i think of most human activity as having at least some art component.

is nostalgia always false? i think you can have an accurate longing for say, the taste of a taco bell taco, and have it confirmed that it does indeed taste as you remember it. kinkade's tacos are a kind of revisionism comfort food that conservatives can indulge in, like, say, the 1950s scenes in back to the future that Reagan enjoyed so much, and i guess i like hill valley, 1955 better than kinkade's brightness tacos, because it at least acknowledges racism existed or something.

well I think the stuff about Christmas Cottage makes it pretty clear that Kinkade is claiming to be selling a fantasy ideal, not nostalgia.

Christmas COttage is riddled with overwrought monologues about the POWER of ART

is nostalgia always false?

nostalgia is always a feeling. a feeling is neither true nor false. therefore, when a feeling persuades you of a truth, it is just as likely to mislead you as not.

nostalgia for home is by no means "false", even if the home longed for was never real.

You say this as if affect (no less of affect such as nostalgia that is pervasively simulated within contemporary consumer culture) is not easily manipulable for the purposes of economic exploitation.

that's a fair question. i think nostalgia is the emotional process by which accurate memory is sentimentalized and thus made false. it's a product of the human tendency to locate a sense of something "best" and "lost" in the past and to attach great poignancy that lost best thing, fuzzing its details so that it can glow more brightly, pushing aside any complexities that might dim its light. as i see it, to remember something fondly but accurately is not to engage in nostalgia. nostalgia is memory softened, simplified and buffed to an impossible, tear-jerking shine.

You say this as if affect (no less of affect such as nostalgia that is pervasively simulated within contemporary consumer culture) is not easily manipulable for the purposes of economic exploitation.

the control of affect is manipulation, regardless of the end it seeks (economic, aesthetic, political, narrative, etc). i wouldn't call this "false" regardless of the intent. if a lie is being told, that's false, but i don't see kinkade's work as a lie, even if he didn't "believe in it" himself. his salesmanship may have been duplicitous, but that's a different issue.

Has any U.S. person ever lived in a home that looked like one of those cottages? I don't see how something that doesn't exist and that you never lived in can inculcate a feeling of nostalgia for home. Esp. since Kinkade cottages been reproduced in tiny ceramic form so many times. They don't read as "homes" to me. Though I can see why Kinkade would prefer them as a subject than something that would actually give me childhood nostalgia, eg a duplex with brown carpet and a small TV.

Kinkade is claiming to be selling a fantasy ideal, not nostalgia.

these things are by no means incompatible

Getting serious Watchmen flashbacks:

http://images.wikia.com/watchmen/images/0/0f/Nostalgia.jpg

Everybody wants to go to Heaven.

I don't see how something that doesn't exist and that you never lived in can inculcate a feeling of nostalgia for home.

because "lost home" is an ideal, a fantasy, and our ideas of what home is (or more importantly "should be") arise from more than just our physical environment. again, i think kinkade's paintings evoke not just home but "lost home", a deeply nostalgic ideal that can't by it's very nature be too directly similar to anything that currently exists. if it could be found, it wouldn't be so poignantly lost.

i'm not sure what the distinction is between calling it false nostalgia or a truth-independent feeling, but i'd definitely say kinkade and his audience conspire to willfully mislead themselves using the power of nostalgia. like if he were a futurist, kinkade's paintings would be full of happy penguins driving hummers with bumper stickers saying "global warming proved false in 2025"

i mean, that should be the lol-art title of all of kinkade's cottage paintings: "lost #217", etc.

My chart was just intended to show how exclusivity/'origin' play into desirability and value of art. Quantity, intent, provenance, reproducibility, artistic integrity, cultural cachet, etc., are all implicated...

You know why I am not feeling this line of reasoning: it is because cookies live in all those little houses, not people. Empirical evidence:

http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.com/afu/images/0486/1961/100_5125__640x360_.jpg

i don't see kinkade's work as a lie

hmmm. When a person consistently says based only upon what he thinks people want to hear, then any truth he tells is accidental and unintentional. For me, having no intention to tell the truth is functionally indistinguishable from lying.

i'm not sure what the distinction is between calling it false nostalgia or a truth-independent feeling, but i'd definitely say kinkade and his audience conspire to willfully mislead themselves using the power of nostalgia.

i would say that kindade's paintings provide a sense of homelike comfort, and that this nostalgic comfort is prized by many. there is nothing necessarily misleading in it, so long as it's taken for what it is. i'm sure we all have at least a few objects in our homes that do little but provide a dose of conceptual comfort.

