In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

I Love Art.

Flea

Especially abstract art. Check it:

Exhibit A, Snowball Family

snowball family

Exhibit B, Black and White

black and white

Aren’t they awesome?

Lucky me, I don’t have to go far to view the artist’s work, because they’re hanging on my refrigerator. And new work rotates in all the time, because my four-year-old is always busy.

I admit I think my children are perfect. I do. I admit I think their artwork is marvelous. But I’m telling you, if I said Black and White was Mark Rothko’s latest piece, you’d have totally believed me.

And you know for sure it’s better than this total piece of shit from Thomas Kinkade:



Why does it always look like there’s a blistering inferno inside every house he draws? That’s not soothing. It’s terrifying. Save the baby, my God, somebody save the baby! The house is going to explode!

Frankly, I’m partial to Snowball Family. I like his use of white space. I like the off-center playfulness. I like that early 60’s retro flavor. And I understand the idea the artist was going for here.

A lot of abstract art is shit, though. How does it get into galleries? There was once an exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago that featured two TVs stacked on top of another, playing a video of a clown taking a dump and reading a newspaper.

I know some of you have seen this. I can’t be the only one.

The piece, called Clown Torture, really irritates me. Not only because it features clowns, which is across the board repellent, but also because the artist could not even justify what he inflicted on the viewing public. “Artists are clowns,” was the premise, or something dumb like that. I confess it was memorable, because here I am still talking about it, but let’s be fair: not all memories are good memories.

Last year I saw that damned Clown Torture in Vanity Fair‘s art issue. Ironically, I was sitting on the toilet when I turned to the page that was doing a puff piece on Bruce Nauman, the frighteningly influential modern artist who weaseled this craptastic idea into the Art Institute.

“No!” I shouted. “Not you, too, Vanity Fair! Why am I the only one who sees the artist has no talent! Why!”

Now, I don’t have an issue with conceptual art, exactly, but if you’re going to shoot footage of a pooping, newspaper-reading clown, you should try to come up with a concept better than “Artists are clowns.” I would have accepted, “I hate people and I want to punish you for existing.” That I can understand.

Take Christopher, painter of Black and White. Do you know what his concept is? It’s what he sees when he opens his eyes just a little bit. Each white splash is a flutter of his eyes.

Where is his exhibit, I ask you? His MacArthur Grant? Pooping clowns, indeed.

The piece across from Clown Torture was another conceptual dealie featuring 168 pounds of individually wrapped hard candy dumped in a heap on the floor that the public was invited to take and eat, one piece at a time. When the candy was gone, it was replaced again, and so it went. The piece was inspired by the artist’s boyfriend, who, at the time he was diagnosed with AIDS, weighed 168 pounds. The slowly disappearing candy represented his wasting away from his illness. The last candy taken represented his death.

I liked this very much. I liked being able to see that much sorrow and love represented in a big pile of candy.

What makes good art good? What makes it shit? And what exactly is it about Thomas Kinkade’s paintings that suck so hard?

Posted in Art

70 thoughts on I Love Art.

  1. Those first two questions are too much for up-past-my-bedtime me, but the answer to number three is simply everything. Everything about them, from their clotted composition (why one gable when three is so much more charming?), to their projection of faux-suburban idylls, to their craptacularly mass-producy-ness pretending to be “original” artwork (both the repros of a single painting to the fact that every. single. fucking. picture. looks exactly the same: oversized “cottage” nestled amidst lush foliage, with no messy humans to detract from the sterile perfection, and of course, glowing with a nuclear vengeance from within) to the fact that it is both produced and consumed primarily as Art to Match your Couch. Don’t think, just buy!

  2. Also, I love Snowball Family, too. The unbalanced balance, and nice use of color, as if to suggest the spectrum that is contained in white (light). Going along with that, the title metaphorizes out to say something about diversity and community. Aw.

    So tired.

  3. Why does it always look like there’s a blistering inferno inside every house he draws? That’s not soothing. It’s terrifying. Save the baby, my God, somebody save the baby! The house is going to explode!

