Defend the indefensible - Thomas Kinkade

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.