Posted on 04/06/2012 8:34:22 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
Thomas Kinkade, the "Painter of Light" and one of most popular artists in America, died suddenly Friday at his Los Gatos home. He was 54.
His family said in a statement that his death appeared to be from natural causes.
"Thom provided a wonderful life for his family,'' his wife, Nanette, said in a statement. "We are shocked and saddened by his death.''
His paintings are hanging in an estimated 1 of every 20 homes in the United States. Fans cite the warm, familiar feeling of his mass-produced works of art, while it has become fashionable for art critics to dismiss his pieces as tacky. In any event, his prints of idyllic cottages and bucolic garden gates helped establish a brand -- famed for their painted high lights -- not commonly seen in the art world.
"I'm a warrior for light," Kinkade told the Mercury News in 2002, alluding not just to his technical skill at creating light on canvas but to the medieval practice of using light to symbolize the divine. "With whatever talent and resources I have, I'm trying to bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel."
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
Add to that inept. Just look at the light and shadows and the wind direction in these “art works”. As to being a good capitalist, just ask the broke owners of the galleries that sold his “paintings” and nothing else, which were really prints with dashes of paint thrown on them by the slave workers in his factory.
Thanks, I’d rather buy an original of an velvet Elvis.
Hahaja ...
Oh, shame on him for painting for the ‘dregs’. What a snob.
Yep!
He was also quite good at self promotion, as in the example of the Thomas Kinkade galleries that popped up like franchises in all the better custom frame shops in every town of any note at all.
Suffice it to say, there are equal or greater artistic talents doing greeting cards for Hallmark, but you don't see anyone clamoring to call their efforts “art.”
You'd be far better served buying antique animation cells from Disney classics, from an investment standpoint. Pretty much the same vibe as Kinkade, too, when you get right down to it. I always expect to see little elves or Bambi cavorting around somewhere in a Kinkade print anyway.
Kinkade was the Danielle Steel of painting!
I could never get past the illogic of his work. Very much like romance novels, with their formula plots recycled over and over again. I guess some people like that kind of thing. And I'll not do anything to keep it from them.
How much for the Kinthulu original?
I alway tell my clients to buy art that they love rather than what they think will be an investment.
I LOVE that middle painting!!
Do you have it in a double wide ?
Those are all Kinkade parodies in #27, and there are more of them on the net.
According to Google, your shutterbug was Carlos Miller, a Miami multimedia journalist who has been arrested three times for recording cops in public
, to quote his About Me. Attaboy, Carlos!
Now, as to which I'd want to frame and hang, that's a hard question. Do I want a high-contrast image with bright colors and literal truth or a a low-contrast painting reflecting an artist's interpretation? It would depend. Both are neat.
You tell me, what kind of a person kicks a well-known and generally liked artist that is known for talking about his work and his faith in the same context, the day its reported he dies?
You objectively tell me how that looks.
He wasn’t painting “for the dregs,” he was painting to make cash off the dregs. He was a huckster who sold “collectibles” that in reality were worth a fraction of what he was selling them for. Sort of like those gold coins that Franklin Mint tries to pawn off at outrageous prices; the suckers who fall for it later find out they could have bought a regular bullion coin for a fraction of the cost with a higher resale value.
Ping to painting #3
It might be poor form to say someone's art was nothing more than commercial marketing on the eve of their death but it was not a nasty comment. It was the truth. Anyone that bought those painting bought into a middle class myth that it was valuable art.
Not trying to say anything nasty myself, just defending someone on FR that chose to speak the truth. FR used to be a place where you could speak the truth. The truth is that "art" is not going to go up in value.
Nice. And vastly superior to Kinkade’s pedestrian dreck ...
Painted by Heironymous Kincaid, I presume.
I love the P-38!
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