When a person consistently says based only upon what he thinks people want to hear, then any truth he tells is accidental and unintentional. For me, having no intention to tell the truth is functionally indistinguishable from lying.

art doesn't work that way. it's like emotion, it doesn't have to be true or false. at some point, the creator's intent doesn't even matter. all that really matters (to us), is what we take from it, and that can't ever be "false".

You know why I am not feeling this line of reasoning: it is because cookies live in all those little houses, not people.

cookies are the perfection of people

Especially if it is primarily a decorative/expressive type of art

just to be clear: i don't much care for thomas kinkade's paintings. i admire the technique and get the appeal, but the aesthetic repulses me and they're dull as dirt.

I admire his motes and crepuscules. He has technique?

Kinkade's stuff seems a little more insidious to me than conceptual comfort. Cookie houses notwithstanding, I'd really compare it to a pro-ana blog in terms of aspirational creepiness.

Will Michael Bay get this challopy re-appraisal when he dies

Like a blues band playing Aretha covers in a Days Inn lounge, made up of retired Suzuki teachers is Thomas Kinkade.

at some point, the creator's intent doesn't even matter. all that really matters (to us), is what we take from it, and that can't ever be "false".

I somewhat agree with this, but I notice that ime it is rare for anyone to make something that is still valued for 'what we take from it', long after the creator and the era of its creation have disappeared, unless the creator also strove to externalize a thought or feeling he or she personally valued and thought worthy of their best efforts. The lesser niches of nostalgia and bumfluff are easily filled by newer and shinier excrescences, and the older stuff loses its shine and is discarded. So, in this sense, the creator's intent does matter.

I'm w contenderizer here on most points.

As for what is false, externalized feelings, etc. I really don't buy any of that. Art is SUPPOSED to be false. If not, it may as well be scientific reproductions of things.

Also, i seem to recall some challopsy reviews of Transformers 2 that said they were like avant garde art or something.

xp "Kincade's tacos"

I admire his motes and crepuscules. He has technique?

if you think he doesn't, try painting one of those cottages, or a god-mickey or w/e. it's not something anyone can easily do. i'd say that kinkade has good skills and a lot of technical facility. nothing mind-blowing, but definitely respectable.

also, there's a long and well-respected tradition in art of paintings of soothing, inspirational, admirable or just plain pleasant subjects. ships at sea, horses, still-lifes, landscapes, hunting dogs, manor houses, village scenes, flower gardens, etc. paintings of this sort lost a great deal of their art-cachet in the 20th century, but people rarely try to claim that this sort of thing isn't art at all.

cookies are the perfection of people

fuckin truth bomb here

i mean, as far as sincerity of creative intent goes, i'm sure that a lot of 18th and 19th century portrait painters hated their wealthy patrons and would have preferred almost anything to the endless hours spent making sure they looked slender and attractive yet enough like themselves not to induce public snickering.

Can the intellectuals who have apotheosized the strip malls be wrong? Can the millions who have purchased a Thomas Kinkade of one sort or another be deluded? I see no reason why this cannot be the case. The point of democracy is not that the majority is correct, although that is a thought that never seems to be very far from the thinking of many of the contributors to Boylan’s book. My own feeling, after contemplating the Kinkade industry, is that, so far as the Painter of Light is concerned, we are all a bunch of Winnie the Poohs and he has urinated on us all.

http://www.tnr.com/book/review/thomas-kinkade

lol

Also, i seem to recall some challopsy reviews of Transformers 2 that said they were like avant garde art or something.

― Emperor Cos Dashit (Adam Bruneau), Monday, April 9, 2012 7:46 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Armond White doesn't count

the essay by michael bay's film school teacher in the intro to criterion edition of armageddon is pretty convincing that bay is an... artist.

a lot of 18th and 19th century portrait painters hated their wealthy patrons

tbf, most of those portraits exist now in a kind of pampered oblivion. few care about them outside of their blood descendants, some art curators and the odd antiquarian.

oh yeah, but there were tons of them, and among them a few that have been enshrined as enduring masterpieces. i'm not saying that such stuff is held in great esteem by the art world (a sphere of spheres if there ever was one), only that it isn't dismissed with the prejudice reserved for kinkaid, even when it's similarly kitschy.

unless the noblemen are depicted as glowing with midichlorian particles, they wouldn't be operating on the same kitsch level.

oops, yeah, jumped tracks between portraiture and you know, domestic beasties and flower gardens. the portraits we choose to remember aren't typically kitschy.

mad xposts but i can't stop myself:

that's um...a placenta beret

i hate u forks

it's what i do

I like you better when you make pottery

one coin two sides

wish i hadn't read that :(

two forks one cup

The pic with him painting with a beret on is so funny. He's an artist!

guerrilla in the war on art

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/109442.html

April 7, 2012
Thomas Kinkade, RIP
Posted by Becky Akers on April 7, 2012 07:41 AM

How disheartening and sad that Thomas Kinkade, the “Warrior of Light,” has left us in this holy season. He died yesterday at his home in California, of “natural causes,” at the age of 54.