    Oh thank god, it’s not just me. I keep expecting to see flames shooting out an attic window or something. Either that, or the inhabitants are racking up one hell of an electric bill.

  5. Oh come on, Kinkade is GENIUS. it is so NOT an inferno inside. an inferno would be RED. you missed the subtle part.

    per the abstract art:

    So a nouveau riche goes to buy some art. The gallery owner talks him into a stark white canvas with a single black dot in the center.

    A year or so later, he goes back. The gallery owner shows him–a stark white canvas with -two- black dots in the center.

    The guy goes, “I don’t like it. Too ongepotchket.“

  6. exhibit A reminds me a little of the cover of death cab for cutie’s 2000 opus, “we have the facts and we’re voting yes”. you’re spot on about the retro graphics feel – it’s got some pop art elements to it, and the one third space is strict classical composition.

    the second one reminds me of a piece of graphic art that a very talented designer friend did to cover a mix cassette he made me back in the 90s. it also reminds me a little bit of marcel duchamp.

    of course we all think our kids are geniuses every time they fill a diaper, but your kid definitely has something. no need to cajole, push or pressure – just keep leaving the art supplies lying around. i’ve got a funny feeling we’re going to be seeing more of this artist.

  7. The last few threads here on Feministe have put me in such a black mood, but I can’t help smiling every time I come back and see the white-on-black picture, and thinking of the guy who decided to paint what he sees when his eyes are a little bit open. It’s kind of beautiful.

  8. My grandmother has a night light of a Thomas Kinkade picture. It’s really quite horrifying.

    (And your kid’s art is really neat.)

  10. JW is spot on. There’s nothing interesting at all in that painting. I wouldn’t even bother putting it on a $2 jigsaw puzzle. Also, the lighting is really weird, the lighting around the ground isn’t consistent with the lighting on and from the house. Now that I’ve noticed, it really irritates me.

    The piece across from Clown Torture was another conceptual dealie featuring 168 pounds of individually wrapped hard candy dumped in a heap on the floor that the public was invited to take and eat, one piece at a time. When the candy was gone, it was replaced again, and so it went. The piece was inspired by the artist’s boyfriend, who, at the time he was diagnosed with AIDS, weighed 168 pounds. The slowly disappearing candy represented his wasting away from his illness. The last candy taken represented his death.

    I love that work. Absolutely love it. It’s by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, one of my favourite artists. Another of his works, Untitled (Perfect Lovers) is an example of good conceptual art.

  11. Also, I’m seriously considering picking up my oil paints again so I can do a faux-Kincade painting where you maybe don’t notice it at first but the house is actually on fire, and then maybe I can become rich and famous or at least sell T-shirts.

  12. There was a site in which readers were invited to contribute changed Kincade paintings; several involved an imminent visit by Chuthulu. I couldn’t find it again on Google, though. Google is not my friend! Here’s a place with one of the pics, though.

    There was also a story in the WaPo last week about an artist who got a particularly stupid Dear John letter, and turned it into an installation. She had an English professor critique it, a musician set it to music, etc. That sounded like good art.

  14. The candy piece sounds beautiful and touching. It’s the reason I seek out modern/abstract art, even if I have to sort through a lot of crap.

  15. I saw some darn good Kinkade parodies a while back, but forgot the address. I don’t like his stuff either, but my cousin does. She also likes Bev Doolittle and that Wysocki fellow who does cats in intricate settings with pun-laden labels [as do I.] Go figure.
    As for talentless artists–I took this class some eons back from a fellow in Alaska whose masterpiece that year was a rock hauled out of the woods and put on a pedestal in a lobby with reams of incomprehensible bullshit put up on the wall. All year he told us that art was anything done by people as opposed to nature, and that the act of removing the rock from the woods and putting it on the pedestal automatically made it art. I couldn’t put it all into words back then, but for me that wasn’t enough, and my crap detector went off bigtime every time he opened his mouth anyway. He also did a stone sculpture that looked like it had been deposited by a constipated horse, and this was in the middle of Anchorage. But it was the verbiage that was the deal-breaker for me.

