- group portrait of his servants -
Posted on 03/06/2006 8:18:41 PM PST by tbird5
Christian-themed artist Thomas Kinkade is accused of ruthless tactics and seamy personal conduct. He disputes the allegations.
Thomas Kinkade is famous for his luminous landscapes and street scenes, those dreamy, deliberately inspirational images he says have brought "God's light" into people's lives, even as they have made him one of America's most collected artists.
A devout Christian who calls himself the "Painter of Light," Kinkade trades heavily on his beliefs and says God has guided his brush — and his life — for the last 20 years.
"When I got saved, God became my art agent," he said in a 2004 video biography, genteel in tone and rich in the themes of faith and family values that have helped win him legions of fans, albeit few among art critics.
But some former Kinkade employees, gallery operators and others contend that the Painter of Light has a decidedly dark side.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I'm probably being too hard on him. I just can't stand blatantly derivative work, even though I know everybody has to go through that stage . . .
- group portrait of his servants -
MY untrained eye sees it completely differently. The first painting looks kind of real and the second one looks like a disjointed mess. It looks like the waterfall in the foreground is being pushed up the back side of the mountain and spilling on to the front of the mt. the waterfall in the background seems to be coming from nowhere and going nowhere, fwiw.
Is that a Ginger Bread house?
That is what has brought us inexplicable blobs of paint, piles of construction debris, and ruled lines as "art". . . artistic relativism, and one person's idea of "art" is just as good as another's.
There ARE objective standards, there ARE technical skills to be mastered, and there ARE some works and artists that are better than others. This idea that just inspiration and good intentions is somehow enough is nonsense. Would you hire a carpenter who couldn't lay out a rafter course? Then why an artist who hasn't mastered perspective, light, or figure drawing?
It's not a matter of snobbery -- I am the descendant of wild Highlanders and Alabama dirt farmers. So what? Anybody can learn this stuff if they pay attention.
Mr. Holloway has a nice deft touch. His color drawings of personalities from history remind me, a little, of Arthur Rackham but without the macabre touch.
Oddball find of the decade - mom beat me to a beautiful 2 foot tall black porcelain vase with cranes and reeds in a hard opaque glaze - very Japonnaise . . . most lovely piece of ceramics I've ever seen close up.
But you don't know if what you think I'm thinking is what I'm actually thinking . . . < g >
Bump for later reading, looks interesting
I swear you can hear the budding drips almost bursting forth in the struggling early Pollock, strongly influenced by Benton's Steel on the left.
There is lots of wonderful art out there. Looking for it is half the fun.
I can't comment on the "series" issues, but I adore just about everything I have seen of Rothko's, and think it deserves its prominent display in the best modern art museums of the world. Of course, a postcard, poster, or Internet image can not do justice to the subtleties of his colors. Beelzebubba
Perfectly stated, Beelzebubba. Rothko's work is full of subtleties, not something you get on line, in books, or something that you "get" quickly.
Richard, I've written about some of the content in de Kooning, Rothko, Pollock and others in lectures you can access clickably on my home page. I hate to go into a repeating rant here, but there really is something in their works. Now, re Barnett Newman, I might agree with you there....
Beelzebubba, can you turn me onto Newman's work? It has never seemed as rich as Rothko's to me.
I bought a pair of original watercolors at an auction a few years ago. Had them re-matted and put back in the original frames. They are street scenes of Mexico by an artist with a Spanish-sounding name. I think they are from the 40's...the color palette is subdued like a lot of works of that era. I have no idea what they are, but they are beautiful and original, and it makes me happy that I rescued them. (I got them both for $5.00, including the frames.)
That stuff is dreck . . . but that's where the "every man his own critic" idea leads.
The interesting point that strikes me about Rockwell and Kinkade (feels weird to be placing both names in the same sentence) is that the personalities of both men are reflected in their art.
Richard: what an elegant description of Rothko's chapel! I was not impressed when I went there in the late 80s, probably because those subtle reds has already faded. I always felt his blocks were like floating doors to the beyond; like graves from the early tragedy in his Russian ancestry: when the Jews of the village dug their own grave before being shot by the Czar's soldiers.
Linda: that very Rothko show at the Guggenheim, circa 1980, turned me around on Rothko and opened my mind to his work. Yes, the cycling of depression downward into darkness was very powerful indeed.
Another version of the Voyage hangs in Utica NY at the Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute. I used to see it frequently there. They have other fine Hudson River School paintings there; as does the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, CT.
Here are three of the five Course of Empire works:
Is the message about the hubris and eventual fall of nations still relevant? Think about where the US was in 1845, with Jacksonian Democracy. Some think Cole was criticizing the popularizing president Jackson.
Couldn't have said it better. Although this does sound like character assassination.
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