If you don’t thrill to Mr. Kinkade’s magnificent landscapes of bridges, cottages, streams, and profusely blooming gardens, all glowing in light from sun, moon, or lamp, you are probably a member of the sniveling “art establishment.” Mr. Kinkade eschewed the nihilism, obscenity, and utter nonsense of modern “art” in favor of truth and beauty. "With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel,” he said.

While politicians murder, rob, lie, and exploit, while bureaucrats and the State’s other lackeys leech off and persecute us, this gentle artist, this devout servant of the Almighty, will celebrate Easter this year in the immediate presence of his Savior.

“The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; 
the devout are taken away, and no one understands 
that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil.” Is. 57:1

in 2001, Thomas Kinkade bet Susan Orlean a million dollars that a major museum would hold a Thomas Kinkade retrospective in his lifetime. look on my works ye mighty and etc.

warrior of light!

you do get a strongly martial vibe from his work i feel

if he hadn't died so young that walmart museum probably would have fulfilled his prophecy eventually

It took me until a second reading of that obit that I realized it wasn't sarcasm :(

will celebrate Easter this year in the immediate presence of his Savior.

seated directly to jesus's right IIRC

wtf at people who believe this shit

this clusterfuck reminds me of the time I visited my parent's house a few years ago and found a bunch of paintings on the wall, some of them bought from a yard sale for $5 each, some of them from a dollar store, because the walls were too bare

I guess that was re: whoever's point upthread it was that kinkade went into this business because the average house has 40 walls

that's a good point esp re. mcmansions etc.

wtf at people who believe this shit

Confirmation bias. Remember, dude's work was aimed explicitly at people who feel alienated and victimized by modernity. Buying his shite was striking back at all those elitists who are probably thinking horrible thoughts about you right now etc.

Dude died on Friday? I'd say maybe he was in the presence of divinity for a split second after death (the Clear Light) but given his karmic issues he had while alive, he was probably zooming through various hells of the sidpa bardo on Easter.

anyway there's that benjamin essay art in the age of mechanical reproduction which I don't remember anything about, there are all those 'artists' cities in china where you can pay somebody like $50 to paint anything you want including a van gogh, it's pretty interesting, would post more about if I had a more coherent theory of art

Also olds with questionable taste.

Backgrounds from Fire & Ice:

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/thefw.com/files/2012/04/thomas-kinkade-fire-and-ice.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-8zJJcFRu-O8/ToRtYi2zs5I/AAAAAAAAJtI/n-K3nX_F3GU/s1600/Fire%2526IceNekron.sm.jpg
http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/283.jpg

Oops, that middle one is Gurney, the other background painter for the film.

I think this is Kinkade:

http://www.comicsbeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/286.jpg

anyway there's that benjamin essay art in the age of mechanical reproduction which I don't remember anything about, there are all those 'artists' cities in china where you can pay somebody like $50 to paint anything you want including a van gogh, it's pretty interesting, would post more about if I had a more coherent theory of art

― swaghand (dayo), Monday, April 9, 2012 11:43 PM (2 days ago)

im p sure i read abt some artbros paying these guys to do ersatz miros and ingreses and then the westerners added magic touches of their own, kinda like kinkade via chapmans

tho i might have imagined this

i would hope that altbros would pay them do pictures of altbros fucking centaurs

if by hope u mean sadly imagine then u will probably be correct before long

yeah, same thing

I wonder who the last universally famed person I never heard of before this guy was?

in 2001, Thomas Kinkade bet Susan Orlean a million dollars that a major museum would hold a Thomas Kinkade retrospective in his lifetime. look on my works ye mighty and etc.

― all yoga attacks are fire based (rogermexico.), Monday, April 9, 2012 4:58 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's pretty smart to bet someone that you can do something in your lifetime, because if you fail, how are they going to collect?

i thought susan orlean was the PBS money saving guru at first and was trying to figure out how she came to have a rivalry with kinkade.

like maybe she told her viewers, "a good way to invest your money... is NOT in thomas kinkade paintings ha ha ha, suck it, kinkade!"

ha!