  17. Love the kid’s art. As for conceptual art, can they just think about it instead of making us look at it?

  18. Oh flea — you know where Thomas Kincaid will lead you…

    To Precious Moments figurines and The World’s Widdlest Patwiot?

  20. it looks like theres an atomic amoeba sitting on the chair in the kincade one

    Seriously. It looks like one of the kids left their giant microbe on the porch after brushing it with some kind of phosphorescent paint.

    The whole thing gives me the creeps.

  23. I remember seeing that candy piece when I was in high school. It made me cry.

    Evoking strong emotion or deep thoughts, is what makes art “good” for me. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes certain art complete shit, but I know shit when I see it. I suppose the fact that complete shit art makes me want to break things, makes it good art, in a way…

  24. Oh come on, Kinkade is GENIUS. it is so NOT an inferno inside. an inferno would be RED. you missed the subtle part.

    Rilly. It’s like you people have never seen a Tudor Revival mansion-cottage stuffed to the gills with growlights before.

    and yeah, elecktrodot’s right–what the hell is that green and red thing?!

    It’s Halloween, and one of the local kids is going as an Atomic Jalapeno.

  25. Before I read the post and just saw Snowball Family, the art, with the caption, I thought, who’s that? I want that. Could I get a poster of that or something?

    Christopher’s got one hell of a career ahead of him if he wants it. I would buy Snowball Family from you if you would sell it to me. No joke.

  26. Why does it always look like there’s a blistering inferno inside every house he draws?

    Whyyyyyy?????? I was sitting on my sofa relaxing and checking Feministe when suddenly a Kinkade popped on to my screen at the exact moment my dear husband was bringing me a frosty beverage. So rather than merely enjoying said beverage, I had to listen to the 20 minute diatribe on how he can’t understand how artists with no understanding of the concept of light become famous (for the 5 millionth time). After 8 years I can almost tell you the diatribe…word..for…word…but I’ll spare you the horror.

    Suffice it to say…someone owes me a frosty beverage… 🙂

    Also…if you just happen to put a big canvas in front of your child, I’m pretty sure my husband would buy it. 🙂

  27. Didn’t 60 Minutes do a piece on Kincaid a while back?

    And it’s good to see that I wasn’t the only one confused by the thing on the chair. I’m pretty sure it’s Jesus. Although, if it was the Virgin Mary, it’d explain why he sells so many paintings.

  28. It’s the contrived aspect of Kinkade that makes it extra vomitous. Your child’s work is amazing because it’s a pure expression–he rendered an experience artistically, really the same way the work by Gonzalez-Torres expresses an experience that is communicated through the vehicle of candy. There’s not one drop of sincerity in any of Kinkade’s work; it’s proof that technical skill (at least in mastering perspective) has little to do with artistic expression. Bleccch, I say, bleccch. The only emotion he wants to create in the viewer is the set of sensations similar to that of desiring to flush their money down the toilet.

  29. Why do the people in the house in the Kincaid painting have all those bloody lights on in the middle of the day? It looks very fishy to me.

  30. my dad *likes* kincaid – something about how they change depending on the angle of the light in the room. i’m just glad he thinks they’re too expensive.

    and yes. make posters of “Snowball Family” and I will buy one.

  31. Why do the people in the house in the Kincaid painting have all those bloody lights on in the middle of the day? It looks very fishy to me.

    Grow lights.

  32. I really like Snowball Family. You might want to get a few of the pieces framed, in all seriousness. I knew a couple who decided to hold a exhibit of local art in their cafe and included their four-year-old daughter’s Spider Falling picture because, honestly, it really captured the idea of a falling spider in a few bold strokes and it looked fantastic in a simple frame. A customer actually offered $50 for the piece but the little girl refused. She said it was part of her.

  33. belledame: I love Ghost World! “it’s a tampon in a teacup!” ahaha.

