His Impact on Art Economics and Visual Culture Defines a Modern Debate
When the painter Thomas Kinkaid, 54, unexpectedly died in his sleep last week at his home in Los Gatos, California, the devoted fans of his cheerful artworks—and the firm that sells his art prints, the Thomas Kinkade Co.—assured the world that his legacy would live on.
Millions of copies of his paintings still adorn American living rooms and calendars, and the “Kinkaid” brand name still goes with Bible verses and curios. But the real core of his legacy will be the debate that he stirred in the American art world.
Neither chic, bohemian, nor avant-garde, Kinkaid claimed to be “the painter of light,” literally and figuratively, as he rose to prominence in the 1980s. He was a somewhat guileless, born-again entrepreneur who made millions upon millions selling his products to fellow Christians, when most artists, curators, and museums were struggling to pay the rent.
The critics said he had ruined art with his kitschy paintings of garish landscapes, which often went to extremes with bright colors. They said he compromised his integrity by franchising his art on mugs, collector plates, figurines, home furnishings, and even a planned housing community that mimicked his idyllic village scenes.
One suspects, however, that both the deep loyalty of some Americans to Kinkaid, and the intense criticism he generated from the modernist art camp, was far more about money and culture than the way he handled a paintbrush.
No one can seriously deny that Kinkaid was a dedicated, skilled artist. He had practiced since his un-privileged youth in rural northern California. He sketched and sketched, went to a Los Angeles art college, published a sketchbook, and painted for an animation studio. As even most painters will concede, he was quite a good plein air—that is, outdoor scenery—painter when he first started replicating his canvases as art prints on a shinny faux canvas material. The offended critics called his art “schlock,” and worse. But by any measure, Kinkaid was a quintessential craftsman who could have taken any artistic direction he chose.
That was when Kinkaid put his finger in the wind—much as the Pop artists of the 1960s had done—and realized that, commercially, he could do best by selling decorative art to a vast population that liked something between a Disneyland fantasy and a Norman Rockwell small-town scene. Kinkaid had always admired Disney and Rockwell. So he began to produce the Kinkaid hybrid—cozy, bright, soft, and sentimental scenes of village bridges, candle-lit cottages, and pink clouds—without a bit of embarrassment.
Having returned to the evangelical Christianity of his youth, Kinkaid realized that in the 1980s, a time of religious resurgence, ordinary churchgoers would be a big part of his audience. In effect, it was an early version of the Wal-Mart audience, millions of average-earning, traditional-values Americans. They had no truck with modern art, and they did not mind buying prints in frames to hang on their living room walls.
For those who were evangelicals (a third of the U.S. population), Kinkaid was “one of us,” and this surely boosted his exploits in retail. In time, his Media Arts Group became the first company owned by an artist to trade on the New York Stock Exchange. In its boom years, the company had thousands of dealers and earned a few hundred million per year.
Like evangelicals in real estate or Amway, a loyal network of people reached out and sold Kinkaid art prints and items—often in malls—and as business boomed, so did a few ethical and legal problems. The Kinkaid market became inflated. Many of the franchise dealers felt they were duped, by religious sincerity, into a pyramid scheme, and a few proved their case in court, winning million-dollar settlements.
The rise and fall of Kinkaid, which included public disclosure after 2006 of his battle with alcohol, some lewd behavior, and a recent divorce, was celebrated gleefully by his critics. He was not only an artist who betrayed the true calling, they said, he was also a Christian hypocrite—the one remaining “minority” that can be flogged in public.
Nevertheless, Kincaid had been an astounding success—the most collected artist in America, his works reputedly in 20 million homes. Not a little art world envy followed his exploits. As analysts have noted, his millions came from the masses, not from a few billionaire collectors, as is the case with the upscale avant-garde. With his financial independence, he could also offer a few zingers, saying that true enough, his “paintings of light” were quite different from the “fecal school” of modern art.
Many high-tone critics continue the ritual of name calling at Kinkaidian art. They hope against hope to banish its influence and embarrassing success from American culture. That will never happen, however. As CBS News headlined this week: “Thomas Kinkade’s art work gets a boost in sales since his unexpected death.” Not a few art theorists have already announced that mass produced art, and even kitsch, have laid claim to the modern world, so why not enjoy it? Every group in society needs its own art. For the many it will be Kinkaid, for the few, Mapplethorp.
Money and culture—these hot topics, and not overly-sweet landscapes, will keep the Kinkaid legacy alive. Kinkaid spoke to a social strata, and cultural viewpoint, unreachable to modern art, both visually and religiously. He also ended up with more money than he could responsibly handle. And that perhaps is the best argument for keeping alive our sentimental romance with the struggling, impoverished artist.
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