Jeff, imo comparing Kinkade to some visually simple modern art is a pretty big red herring. Kinkade’s figurative, representational, brushwork painting, and the obvious comparison is with good figurative representational brushwork painting.
Anybody that can afford one of the stupid overpriced Kinkades could have had 2-3 times as many comparable quality prints of good art from centuries worth of “painting’s greatest hits.” There’s really no excuse for it on any level. Even if you want to look at a disney cottage in a disney forest, get a damned Disney cell painting and frame it.
The whole “collectible” thing is fascinating, not just Kinkade, which I can understand (after all, this is a guy whose death made the news headlines) but all of the crap you see on TV ads. It’s easy to laugh at “Only a limited number of Hillary Clinton head gold plated buffalo nickels will be made, and once these are sold, the mold will be destroyed” ads, but apparently people buy this stuff and hang on to it an display it with pride.
One of the warnings we got early on when we got involved with art was that, towards the end of his life, Dali would sign huge numbers of blank papers upon which people would mass print a number of his prints, numbering them above his pre-signature. There are massive numbers of these “signed, numbered prints” by Dali on the market, prints that Dali never laid eyes upon. And no doubt most of them are proudly displayed on the walls of home as people show off their Dali.
I don’t disagree that his paintings are hotel art. But my point was, when you get into art, people like what they like. If one person loves a Kinkade, fine. I think it’s crap, but OK. And if I watch someone fawn over a single pencil line that is about 4 inches long on a huge white canvas, I personally think that’s crap too (and yeah, I have studied modern art and there are styles I appreciate even if I don’t like it) and then pay over $13,000 for it, OK. Because compared to other similar artists they could easily have a couple of much better pieces, but since it is that style, eh.
Early on when we started going to the Gerhard Wurzer gallery in Houston, and the owner took us under his wing (we’d spend entire afternoons with him in his office, going through art books, then out into the gallery, etc.) he told us the most important part of collecting art was to own what you like, not what other people tell you you should like. We still love our beautiful Zupan oil that we bought way back then, and some of our various styles of prints, and our smaller Pissaro remarked print, because, well, we just really like them. If someone really loves a Kinkade, fine for them, I don’t begrudge them for that.
“I think it was Roy or Siegfried or whatever had a codpiece in his leotards,” Dandois testified. “And so when the show started, Thom [Kinkade] just started yelling, ‘Codpiece, codpiece,’ and had to be quieted by his mother and Nanette.”
His art might have been crap, but this is awesome.
Apparently, there’s a recent movie about him - Thomas Kinkade’s Christmas Cottage, featuring Peter O’Toole, Chris Elliott, and Bull from Night Court in its cast. Billed as a drama, oddly enough.
I had a Kinkade puzzle (I asked for Christmas many years ago) and what his wintery cottage scenes said to me was tranquility, peace, stability, warmth despite the snow. 1920’s white America in Minnesota, Colorado, Western Maryland.
I never took his art to be anything except shovelware that people could indentify with and never thought anyone would spend more than $100 on one of his prints. Everyone knew he was a mass-market painter so why would someone pay him gobs of money when unnecessary? There was no reason for him to be anything toher than he was. No reaosn to prive himself. He made old and sick people feel good when they look at his pictures. That’s a very thing to do for someone that has more value than getting $2,000,000 per piece.
Sounds like the guy was kind of a mean drunk. In addition to the Siegfried & Roy incident:
It was around that time that Los Gatos locals who had seen him dining with his family in prior years saw him instead partying at the bars. With a restricted driver’s license from a 2010 drunken driving arrest, an armed body guard who doubled as a driver escorted him around town. He would often mix water with $200 bottles of Silver Oak cabernet. He was kicked out of at least one bar and at times could get loud and argue with other patrons, said Pete Jillo, a friend and owner of Gardino Fresco on Santa Cruz Avenue