    Also, I recognized that art is about way more than technical skill when I realized if I was just patient, I could draw decent sketches from life–decent as in, they resembled the things I was drawing, but I am quite aware I lack any artistic talent at all.

  34. Why do the people in the house in the Kincaid painting have all those bloody lights on in the middle of the day? It looks very fishy to me.

    And is there smoke coming from the chimney when early summer flowers are blooming? And why are early summer flowers blooming when that one tree’s leaves have turned? I don’t think these are things you can think too hard about without your mind exploding.

    Also, what the fuck is that ghostly chili pepper looking thing by the front door?

  36. My tastes are bourgeois enough that I don’t hate Kincade.

    However, you can get that effect by taking a nice photo of a house and using fun darkroom techniques … or nowadays you can do such things on your computer. It’s fun to work out protocols and such that give you all sorts of “artistic” results … and why limit yourself to Kincade’s color scheme and quasi (house-on-fire-but-the-color-is-slightly-off) realism … you can go a little further afield even with photographs taking in your parents’ ‘hood coupled with a bit o’ photoshop.

    Of course, as you can tell, my childhood pictures were not of the same quality of flea’s kid’s pictures … so you can only imagine what flea’s kid will do artistically 🙂

  37. Re: abstract art … maybe it’s just me, but I always thought that Bob Ross could have made a mint selling his backgrounds. Once he put all those trees and such on the paintings, they did tend to become ongepatchket (although it was appropriate for what he was doing — you need to work through lots of examples to teach people something): but the first layer(s) of paint — before he painted anything in particular — those were aesthetically pleasing and probably would say meaningful things to the art critics.

    I do believe he missed his calling as a serious, abstract artist. Seriously, what he did, before he actually put things on the canvas, was better than a lot of what passes for art nowadays.

  38. And is there smoke coming from the chimney when early summer flowers are blooming? And why are early summer flowers blooming when that one tree’s leaves have turned? I don’t think these are things you can think too hard about without your mind exploding. –
    Betsy

    Most people wouldn’t even notice this sort of thing … even people who claim to be (or whom pundits claim to be) the “salt of the earth”. And we moonbats wonder why people don’t “get” global warming or why people think GW Bush is tough on terrorists? People just aren’t as careful about seeing if things add up as they ought to be …

  39. (crossposting the comment to the crossposted post. Infinite recursion?)

    You know what bothers me about Thomas Kinkade? That cottage is freaking huge! No one needs a house that big! Especially not with those whimsical overpitched roofs, which are going to make the heating bills suck even if people do manage to turn the lights off from time to time.

    Thomas Kinkade causes global warming.

    Why yes, I do live in an area with a lot of whimsical-cute huge-summer-home construction, how did you guess? Kinkade is bad enough on a wall, but splattered all over the landscape it’s really retchable.

    I liked Snowball Family the best. I would totally buy a print of that. Or at least, you know, a postcard.

  40. it looks like theres an atomic amoeba sitting on the chair in the kincade one

    I had to scroll back up and look. you’re inarguably correct.

    this is a universe in which atomic amoebas perch serenely on kitschy floral porch chairs, the undersides of leaves (and everything else) are lit by at least three conflicting sources, and nowhere in the apocalyptically-color-soaked whole wide world can one locate a single dot of grey, not even on a nostalgic slate-green roof.

    except, hopefully, when Cthulu drops by.

  43. Gaaaaah!

    Could you put a *warning* out if you are going to show disturbing images like that Thomas Kincaid thing?!!? THANK you! Now I gotta go wash my eyeballs…. *grumble*

    Honestly, I think it’s that every stinkin’ picture of his is exactly the same in essence, none of it is very interesting (“restful” as opposed to interesting in any way, and BTW, I *like* Impressionists, who did not capture terribly dynamic scenes, but did so in a way that they seemed ALIVE, not preserved in stasis), and he fucking *trademarks* himself. “Thomas Kincaid, Painter of Light ™” Gaaaaaah! *scrubs madly at brains*

    As for the radioactive jalepeno thingie, I’m gonna go with “glitch in someone’s machine, somewhere along the line”, as it seems to be just sort of floating there, not firmly attached to something as you might expect from Mr. Every Light in the House ON.

