I can only presume that you were in the basement with Satan. I'm so sorry for that. Thomas Kinkade could have put some light into your life...so sad you didn't give him the chance.
—Priscilla Tucker, in a comment in response to another comment to an LA Times obituary
I should first note that my mother's family name is "Kitch." This certainly shapes the character of my critical affinities and my relationship with the late Thomas Kinkade. I also grew up and live in Monterey, former location of the Thomas Kinkade National Archive (the sign presently reads just "The National Archive"), a few minutes from Carmel, Kinkade's home away from home. I would like to think I have a special relationship with the man.
"A Kinkade" for six years now has not meant a painting to me. "A Kinkade" was a kind of practical joke, part art project, part attack on the bourgeoisie, part waste of time. My friend Brendan happened upon a torn-out picture of Thomas Kinkade: the artist taking a break from painting, I imagine, to pose in apron and goatee and with that classic Kinkade smile. We blew up and photocopied the image and made Kinkade say things—absurd things, heartbreaking things, matter-of-fact things—and we posted Kinkades around the small liberal arts college campus we attended at the time. The agreed-upon favorite was "I don't like spaghetti westerns...but I love spaghetti!" The humor arose from the juxtaposition of the quote and the image of the artist, but also from the juxtaposition of Kinkade (successful commercial "art," profit, schmaltz, "painting") with us (unsuccessful, uncommercial "art," economic loss, black and white seriousness, photocopying). What was strange about Kinkade's "paintings" was that they were less real—more reproduced—than the one-of-a-kind photocopies we made; the paint brush ended up with countless reproductions while the photocopier yielded originals. At a certain point we also made Thomas Kinkade a myspace page. We spelled "Thom" wrong, but as an homage to the founder of myspace—Tom. We gave Thomas quirky, unrealistic attributes, interests, etc. but we kept getting sincere messages and comments from other people's myspace accounts—people who were touched by his/our work, his/our message, his/our light. Which was more inconceivable—enjoying Kinkade's "paintings" and not realizing that this was a joke myspace page and not expecting that someone would pretend to be the electronic representation of a real person just to mock them; or actually pretending to be the electronic representation of a real person just to mock them? I have no answer to this question.
To the creative, intellectual, forward-thinking person who makes things by hand, and prefers hand-made things—i.e. an artist—Kinkade is abhorrent. His fans would say he is attacked as a Christian, as a commentator corroborated in response to an unflattering L.A Times obituary.
The liberal media hates to honor Christians. They try and dig up anything negative to discredit a good person. Them trying to tarnish Thomas is so horrible but not shocking. He is missed by millions. I loved his work and him as a person. I know he is in heaven, no more sadness or pain. ♥
Simcha Fisher beautifully deconstructs the-light-in-his-paintings-is-overwhelming-and-inexplicable-because-it-is-Jesus argument in her article on the technical elements of Kinkade's work. She argues that in classical Christian iconography there is also a discernible light, but, unlike in Kinkade's "paintings," it is recognizable as emanating from God, it follows an artistic logic.
By showing light in the form of exaggerated highlights, fuzzy halos, and a hyperluminescent shine on everything, regardless of where they are in the composition, he isn’t revealing the true nature of—anything. It’s a bafflingly incoherent mish-mosh of light: an orange sunset here, a pearly mid-morning sheen there, a crystal-clear reflection in one spot, a hazy mist in the other—all impossibly coexisting in the same scene.
From his politics to his business model to his embrace of suburban culture to his anachronistic acceptance of an "uncomplicated' tradition that is sexist, homophobic, racist, anti-socialist, etc.—Kinkade represents all that is antithetical to the advancement of our culture. The articles and the comments all take on a red state/blue state split. People who like Kinkade are the people who drive Hummers. And the "haters" don't like Kinkade's politics.
