Dale Chihuly vs. Thomas Kincaid

chihuly at least has some imagination

also i heard from a reputable glass artist who taught at berkeley that he pioneered some new techniques and revived old ones so +1 for contributing to the field

Kincaids you can at least overlook though bcz they're so bland and ubiquitous but Chihulies have this gaudy obnoxiousness to them and are often attempting to give off this "ooh! aahh!" luxury that tries to demand your attention and esteem

I actually like Chihuly well enough. Would make cool bowls, I suppose. I didn't realize that he was on the level of Thomas Kincaid?Does he have stores?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

chihuly has stores iirc

kincaid is much worse than chihuly. there is something sinister about kincaid's work related to the commodification of a certain kind of very white middle class, pseudo-rustic america... idk. his work is aggressively reactionary and chihuly's work looks kind of cool.

somebody like kincaid would have to exist if kincaid didn't, i can't begrudge all the folks (like my mom) who buy his artwork. i mean, if you're gonna rip on kincaid, it's like, why kincaid instead of the other 100,000,000,000 other mass-market lowest common denominator kitsch crap out there? "kincaid sucks" well who gives a shit really? so does hallmark, mcdonalds, walmart, bla bla bla, yawn. i don't meant to say there's nothing interesting to say about kincaid in terms of criticism, etc., in the same way i don't think there's nothing interesting to be said about hallmark or walmart. but a certain just basic "kincaid, lol he sucks" is kind of a boring and predictable thing to say.

and i love chihuly. yes i can see the gaudy obnoxiousness but all that glass can just be utterly spectacular to see. i'm totally okay with chihuly grabbing my attention and making me go "oohh, ahh" because some of pieces are just astonishing.

i'm from seattle and have friends who've worked for chihuly. i've watched his PBS specials (or at least half the venetian one where he floats glass blobs down a river). i've visited his glass annex of the tacoma art museum. i am still waiting for the astonishing spectacular. (striated glass is pretty, no argument there.)

but marcos otm as applies to both these dudes. no sport in safely ridiculing the designated targets.

kincaid is a crypto-realist, his stuff is useful for parsing people's attitudes toward ideas about home & hearth & comfort & beauty etc

I had not ever heard of the other dude here

Giant Chihuly piece at the V&A has a high wow factor:

http://www.dailyartfixx.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Chandelier-Victoria-and-Albert-Museum-London-Dale-Chihuly.jpg

multiple xps if we're talking about gaudy obnoxiousness and kitsch than maybe this should really be kincaid v. koons?

http://www.jeffkoons.com/site/images/splash.jpg

also re: chihuly dude just really seems like a psychedelia-obsessed hippie, and that sounds good to me:
http://thepolishsquirrel.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/chihuly.jpg
i mean, this is beautiful!

idea of scale for V&A piece:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/users/sites/default/files/album_images/29079-large.jpg

The more I see of his work the less I like it but I can't help but be impressed every time I see that thing.

lol it's also spelled "kinkade"

xp man, cleaning Cthulhu is like the worst job ever.

xxxp I wonder what Dale Chihuly's record is on "fucking porn stars, then making art out of it."

http://seattletimes.com/art/specialreports/chihuly/chihuly_centerpiece.jpg

The thing abt Koons and Hirst is that they're still like art-worldy whereas Kinckaide and Chthuly appeal to a very middle-class non art world sensibility of pretty serenity or like impressive beautiful luxury. They are both made to be aesthetically impressive; Koons is not trying to do this and also he is a lazy jackass in the way that these two aren't

that chihuly and kinkade are both skilled craftsmen (and they are) doesn't preclude their also being lazy jackasses (cuz they are)

I had never seen/heard of Chihuly til a few years ago when I saw his exhibition at the DeYoung in SF. It blew me away! Which now reading this thread makes me feel kind of bummed / defensive. Finding out afterwards that hordes of ppl in Vegas or wherever have also consumed his art didn't really change anything for me. I guess I don't like that feeling of there being artists that you should/shouldn't enjoy. that Chihuly puts his name on stuff that a team of ripped awesome glassblowers actually make and he sketches or sits on a banana lounge and watches them create, idk that that really bothers me either. I dug the documentary vid they shot in Tacoma...but maybe it's just because glass manipulation is rad. even if it's intended for yokels.

