Defend the indefensible - Thomas Kinkade

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I like that he takes on not only modern art but the entire history of Western art. "The Louvre is full of dead art"

― Maxwell von Bismarck (maxwell von bismarck), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:10 (twenty years ago)

"The fact is we have a grassroots movement emerging in my art and in the country, and there's ten million people out there that if I give the word will go out and picket any museum I want them to," he went on. "I won't give the word, but they're dying to have an art of dignity within our culture, an art of relevance to them. Look at someone like Robert Rauschenberg. What's his Q rating? How many people have his art? A hundred? Where is the million-seller art? What about the craftsmanship of expression?"

argh argh argh

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:14 (twenty years ago)

That article is so fascinating. thanks for sharing, john. i know that there is a book all about people's various "love languages." my cousin's friend gave her a copy when my cousin got engaged. we gagged after the friend left.

― kelsey (kelstarry), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:23 (twenty years ago)

Look at someone like Robert Rauschenberg. What's his Q rating? How many people have his art? A hundred?

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

― CUSTOS PASSANTINO (dr g), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:27 (twenty years ago)

"Look at someone like Robert Rauschenberg. What's his Q rating? How many people have his art? A hundred? There are only so many tires and goats in this world. People need more than that."

― CUSTOS PASSANTINO (dr g), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:31 (twenty years ago)

On the other hand, it's hard to argue with a painter that cured someone's cancer.

― Maxwell von Bismarck (maxwell von bismarck), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 19:32 (twenty years ago)

OK folks let's just fucking cut to the goddamned chase here. All this is from the 2001 article linked above:

...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.

I mean for real people as if I didn't already hate that kind of shitty stupid farts and crafts garbage before, but for fuck's sake, he's an entrepreneurial evangelist. He needs to be shot standing up against the same wall as Pat Goddamned Robertson, ok? Going around making people feel all warm in their mediocrity blanket, here you go, collect my "art," isn't it nice we all love Jesus and are loved by Him. Let's spread the fucking love around. Only a thousand dollars or so, that's all I ask.

― TOMBOT, Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:04 (twenty years ago)

Tom OTM.

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.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:12 (twenty years ago)

Thanks for the revelation, Tombot. /sarcasm

― CUSTOS PASSANTINO (dr g), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:16 (twenty years ago)

i want smarter pants, dammit

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:45 (twenty years ago)

can you ask highlighters for huge fuckin' streaks of hideous black and yellow all over a Kinkade painting?

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

"maybe you could paint some black people in that village"

― CUSTOS PASSANTINO (dr g), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:48 (twenty years ago)

I'm shocked by the gated community with houses named after his daughters. Did I say shocked? I meant completely FREAKED OUT.

― kelsey (kelstarry), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:50 (twenty years ago)

Josephine Wall has captured my inner reality! My brain, liquifying, exiting my skull via seashell. The parasitic unicorn, perched on my brow like a gargoyle in disguise. Falling for another guy with an inner guitarist! Shit!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 20:58 (twenty years ago)

i did mention he was xian

― anthony, Wednesday, 14 September 2005 22:00 (twenty years ago)

I think n/a and anthony are otm upthread regarding how great Kinkade is as a conceptual artist. I mean, I've been in one of his stores and it made me want to eat a bullet, but, here in the saftey of my home, he seems like the coolest thing evah. He is like some sort of bad delillo-esqe near-future satire of american society. If we did read about him in a book, it would probably seem too absurd and we'd think it was crap -- and yet is totally real!

I think my parents like him.

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

― stewart downes (sdownes), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 22:24 (twenty years ago)

http://www.stevekeene.com/home.html

The antidote.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 22:33 (twenty years ago)

He's got nothing on Komar and Melamid:

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

― Spencer Chow (spencermfi), Wednesday, 14 September 2005 22:37 (twenty years ago)

http://polar.negation.net/~synnex/minivan.jpg

― ~~~~ DODONGO DISLIKES SMOKE ~~~~ (ex machina), Thursday, 15 September 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)

I AM THERE FOR YOU OYSTER-EAR GIRL! JUST LET ME SHOO THIS BIRD THAT CRAPS LIGHTNING BOLTS OFF MY CRESCENT MOON NECK TATTOO!

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 15 September 2005 01:06 (twenty years ago)

Seriously I wish I had an audiofile of the art auctioneer from "Fine Art Wholesalers" describing that Josephine Wall piece with a total poker face, I mean twenty minutes prior he had been moving Peter Max originals and then THIS THING. Keep in mind that this is all occurring on a huge boat in the middle of the ocean with free champagne available, and that the art auctioneer has this great Pan-Euro accent going on.

― TOMBOT, Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:00 (twenty years ago)

― simian (dymaxia), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:04 (twenty years ago)

Norman Rockwell is much less sentimental, believe it or not. He doesn't use the same vocabulary, the same light and forms that Kincade uses.