I really hate the L.A. Times sometimes. They were just baiting the atheists to bash this talented artist. Look at the beginning of the fourth paragraph. It begins "Kinkade was a politically conservative Christian." I can understand saying that he was Christian since his paintings were based on images of Christ and other Biblical images. But of course they had to add the other two adjectives. Why does politics even matter? The ultra liberal L.A. Times is at it again.
The creative, intellectual liberal makes the potentially erroneous assumption that certain ideals—inclusion, internationalism, social justice, equality, mutual religious and cultural respect, etc.—can only be expressed artistically by those who hold them as political beliefs. This is a somewhat adolescent conclusion made by myself as an adolescent at the height of the anti-intellectual assaults of both Kinkade and the Bush Administration. However, with certain nuance and exception I still believe this, though I contend that I don't dislike Kinkaid for his conservatism—I dislike the despicable things about him, and it just stacks up as another illustration to this adolescent paradigm that the creative conservative elite have yet to break down. In other words, until someone takes critical thought seriously, I refuse to take him seriously. And so I did not take him seriously.
Christmas 2008 I thought it was hilarious when he put out an autobiographical movie about a young artist finding his artistic calling one glorious Christmas. A few years later, upon returning to my hometown of Monterey, I read in the local paper that Kinkade was arrested for driving drunk in Carmel, and I gloated. Today, writing on the occasion of Thomas Kinkade's death, I am not proud of it. But on that day I called up old friends just to make sure they heard. I read his wikipedia page and learned incredible details about his hypocritical, drunken antics (this salon.com article discusses the relevant Kinkade Kontroversies [KinKontroversies/Kintroverkades]).
Last night I was up late writing a song about Thomas Kinkade. Much was uncertain for me. How does an affluent 54 year old die of natural causes? His antics were hinting at Charlie Sheen status toward the end and we're expected to believe natural causes? We're supposed to think, "Whitney, sure—but not Kinkade!"? The whole concept of a man obsessed with light, that he would die super young, seemed backwards. Or maybe it is sickly appropriate—a man is only slightly unconscious, not even really ill, but he is so predisposed to go to the light, as it were, that he never had a chance when he bumped his head, stood up too quickly, etc.
Also, why were people such gloating jerks about it immediately? Where's the respect for human life? I found myself lacking a perspective, a little context, for someone in my position. I have for the last ten years been in dialogue with people who were familiar with Thomas Kinkade, and who personally resented his success and bamboozlement of an entire population. However, he also provided a perfect representation of why the great traditions of art—painting on canvas, framing it, and putting it on a wall—are over. We lived in a post-Kinkade world (in a different way than we do now) and nobody was breaking any rules, covering new ground, etc. if he was following the same logic of Kinkade, the same logic followed by Jackson Pollack, Van Gogh, etc. that of a drunk male genius on a hill or in a fucking cottage with an easel and paint and brushes. How many avant-garde artists opened up galleries in malls to mock Kinkade? How many surreal ceremonial accounts of themepark anniversaries were sold or celebrated in the art world? How many people acknowledged that Kinkade was art to a greater population of our country than any one man has been since Norman Rockwell?
As far as I am concerned this is that obituary. This is my acknowledgment that something important has happened to the creative members of my generation—the mockery that has been made of California art, the perverse synthesis of small town stereotypes with SoCal-style suburbs, the mall-ification of high culture, the creation of an idiot suburban upper class that has outgrown intellectual urban culture much more than could have been foreseen fifty years ago when white people and their money fled society—the great emblem of our dissatisfaction is deceased. What better time to retake popular art and let the people choose themselves as their creative voices. I am obviously excited. I have stopped making complete sen(ten)se(s). Maybe he wrote manifestoes! Maybe he sincerely expressed himself in unshown works! Maybe... The results of the autopsy are weeks away, apparently. In the meantime he remains a legend in subverting the art world. He created his own market, his own art universe on his own really shitty terms.
And when a movie is made Meryl Streep may reprise her role as Susan Orlean and the script could be adapted from her now decade-old brilliant New Yorker article on Kinkade. I volunteer to play Kinkade, or at least the Nicholas Cage character.
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