I can't stand Kincaid's paintings, but I dunno that it's really because of WHO consumes them as much as the glowy cloyingness of them is really irritating to me.

possibly I'm just being overly sensitive

there's a giant, milky-white chihuly spermolier in seattle's benaroya (concert) hall. it's impressive, distinctive and even rather lovely, but doesn't set my ass on particular fire:

http://www.artsjournal.com/anotherbb/dalechihulygoldchan.jpg

nor do the tie-dye seafoods skinning tacoma's "bridge of glass":

http://museumofglass.org/view.image?Id=910

i don't think this work sucks, but it doesn't do much for me. glassblowing IS rad though, no argument there. in seattle, i'd sometimes go to local studios or the shop space @ TAM just to watch them work.

i love that such a delicate end product is as physically demanding as smithing to actually produce. I really did the physical effort required to bring about those huge pieces.

me too, but...

the essence of chihuly is frozen my mind in the form of a sketch that a friend brought home from his office. in the sketch, a dashed-off squiggle chandelier dangles over a dashed-off curving staircase. down below and on the staircase are positioned various awestruck stick figures with speech baloons saying things like "brilliant!", "genius!" and "so beautiful!".

so, you know...

Gonna vote for Kinkaid cos he seems more pedestrian. You could buy a book of his stuff in a Walmart in the middle of nowhere. Also he did backgrounds for Bakshi's "Fire and Ice" and has that weird "Is he really Christian or just an opportunist?" angle going for him. I'd love to see a documentary on him.

kinkaid was apparently a very belligerent alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder about his lack of recognition by the "art establishment" iirc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Now do Jack Vettriano.

i'm p neutral on chihuly but i every time i see one of his chandelier things i can't help fantasizing about how satisfying seeing the cables break and watching the glass shatter into a billion pieces on the floor would be.

there is something sinister about kincaid's work related to the commodification of a certain kind of very white middle class, pseudo-rustic america...

that's what's awesome about it! as much as I like dayglo psychedelic kitsch, chihuly doesn't do anything for me. it's just too ugly for me. like sub- Alex Grey level kitsch imo.

had never seen any chihuly before -- ugh those things are creepy, i half-expect them to drop to the floor and start crawling around.

whoa apparently joan didion wrote something about kinkade! here's an excerpt from wiki:

A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.

Joan Didion, predictably more coherent than i was in describing why Kinkades work is unsettling

in a way i almost sort of admire kinkade's insane audacity, calling himself 'the painter of light' and comparing himself to turner and just aggressively insisting on his own importance. otoh his actual work is just so boring, it's not even entertainingly tasteless and OTT.

kinkade is the opposite of a lazy jackass, he's the epitome of american hard work and his stuff is more honest than all of the art world combined if not all that fun at the end of the day. don't know much about chihuly but he's kinkade for hippies idk? koons is far more of a 'lazy jackass' than either of these two if by lazy you mean entitled and by jackass you mean self-important. these things are also fine and may or may not have anything to do with the fact that i enjoy his work.

spelled kincaid obviously, who i would vote for, but really my heart lies with arnold friberg, who has an appealing element of 'lost' masculinity, seems like he's kincaid for the hubbies

it kinda breaks my heart when ppl compare kinkade to norman rockwell, who was a genuinely great artist in his way and way way way out of the league of any of these guys.

In what sense is his work "honest"? The world it presents is a fantasy world, and the fantasy is a particularly commercial, bourgeois one (cf. Thomas Kinkaid-themed gated communities).

his stuff is more honest than all of the art world combined

why stop there?

the fantasy is a domestic one and it doesn't pretend to be anything but, a pure expression of mass domestic fantasy. it's honest in the way that the covers of supermarket romances are honest.

the mainstream narrative of progression in art is far more bourgeois and enabled by lies.

his stuff is more honest than all of the art world combined

why stop there?

― IIIrd Datekeeper (contenderizer), Tuesday, August 6, 2013 2:43 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you certainly don't

I want to hear more about that idea Matt

well i should be working and not being a lazy jackass

this was a good thread iirc

Defend the indefensible - Thomas Kinkade

kincaide embodies a v. explicit christian utopia that occurs for most of the 20th century, the end of that kind of womb like totemic belief in buccolic arcadias as a saving grace (cf joan didion article about him in her california book ca 2003.)
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.

― anthony, Wednesday, September 14, 2005 2:29 AM (7 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry i didn't see your first response.

i sort of get that idea but i don't agree with it. i think the modernist legacy is conflicted, and should be questioned, but ultimately the moment went art began to reflect upon, and critique itself was a movement toward a more honest form of art, not away from it. i don't think modernism is a "swindle" as much as the advertising culture that created the kind of "mass domestic fantasy" typified by kinkaid's paintings. if there is a truth content to his paintings, it is in the use of psychedelic colors -- his move from realism, or a more realistic type of romanticism -- because this indicates the pressure the american dream is under today... the public's increasing sense of its unreality.