― simian (dymaxia), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:06 (twenty years ago)

that Disney painting...it reminds me of Bierstadt!

― simian (dymaxia), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:07 (twenty years ago)

And when you stretch it to fill your desktop it becomes Seurat on PCP.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:21 (twenty years ago)

You wouldn't hang one of those things on your wall, unless you want to be cheeky, but don't they tell you a lot about a certain American sensibility? I tend to be very libertarian about these things - if people are buying this stuff, we have to take it seriously
Maybe it's a good thing.
If the American psyche has this much pastel flowery seashelly unicorniness then maybe there's hope. A white unicorn would never assist in the maiming of Iraqi kids or the abandonment of flood victims!
We need to find a way for these people to EXTERNALIZE THEIR INTERNAL UNICORNS!!!

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:40 (twenty years ago)

we need Kinkades airbrushed onto sweatshirts at mall kiosks.

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

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Thursday, 15 September 2005 13:54 (twenty years ago)

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00013EVJ2.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

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

That's not a judgement, btw.

― simian (dymaxia), Thursday, 15 September 2005 16:15 (twenty years ago)

It's from the AFTERLIFE!!! It's HEAVEN!!! To bad none of us will go there, on account of MOCKING THE KINKADISTS.

― Beth Parker (Beth Parker), Thursday, 15 September 2005 18:39 (twenty years ago)

TS: Adolf Hitler the artist vs. Thomas Kinkade the artist

― Maxwell von Bismarck (maxwell von bismarck), Thursday, 15 September 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

"A white unicorn would never assist in the maiming of Iraqi kids or the abandonment of flood victims!"

A bird that craps lightning probably would, though.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Thursday, 15 September 2005 22:22 (twenty years ago)

An entry from Donald Urquhart's Top Ten in this month's Artforum:

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."

― dr gary busey (dr g), Friday, 16 September 2005 03:26 (twenty years ago)

painstakingly pretty,

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

― kingfish superman ice cream (kingfish 2.0), Friday, 16 September 2005 04:52 (twenty years ago)

illuminated with a gaslight-and-sunset glow,

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

― simian (dymaxia), Friday, 16 September 2005 15:48 (twenty years ago)

he's got a good racket going. no other defense. shit's ugly as fuck and could never look cool on a t shirt.

― AaronK (AaronK), Friday, 16 September 2005 16:03 (twenty years ago)

five months pass...

Thomas Kinkade - the Pisser of Pooh-Bear.

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:17 (twenty years ago)

In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.

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.

― latebloomer: keeping his reputation for an intense on-set presence (latebloomer), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:27 (twenty years ago)

WHERE THE TITTAYS AT?!!?

― Austin Still (Austin, Still), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:31 (twenty years ago)

eek

― latebloomer: keeping his reputation for an intense on-set presence (latebloomer), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:40 (twenty years ago)

Kinkade? Josephine Wall? Amateurs...
I give you the (sadly) late C John Taylor!

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Monday, 6 March 2006 22:53 (twenty years ago)

At least Taylor attempts something besides landscapes, even just for that he's better.

― Rotgutt (Rotgutt), Monday, 6 March 2006 23:53 (twenty years ago)

I can understand if your granny likes this shite, but what bothers me is the fact that some young people are into him (young meaning under 35). I have met 2 guys who were arbiters of taste in many ways, but who had TK prints and a TK COFFEE TABLE BOOK!

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.

― unclejessjess, Monday, 6 March 2006 23:59 (twenty years ago)

I would not put Taylor in the same class as Kinkade. Taylor's paintings are pretty bad all around, but they are at least showing some interest in thinking about starting to be curious about trying something challenging for a viewer. TK is about carefully avoiding engaging a viewer's brain.

― unclejessjess, Tuesday, 7 March 2006 00:02 (twenty years ago)

"something challenging for a viewer"

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

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 00:07 (twenty years ago)

I know what you mean though. I've actually been to his art gallery (in fact there are about five or six shops around Scotland selling the stuff) and some of the paintings do have a curious edge. And he did poetry as well.

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 00:09 (twenty years ago)

Anyone who wastes time hating on this charming artist needs to reassess his priorities in life (& probably they definition of kool while they at it).

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

― UL® (blastocyst), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 00:22 (twenty years ago)

Who are we talking about now - Kincade or Taylor?

― Ned T.Rifle (nedtrifle), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 01:17 (twenty years ago)

― UL® (blastocyst), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 01:57 (twenty years ago)

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=1928

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

― unclejessjess (unclejessjess), Tuesday, 7 March 2006 03:28 (twenty years ago)

apparently next year a collection of academic essays about TK will be published by duke

― anthony easton (anthony), Thursday, 9 March 2006 10:56 (twenty years ago)

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