I don't think any personal finance guru would recommend collectors items as a main investment.

are you saying my tv after 10 pm isn't a personal finance guru

is there good writing on kinkade that isn't hand-wringy and terrible like 100% of this thread?

ok maybe 97%

are you saying my tv after 10 pm isn't a personal finance guru

Bradford Exchange y New York Stock Exchange: the names are strikingly similar....

Ha I just looked up the Bradford Exchange site and it is cashing in on the news

http://desmond.imageshack.us/Himg43/scaled.php?server=43&filename=screenshot20120411at725.png&res=landing

Thomas Kinkade Stained Glass-Style Illuminated Faith Cross
Thomas Kinkade Faith Cross

First-ever Thomas Kinkade tabletop stained glass-style illuminated cross with inspiring chapel artwork and Scripture words. Wooden base, name plaque.

Measures 5" W x 9" H

that photo is lol, it looks like he's going to do that dizzy gillespie thing where he inflates his cheeks

someone photoshop (or actually make?) a thomas kinkade faith piss cross please

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ

I accept the TSA making me separate the few little liquids I need to take in my carry-on luggage by putting them in a little baggie etc. It's kinda dumb but whatever.

I'm really just annoyed at having to go out and buy QUART-sized ziplocks especially for my trip. I have gallons, I have sandwich-sized. I don't really WANT a box of quart-sized ziplocks.

huh

quart-sized are good for your smaller hams

oh fuck I totally posted this on the wrong board

welp there's a first time for everything

*dies*

*thread

heh, quart sized ziplocks for your kinkades

I guess it's vaguely piss-christ related

be sure to double bag it

is there good writing on kinkade that isn't hand-wringy and terrible like 100% of this thread?

― Fook Lee (Matt P), Thursday, April 12, 2012 1:11 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=OZIiVvxIuBEC&pg=PA215&dq=the+artist+in+the+mall&hl=en&sa=X&ei=446GT4vmA6Of0QXh4om5Bw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false

http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2012/04/10/art-entertainment/from-our-archives-thomas-kinkades-american-dream.html

I wonder how TK decorated his own house -- that might be interesting. He seemed pretty obsessed with Disney stuff.

a lotta jp witkin i heard

^mashup that needs to happen

-American Artist Thomas Kinkade
-Macular Degeneration

http://www.mercurynews.com/los-gatos/ci_20385235/brother-says-painter-thomas-kinkade-battled-alcoholism?source=most_emailed

ah the "i was drunk" defence

His brother blames all those mean critics for T. Kinkade's turning alcoholic. What other explanation could there be?

ah the "i was drunk" defence

― Ò (Ówen P.), Friday, April 13, 2012 5:56 PM (50 minutes ago)

I'm going to not read this article. I choose assume booze was his defense for painting so goddamn much light.

it's pretty smart to bet someone that you can do something in your lifetime, because if you fail, how are they going to collect?

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, April 11, 2012 5:30 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ real talk

i like to think susan orlean is hounding his estate right now

O'Toole kept living

Hardcore lolz here, Abbbottt. You're a treasure.

I actually showed Thomas Kinkade's Christmas Cottage in class and O'Toole's performance inspired a student to diagnose a new ailment: Humpty Dumpty Dementia.

But did you know there's another Kinkade movie? It's called Christmas Lodge and seems a correction of Cottage. If you look at the IMDb and Amazon reviews of the latter, then you'll discover that many Kinkadians were upset at all the swears and an attempted dad/son crotch grab. Lodge contains amped Jesus content and no swears. Also no respected actors to keep on living after their star turns here. Can you dig it?

I haven't seen TKCC (as the kids call it) but LOL @ Chris Elliot's wig in the trailer

Sorry, I just now noticed the request to comment.

