112 replies to this topic

[MattP]

"Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade is being accused of hoodwinking investors and leaving them in the dark. After arbiters awarded two former Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners $860,000 this year, other former dealers have filed claims that accuse Kinkade of using his Christian faith to defraud them.

Gallery of Accusations

Weird that CT's just getting onto a story that's been around for almost 2 months...

[Peter T Chattaway]

popechild wrote:
: Weird that CT's just getting onto a story that's been around for almost 2 months...

Just a guess, but it's possible this story was written for the magazine, which has a long-ish lead time, and the story is only going online NOW because the magazine is out ...

[Jeff Kolb]

The lady and I ...admiring some Kincade.

And then there was the mail I recieved the other week. Thomas Kincade himself offered me a limited-time, charter member edition, special-offer, Kincade-designed, Christmas-themed, die-cast model train set! And 10 feet of track for FREE. Oh yes...it was glossy.

How did he ever come by my address?

[Chashab]

The lady and I ...admiring some Kincade.

And then there was the mail I recieved the other week. Thomas Kincade himself offered me a limited-time, charter member edition, special-offer, Kincade-designed, Christmas-themed, die-cast model train set! And 10 feet of track for FREE. Oh yes...it was glossy.

How did he ever come by my address?

About to put my foot in my mouth yet again:

Who buys those things??? I have enough dust collecting "collectables" already and I haven't tried to come by them!

Adding: Fun photograph!

Edited by Chashab, 20 October 2006 - 03:30 PM.

[Chashab]

Lynn Aldrich, in reviewing Betty Spackman's Christians and Kitsch, had this to say of Spackman's treatment of Kinkade's work:

“On the other hand, images can be so good that they are bad. Thomas Kinkade’s paintings fall into this category, rather too gently treated by Spakman who says she ‘has no reason to doubt the artist’s sincerity.’ Kinkade’s original workds and all the reproduction and miniatures he produces as their prolific offspring are promoted in a high-volume shopping galleria near you . . . His ’sweetness and light’ renderings have all the ingredients of good paintings — luminous paint handling, luscious colors, carefully rendered flowers, cottages and lighthouses, well-learned art techniques to show off skies and cloud forms — but the accumulation of all this goodness collapses into a lie, a fake world that is ultimately as lacking in mind and soul nourishment as a diet of sugar cubes.”

Thought it interesting, and don't entirely know what to make of it, that she thought Spackman was being too soft on him. Of course, I haven't actually read the book yet *tears* Just the review!!

[Peter T Chattaway]

Link to the thread on Kinkade's feature film The Christmas Cottage.

[Cunningham]

Don't miss this. Thomas Kinkade's Experimental Period Here's a taste:

Hometown at Suppertime

Kinkade chose the Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery in the Castleton Square Mall in Indianapolis, Indiana, for his first full-scale installation piece. Having emptied the store of merchandise, Kinkade painted every surface an even white and covered it in petroleum jelly. Then, using a series of high-powered projectors, Kinkade bathed the gallery in a re-creation of dusk in one of his picturesque hometowns where every window glowed with the warmth of friends and family.

In the middle of the store, he set a barrel of trash on fire. Dressed in a tailored three-piece suit, Kinkade sat down next to the barrel with a bottle of cinnamon schnapps and drank himself into a stupor. As curious patrons wandered in, he cajoled them for spare change and repeatedly yelled, "Get over yourself, hotshot!" By the time police shut the store down and arrested Kinkade, the artist had made $1.29, mostly in warm pennies and nickels.

[Jeff Kolb]

Weird. I just stumbled upon McSweeney's yesterday for the first time in years. Geez, there's some funny stuff there.

[M. Dale Prins]

Yes, like this.

Dale

[Peter T Chattaway]

Animator Ralph Bakshi on Why 'American Pop' Ended With a Lame Bob Seger Song
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.
Vulture, New York, May 7

[Overstreet]

First Things on Kinkade.

I liked to this on Facebook, and a Kinkade defender showed up to nay-say the nay-sayers.

Reminds me of Greg Wolfe's editorial: The Painter of Lite™

Edited by Overstreet, 23 June 2009 - 04:05 PM.

