Posted on 03/24/2006 6:35:10 PM PST by aculeus
Entrepreneur artist who hangs in one in 20 US homes accused of fraud and drunken antics
"There's over 40 walls in the average American home," a business manager for the artist Thomas Kinkade once said, "and Thom says our job is to figure out how to populate every single wall in every single home and every single business throughout the world with his paintings."
Kinkade's luridly idyllic landscapes, full of quaint cottages and glowing firelight, already hang in an estimated one in 20 US homes. "In the often hurried, unsympathetic and complex world we live in, the images Thomas Kinkade paints offer a place of refuge," his company's literature purrs. "A place where the transient things of life give way to the things that matter most ... faith and family, a loving home and the people who know and love us."
Art critics have long dismissed his work as a kitsch crime against aesthetics. But now the world has grown even more "unsympathetic and complex" for the artist, who describes himself as a devout Christian and has trademarked his "Painter of Light" soubriquet. In court documents and other testimony, he has been accused of sexual harassment, fraudulent business practices and bizarre incidents of drunkenness including a habit of "ritual territory marking" that involves urinating in public places.
'Misleading picture'
A court-appointed arbitration panel has ruled in favour of two former owners of Kinkade-branded galleries, ordering his company to pay them $860,000 (£500,000) for breaching "the covenant of good faith and dealing" and failing to disclose pertinent business information.
(Excerpt) Read more at arts.guardian.co.uk ...
Okay, how is Mick Jagger more cultural and aspiring than Elvis?
How was Elvis' upbringing any more chaotic than any poor family of the time?
I notice it seems some sort of alien spacecraft is giving off light behind the trees in several of his works.
I was dying to play on this thread yesterday, but I was blind...
I like it!!! Those ants 'speak' to me :)
I like Escher. :-)
"You are going to break my Internet if you keep posting this stuff"- Algor
I don't know how I missed it yesterday, work may have interfered. #119 post I am still wiping tears from my eyes.
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