I don't think the Kinkade industry has anything to do with art or technique; I think it has to do with selling an elaborate, porned out certificate of happiness and achievement to what is left of the middle class.

dude will you make me one of those certificates? will pay up to $59.95+s&h

I have one on ebay for $100. If you purchase it, I will add a squirrel in the foreground so adhered in syrup it can't move.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/261002696878?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_3464wt_883

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QWeyn8uoZg

Wld kill to see Peter O'Toole entreat Lacey to PAINT THE PANCAKES, DAN!

http://www.faithmouse.com/pancake_house_print_2.jpg

Thomas Kinkade Cause Of Death: Painter Died Of Drug And Alcohol Overdose, Coroner Rules

But, you know, for god.

anyway there's that benjamin essay art in the age of mechanical reproduction which I don't remember anything about, there are all those 'artists' cities in china where you can pay somebody like $50 to paint anything you want including a van gogh, it's pretty interesting, would post more about if I had a more coherent theory of art

― swaghand (dayo), Monday, April 9, 2012 11:43 PM (2 days ago)

im p sure i read abt some artbros paying these guys to do ersatz miros and ingreses and then the westerners added magic touches of their own, kinda like kinkade via chapmans

tho i might have imagined this

― The term “hipster racism” from Carmen Van Kerckhove at Racialicious (nakhchivan), Wednesday, April 11, 2012 4:13 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a John Baldessari piece I remember from the Met retrospective where he basically hired a few sort of ordinary landscape-type painters who sold their paintings at a local fair and got them to paint from photographs he had taken. The result was very well-painted and very contemporary-looking paintings -- of course Baldessari had chosen the composition, but the technique was as good as anything you'd expect to see from the latest hot young painter.

Description and example here:

http://www.thelmagazine.com/newyork/achieving-pure-baldessari-at-the-met/Content?oid=1794006

v cool. Done in 1969.

http://i.imgur.com/xav6H.png

Thomas Kinkade's real home, currently held hostage by girlfriend. If you like real estate drama...

awesome

http://io9.com/thomas-kinkades-cottage-paintings-upgraded-with-star-w-1456764815

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1950h7cdqdj71jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1950h7cdmq12yjpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhuwkBfGKwQ

Or, you can buy one "enhanced" by Kinkade himself for XX+$ and it will be signed with a DNA matrixed (i.e. blood or something) signature.
― Jaq (Jaq), Monday, September 12, 2005 7:58 PM (twelve years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

goth as fuk

Dollop episode about him is a good one, for you comedy podcast enjoyers https://castro.fm/episode/YZfxQt

Imagine being so rich you can commission "The Painter of Light" himself to render your mansion in a painting. pic.twitter.com/oHWStEBu0i

— Amiebea (@Amiebea) August 7, 2018

betsy de vos's summer house

makes it look like even more of a damn clown house

fake river!

Looks ripped from McMansion Hell

well . . . yes

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/8/6/17654434/betsy-devos-yacht-mcmansion-hell

Ahead of his time! Thomas Kinkade Once Painted a Roll of Toilet Paper.

https://robbreport.com/shelter/art-collectibles/thomas-kincade-toilet-paper-painting-print-covid-2912759/

Looks like he's finally getting a documentary, thank god

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2025/mar/25/thomas-kinkade-documentary

dude was mostly just a fucked-up grifter imo?
idk that i’d watch a doc about him but ymmvv

That actually sounds like a reason to watch

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/unseen-thomas-kinkade-paintings-documentary-2622338

Even a 2008 biopic featuring Peter O’Toole and Marcia Gay Harden couldn’t redeem him; it went straight to video.

the dollop podcast did an episode on him: i recommend listening to that to get caught up on this dude’s bullshit

that toilet paper painting is the best painting of his i have seen. it seems like something made by a high schooler trying to imitate giorgrio morandi.

i don't like his paintings but i find that kind of art inoffensive in jigsaw puzzles, casual video games, cozy mystery book covers, etc.

for a guy who drew a lot of houses he could have learned more about architecture and design. he didn't draw roofs good.

It's sad he died before AI became a thing. A lot of his paintings look like AI and I imagine he wouldn't have hesitated to use the medium to increase his productivity.

I was struck by this heartwarming tribute:
https://i.redd.it/95uycadj89wb1.jpg

Blows my mind that james gurney and kinkaid were buddies

i was watching a video by Solar Sands, who did that video on Thomas Kinkade, "the most hated artist you probably recognize"... they've got a follow-up on Jeff Koons, "the most hated 'sculptor' you probably recognize". it's mostly them personally trying to figure out how they feel about koons' work and koons himself. they talk a little bit about koons vs. kinkade and koons vs. paul mccarthy.

i don't really have any strong opinions on jeff koons one way or another, i guess. he reminds me a little bit of rick rubin, just without the beard.

Matt Zoller Seitz on the documentary:

https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/art-for-everybody-thomas-kinkade-documentary-film-review-2025

i don't really have any strong opinions on jeff koons one way or another

the stuff with Cicciolina is pretty cringe and has not aged well