The Light Has Gone Out

This past weekend the art world lost a very polarizing figure- Thomas Kinkade. In terms of sales, probably by far the most successful American artist of the past few decades. Yet no serious critic would ever review his work, no major museum would ever show it or collect it, and no art history textbook will ever include his work.

Kinkade was a mass producer of kitsch. Hypercolored paintings of bucolic scenes- think of a quaint cottage in the woods beside a stream, with patches of blooming shrubs and wildflowers spread around. He trademarked for himself the title "Painter of Light", which he claimed had a religious connotation in his paintings. (not exactly a new idea for anyone with minimal knowledge of Baroque art- see Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc). If he was doing all this in the early 1800's, he probably would have fit in well with the Romantic landscape painters of the era.

Kinkade claimed to be a devout Christian and saw his art as an expression of that. Let's say I take him at his word, and believe that his paintings were true examples of self expression of his personal vision. If he had just spent the past few decades turning out his canvases, displaying them in local galleries, and selling them to people who liked that kind of thing, I'd wish him well with a market I have no interest in pursuing. No fellow artist would begrudge him that.

But Kinkade made product, not art. His paintings were reproduced as printed canvases and mass produced posters, which were sold in huge quantities to his gullible fans as genuine fine art at genuine art prices. At his height of success, there was a chain of hundreds of dedicated galleries selling his reproduced "art", along with any other object on which the images could be printed. (this is in addition to thousands of other stores that carried his products as well) His designs were licensed for everything from furniture fabrics, to a whole housing development, plus greeting cards, calendars, and uncountable other "collectibles". There were many examples of customers who had invested six figures in their Kinkade collections. But even then, there were problems. Many of those dedicated galleries failed, with lawsuits following from franchise owners who claimed they were lied to about the business and forced to take on unsalable inventory. And yet Kinkade regularly saw annual revenues over $100 million.

Some super rich art collector spends millions on a contemporary piece of fine art and I believe that they are getting ripped off. However, such people have the millions to spare and one assumes some knowledge of the world of fine art, and if it blows up on them, they'll survive. However most of Kinkade's collectors were not wealthy or art knowledgeable. I saw interviews where his fans were proud of not understanding high art, preferring Kinkade's work because it was pretty and didn't require them to think anything beyond that. I saw an interview in which Kinkade put himself above Picasso, describing the other as a hack who cranked out 10 Picasso's before breakfast to make money. It's true that late in life Picasso was not above producing product, but the work that made his reputation decades earlier was done in spite of its lack of commercial appeal at the time. But how did Kinkade not see himself as just as much a commercial hack, if not worse? Or would he just never admit it to those he was counting on to buy all his licensed art, people who probably couldn't afford the loss?

I think that's why the art world has so little respect for Thomas Kinkade. Not because of his subject and style (which would be just as valid in today's crazy art world as anything else), but because his business was making money, much of it by misleading his fans as to the real value of his product. I'm curious to see what his status will be ten years from now.