    BTW, not terribly into abstract art, but the young artist above has some cool ideas. Much encouragement! 🙂

  44. I take it y’all aren’t going to search for the upcoming film (a series, I think) about Kincaide, eh? I’m pretty sure someone’s making movies to be shown on Lifetime or something. I’m not a big enough Jared Padalecki fangrrl to sit through them.

    My parents and my dorky sister and BIL are really into Kincaide, which makes me full of shame just through association.

    Seriously, though, I really enjoy Black and White. Your kid’s got a certain something.

  45. If you enjoyed Something Awful’s first take on Thomas Kinkade, there’s a 2nd crop right here. These two collections together made me laugh so hard I could barely breathe. Explosions! Dinosaurs! Gore! And all in such precious, precious settings 🙂

  46. I liked Snowball Family. I will admit, I didn’t understand Black and White at first, but when you explained it, the concept actually fascinated me.

    Art is subjective, but I think we sometimes go too far with that mentality to the point where we’re calling sheer lazy crap “art”, so as not to offend anyone. “Artists are clowns”? Sound pretty piss-poor to me. The candy tribute, on the other hand, is touching and original.

    And oh my god, the mall that I used to work at, they actually had a fucking KINKADE STORE. I SHIT YOU NOT.

  47. Its hard to find an abstract piece of work I like, mainly cause I don’t get the concept, or don’t feel like the artist really cared for what he/she was creating. The candy piece is very touching and orginal.

    I like how they are technically good artworks that are unorginal, boring, and just plain sucky, even painful Thomas KinKade), as well not so technically art pieces that spur inspiration and emotion (the candy piece and Snowball Family).

    Then there is that Clown Torture “work of art”…*sighs* well to each his or her own (no matter how terrible it is).

  49. To Precious Moments figurines and The World’s Widdlest Patwiot?

    Yes! Who fights tewwowism! Ah, the Painter of Light(tm).

    Love, love, love both the Fridge Works. I kept a lot of lp’s stuff from around that age. Actually, I keep a lot of her stuff from every age, and treating her like an artist means she can talk with other artists, who are almost universally interested in making art with her. It’s a lost language; resurrect it, sez I.

  51. whenever I look at a kinkade painting, I amuse myself by thinking in the very next moment, a giant foot a la Monty Python will come down and squish the entire scene.

    And I must join the chorus of WTF is the deal w/the giant radioactive jalapeno on the porch? Scary.

  52. Your kid does have talent. My husband would like both of those (he’s into abstract stuff). If you were selling posters/prints, I’d be interested.

    For myself, however, I like art (pictures or sculptures) that actually look like something. Probably it’s because I have no artistic sensibilities whatsoever and am arguably the least creative and talented person on the planet (except in the kitchen–I express myself with food), but I really don’t get abstract art. Once it’s explained to me and if it just looks interesting, it’s fine, but otherwise I can’t get into it. And as for the conceptual stuff, again, I usually need it explained before I get it, and then I usually think it probably wasn’t worth the effort.

    I will agree that Kincade is annoying, though. Art should look like actual stuff, but it doesn’t have to be boring or cutesy.

  53. You all took all the funny shit I had to say about Kinkaid already! ::pout::

    There are so many things to hate about Kinkaid other than his “art.” For one, that he doesn’t actually paint the paintings anymore (sorry — he “highlights” them after they are painted; want to bet how fun it is to watch that soulless, craven process?!?) but still sells them as originals to hapless, trend-fucking morons. For another, that his devotees are so batshit that they have made a market for a whole stupid residential development to be built in the “style” of his “art” (no word on whether or not the HOA rules require all home lights to be alit at all times, chimneys running, despite it being daytime or summer). Ugh. Wretched.