[draper]

Jeffrey thanks for the links.

I feel so perplexed by the comments following the First Things posts . In particular the comment "I stopped trusting the New York art community when they insisted that Jackson Pollock had something valuable to say with his splattered canvases."

This is to me heartbreaking. Pollock was a 4 page feature in Life magazine in 1949. Pollock's first critical notice was in Art News during a show at the McMillan gallery in New York that ended in February 1942.

This is a period covering 7 decades, the period in which Art in the United States became ascendant. The entire second half of the 20th Century.

It seems to me that Kinkade lies like a well lit fence along the dividing line in the culture wars. It might be because I keep running into people that insist the "cultural elite" are ruining the country, I am not sure, but if we disregard the opinions of knowledgeable professionals because we don't like what they are telling us, where do we go?

We don't seem to have the same issue with engineering and mathematics and they are as mysterious to the uninitiated.

Perhaps as our idea of facts and reality become increasingly maleable it is reassuring to have Thomas Kincade producing vibrant and reassuring pictures.

Edited by draper, 25 June 2009 - 04:05 PM.

[Peter T Chattaway]

draper wrote:
: We don't seem to have the same issue with engineering and mathematics and they are as mysterious to the uninitiated.

But engineering and mathematics give us cell phones and DVD players and they seem to "work" in general. They make a difference -- and a positive one, at that -- in the lives of the uninitiated. Whereas it is presumably not clear to the uninitiated how anyone's opinion of a bunch of dots splattered on a canvas is supposed to "work". What difference do those dots, or those opinions, make, and to whom?

[Buckeye Jones]

Kincade seems to work like an engineer or a mathmetician, in fact. He employs his technique to sell things. Same as most engineers. A few work in academia. Perhaps you could consider them similar to the art establishment. But for the most part, engineers and mathmeticians make things to sell so that they can earn an income to feed their families and maybe buy a second home on a lake in the Carolinas. We don't listen to the ones in academia--yet. In twenty years, when you're no longer using copper wires in the walls of your house to power your lights, you will be listening to them. Then there will be other ones in academia that you won't be listening too.

How is this different from the aesthetic vs commericial art establishments?

Edited by Buckeye Jones, 26 June 2009 - 02:45 PM.

[Overstreet]

More on Kinkade at First Things.

These days, it would seem Kinkade’s muse is himself:

“Thomas Kinkade is a multi-dimensional lifestyle brand, similar to Martha Stewart or Ralph Lauren,” says Kinkade.

“You can put a Thomas Kinkade couch beneath your Thomas Kinkade painting. Next to the Thomas Kinkade couch goes the Thomas Kinkade end table. On top of that goes your collection of Thomas Kinkade books, Thomas Kinkade collectibles, Thomas Kinkade throw rugs. You can snuggle your Thomas Kinkade teddy bear.”

And, he adds, “You can put all of that inside your new Thomas Kinkade home in the Thomas Kinkade subdivision.”

And what does it say about us, that Kinkade has (reportedly) sold more canvases than any other painter in history?—More than Picasso, Rembrandt, Gaughin, Monet, Manet, Renoir and Van Gogh combined?

[Joel C]

It's interesting, I wasn't aware of this until just now reading through a few articles, but for a period of his career, he anonymously produced paintings under the name of Robert Girrard. He didn't mass-produce them, instead putting them in only one gallery in California. Having since announced his pseudonym, he has said that he used that time to explore his artistic horizons. Some of the pieces are actually quite lovely; it's a shame that he felt he needed to create a different, unknown, obscure version of himself to feel comfortable exploring his creativity.

Then again, he's now selling and promoting pieces from that period on his website, along with the rest of his collection of works; but it does add a bit of nuance to his story.

[Nathan Douglas]

Via Rod Dreher: One of Kinkade's companies has gone bankrupt.

[Greg P]

Uh-oh.

[Darren H]

That tingling sensation I'm feeling? I believe it's schadenfreude.

[Overstreet]

Artistic license.

(Okay, I'm stealing that from a Facebook comment.)