great post from anthony, thanks matt! i am processing it. my kneejerk response is to say again what i said above: that the fact that in kinkaid, the idealization of american suburban life becomes this back to arcadia fantasy is interesting. rockwell was able to reconcile nostalgia for small town america with a social conscience and awareness, but kinkaid doesn't even attempt this. i don't mean to say that life in america was better then -- it certainly wasn't -- but for some reason, then, things like the civil rights movement could fit neatly within this idea of progress, or of america as a whole moving forward, which seems less tenable now. maybe.

xp

tbh, that all sounds a little sad, a mind in endless pursuit of an "interesting" stance relative to all the other stance-takers out there. thing is, there's nothing particularly interesting about kinkade's work. many people like warm, inviting and comforting imagery, especially of the homey sort that caters to popular pieties. that should surprise no one, and a moderately talented technician's successful exploitation of such proclivities is less surprising still. there's nothing remarkably "honest" about it, except in the sense that so many other megapopular commodities are blandly honest. a mcdonald's hamburger is no more pretentious than kinkade's paintings, but i don't find its honestly particularly compelling, not even in relation to absurdly aspirational whole foods offerings that cost much, much more.

not a defense of koons, btw. his work is every bit as blandly vacant as kinkade's.

weird thing is that in interviews both koons and damien hirst come across as super genuine, down to earth dudes.

admittedly none of these artists are as condescending as you are xp

i miss anthony, he was a cool and interesting guy

still is!

jeff koons needs no defense imo and shouldn't be dragged into this. He fires a lot of rounds and misses at least as often as he hits but Rabbit (1986) is a straight up masterpiece and Puppy (1992) is pretty close. Both may need to be experienced in person fwiw.

one of the things i find really incredulous about kincaid and 'mass market' art is the idea that people, or individuals, taken one at a time, are like duped or brainwashed or something into buying a piece under the pretense that it's pretending to be something it isn't, like it's a wolf in sheep's clothing or something and they're tricked. i don't think they are at all, i think that these pieces are very transparent, and that people buy them for transparent reasons, the same reasons you or i buy something, "sophisticated" self-consciousness aside, and i think the idea that it's pernicious that people do this (want comfort or whatever), that someone shouldn't do this, that they should opt instead for market choice y, keeping austin weird, or yes, even make it themselves and avoid the whole system (which is another invitation back into the system via resources) is actually the greater evil, if we want to get all moral and grandstanding about it, because it's convinced of its own righteousness even as it just reinforces the same old battle lines.

like one of capitalism's greatest tools is self-reflection and taste in the service of (neo neo neo) transcendentalism, c.f. all of contenderizer's posts

in the same way it behooves us to listen to whatever is on the top of the pops.

:-/

i don't think there's anything wrong with kinkade's work, nor do i think that the people who like it are being duped (unless they're speculating in a market they don't fully understand, but that's a different discussion). in this thread, i backhandedly defend his paintings with argument that isn't so terribly far removed from yours, matt. they offer something real and valuable to those who enjoy them: a vision of home as an ideal, a place of reliable welcome and warmth. i have no problem with that.

personally, i don't get much out of kinkade's work. i feel the allure of those perfect little gold-buttered dreams, but it doesn't resonate very deeply. and i do think there's something lazy in his seemingly cynical commercial exploitation of one narrow "vision". his technical skills are admirable, and i can't fault his business acumen, but i don't get the sense - from the work or from the man - that he has anything personal invested. the paintings are simply things that made other people give him money.

Rabbit (1986) is a straight up masterpiece and Puppy (1992) is pretty close. Both may need to be experienced in person fwiw.

― resulting post (rogermexico.), Tuesday, August 6, 2013 3:45 PM (1 hour ago)

i've seen rabbit in person, along with several other koons pieces. i don't get it. koons' best-known sculptures are fun, loud, kid-friendly, pleasantly shocking and even awe-inspiring in their violation of the ordinary texture and scale of reality. that's great, but i get a similar high from macy's parade balloons and the oscar-meyer hot dog truck. the purported commentary on art world values and consumer culture in general seemed trite even 30 years ago (and ironically so, but that's a dead end too).

still, divorced from all that chatter, a giant steel replica of an inflatable bunny balloon is cool as hell, and if i lived in downton abbey, i'd certainly want one for the servant's atrium.

the purported commentary on art world values and consumer culture in general seemed trite even 30 years ago (and ironically so, but that's a dead end too).

agree with this but ime it's beside the point. i could hang out with Rabbit for like hours in the same way i could hang out with a Kandinsky. as opposed to e.g. yr roadside attractions or also e.g. koons' balloon dogs though they're fine and i like living in a world where they exist.

okay, that makes sense. personally, i want to add the wienermobile to the category of masterpieces that includes rabbit, but that's just me.

where would the Randy's Donut fit in? mere gigantism or meta bc you can buy a donut from it?

man, matt p is such a carbuncle. uh, it's nice to see you, too.