    As for the modern abstract stuff, I feel like I get a subconscious sense when looking at it as to whether the artist is laughing, either with me or at me, or whether the artist is dead serious. Doesn’t mean that the art is good in either case, but I certainly have bigger issues with the artists who think they’re oh-so-very clever at the expense of the viewing (and, evidently, purchasing) public. Jeff Koons always struck me as someone whose work screamed, “Can you fucking believe that the art world takes my bullshit seriously?!? Hahahaha!!! Suck my dick, art world!!!” It seems that the video artist types are as serious as the grave, though, but their work goes the other way, being way too self-consciously serious, and the 12-year-old in me can’t help but Beavis out while watching it. Oh well.

  54. I saw both of those works in Chicago- and had just about the same impression. Plus, clowns are just a terrible idea always.

    Whenever I see particularly random abstract work, I think of the scene from LA Story when Steve Martin goes on and on about how evocative and sensual etc etc a painting is, and in the end you see that it is a plain red canvas.
    And while I like and appreciate “Snowball Family”, I really, really like “Black and White”.

  55. While I too am not a fan of Kincade, as an artist myself it really got my defenses up to hear his work dismissed as “a piece of shit.”

    He may not be my style (no, not at all my style), but both technically and aesthetically, he is not a bad artist. He has great technical skill (I would kill to get some of the effects he does, and take a look at those trees! they’re good!), and his compositions and color schemes are really successful at evoking a feeling of comfort. In fact I would say he’s very good at what he does. I think his audience would agree with me on that, because clearly he’s been successful. Again, it’s certainly not something I’d spend money on and put in my own home, but there are many people in the world whose taste doesn’t match mine. Trite as I may think their taste tends I would hesitate to call it “shit” – I mean, honestly.

    In a way it raises a question that I, as both an artist and a scholar of literature, find very interesting: what makes art (in a very broad sense) legitimate? I think it’s mostly not based on the quality of the art itself, but in a strange relationship constantly being negotiated between economic success and legitimacy bestowed upon it by those who themselves are considered legitimate.

    I would approach your kids’ art in the same way, because I am a fan of both the pieces you posted (and especially black-and-white!): they’ve got the lack of economic success that makes them “legitimate”, but are lacking praise and recognition by “legitimate” critics in the art world. I don’t think it’s any more fitting to dismiss their art as “a piece of shit” than to do so to someone like Kincade’s work.

    As for discussion of modern and contemporary art, as someone who has found great release through abstract art of my own (although my style definitely tends toward traditional realism), in my opinion it’s likely more about the process than the product. What I mean is that it’s probably less about whether you’re supposed to “get it” and more about what it meant and means to the artist. Now as to how gallery decisions are made, well, that’s definitely not my area of expertise. 🙂

  56. Oops, I realized I wrote something that was clear to me in my own head, but sounds vague in my post.

    When I said that Kincade (sp? hmm) is successful at evoking a comforting feeling, I did not mean that I personally find it comforting to look at his paintings. In fact, like many people here, I’m creeped out by the white supremacist upper-class suburban world he explores in his paintings.

    What I should have wrote is that he is very successful at evoking that feeling for some people but that not everyone will have that same reaction.

    And I can’t believe I of all people am defending this artist here, I who just started a painting this afternoon based on At the Mountains of Madness – yeah. Translating that non-Euclidean geometry into the visual medium is going to be an interesting challenge. x_x

  57. This thread is so comforting to me. My sister and I once got kicked out of a Kinkade Gallery for doubling over in laughter at the horrid pictures therein, and for audibly making bets on how many candles would be burning in the next cottage’s windows, or how many proud American flags would be flying in the next cityscape.

    Mali, though I’m pretty damned judgmental by nature, I try to be careful about casting aspersions on people’s tastes in art. But to my mind, Kinkade doesn’t produce artwork; he draws pictures of cliches. He exploits the most common, pedestrian, easily accessible symbols of all that is good in his narrow little mind, crams as many of them onto each canvas as possible, and then has his lackeys color them in so that he can rake in gazillions of dollars. (And just to be sure no one misses the sticky-sweet puddle of Traditional Values on each piece, he helpfully sells them as night lights and calendars and mouse pads with “inspirational” Bible verses pasted on top.)

    I’ve got nothing against art whose primary goal is to offer comfort. But what he’s offering is ridiculously simplistic and fundamentally cynical, and I can’t help feeling that anyone who’s comforted by it just hasn’t thought it through.

  58. I like Christopher’s art very much.
    I’d never heard of Thomas Kincade before, but I’ve become vaguely aware that there is is art out there that is on purpose referencing kitsch. Is that what this is? Or is this the real thing? See, here’s where I get intimidated by visual art. I always feel 10 years out of date, because I am.

  59. Crap. You know I had gotten this far in life without knowing who Thomas Kinkade was and you have to go and ruin it. At least I know understand what was being ripped from the headlines from a Law & Order episode obviously based on Kinkade.

    But yeah, you’re kid’s stuff is really quite good. I especially like Snowball Family. Its a very interesting palette of colors used.

  60. mali, I’m no artist, and some of Kinkaide’s stuff I’ve seen — my MIL has one — isn’t really all that dreadful. There’s a place in the world for art that matches the sofa, after all. Still, in that particular picture the sun is over the third gable to the right, but the light on the lawn appears to be coming from the far left. Thus, the lawn lights are perpendicular to the sun. Either he’s trying to say something really, really weird, like “this is a suburb on a planet orbiting a binary star system,” or he just wasn’t paying attention.

    Oh, and yeah, Christopher is great. I’ll have to get my son Aaron to draw something and post that. Flea and I can have a juvenile art contest.

  61. Thank you all very, very much for your excellent taste in children’s art! I read Christopher some of your comments, and he got very excited.

    He says to tell you all that for two dollars, he will print his artwork, sign it, and mail it to you. A steal, if you ask me.

  62. flea, set him up a paypal account, and I’ll fork over a few bucks myself. We have a new bigger house and I have about five pics total with which to cover the space…and my son isn’t old enough to paint yet.

    What bugs me about Kinkade is that, if you like soft, imprssionistic scenes to go with your couch…well, Lord, there’s a million great prints by actual Impressionists that you can get for peanuts. My suspicion is that the reason Kinkade appeals to most of his clientele is his overt God-iosity, in that many of his paintings come pre-inscribed with Bible verses–though I am not at all sure what the Bible has to do with blurry hypercolored pastoral scenes. Anyway, he’s marketed as an Amurican Christian Painter(tm), and you buy him so that you don’t have to risk letting the works of decadent Frenchmen like Van Gogh into your Amurican Christian home.

    As the Fark links show, Kinkade is so bland that adding any note of discordance…nuclear clouds, dinosaurs, murder scenes…actually improves them, and gives them a story. As is, they have no story, except “wow, those are some bright blue delphiniums, there.”

  64. Thanks for the links! I’m glad I wasn’t just hallucinating the redone images. 🙂 Kincade is also a real asshole, from what I understand. There have been several news stories about him harassing employees, harassing women, etc.

  66. Here’s a story about some of his antics. Although, one almost has to grudgingly admire him for this one : “urinating in public – […] on a model of Winnie the Pooh at a Disneyland hotel. “This one’s for you, Walt,” Mr Sheppard claimed the artist said as he did so.”

  68. As near as I can tell, Kincade’s paintings are a form of iconography. That is, they’re a collection of symbols designed to evoke certain feelings or memories. The houses with lots of light shining from the windows and smoke rising from the rooves symbolize the inhabitants’ prosperous activity. The houses’ architecture and their setting in saturated-color, perfectly tended untrodden lawns and flowerbeds symbolize rural safety and peace. Plus land of your own, without anyone pitching their litter into it, is another marker of prosperity. And I suspect there’s also a reaction against the steel/concrete/asphalt/plastic surfaces which fill so much of the less-affluent parts of cities.

  69. I’m here to rain on the “awww kids!” parade – I don’t really think your child’s art belongs on a blog like this. Of course it’s not my blog, so really, do what you want. I’m just sayin’.

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