Yes, Much Ado About Nothing

About a week or so ago, I posted a response to a post by Wes on The Reformation and Images. The discussion in that post inspired other posts by both Wes and his friend Paul on the issue of art….what is art? What makes art good or bad? Is there an element of objectivity when evaluating art? What distinguished fine art from kitsch art? In response to a few of these posts, I have defended the work of Thomas Kinkade, even at times comparing a few of his works to Monet’s art.

That being said, I now need to clarify my position on Kinkade’s “art”. There are reasons why I defend it (and other art like it), and there are reasons why I consider it rubbish. Let me start with the obvious: why it’s rubbish:

1) While owners of Kinkade’s paintings say they are “much more than paintings,” they are, as Susan Orlean with the New Yorker puts it, “also much less than paintings, since they are really just reproductions.” Here is an excerpt from Susan Orlean’s piece on Kinkade in 2001:

Kinkade’s commercial awakening occurred in 1989, when he formed Lightpost Publishing with a business partner, Ken Raasch. His paintings were selling well, but he decided that he wanted “to engulf as many hearts as possible with art,” a goal that would be hindered by selling only original work. Instead, Kinkade opened a chain of galleries and began producing high-quality digital reproductions of his paintings on specially treated paper, which sold for a few hundred dollars each. A digital image could also be soaked in water, peeled off the paper, and affixed to a stretched canvas, so that it showed the texture of the canvas the way a real painting would. These canvas transfers could be sold as they were, or they could be accented with paint by a master highlighter or by a special apprentice to Kinkade (”Studio Proofs” and “Renaissance Editions”) or by Kinkade himself (”Masters Editions”); the transfers now fetch anywhere from fifteen hundred dollars for the standard numbered editions to thirty-four thousand dollars for the prints that Kinkade highlighted himself. The originals were no longer for sale at any price, and the number of each edition was restricted, and the image was “suspended” once it was sold out.

This is reason enough for me to disregard Kinkade’s work. He is more a businessman with the ability to paint than a true artist. Read the full article above, as it is entertaining and enlightening.

2) Kinkade is too late. Everything he’s doing (stylistically) has been done before.

3) I just don’t like him. I don’t like his arrogance toward the rest of the art world. He said himself that much of his work is a reaction against the elitism in the fine arts. And his work shows it, because it is not considered fine art.

Now, this is why I defend Kinkade:

It’s not even so much about him specifically. It has more to do with how people judge and critique art. As seen in a number of posts and comments on this issue, some people hold the view that in order for art to be considered “good” art, the work must convey the battle between darkness and light. Fall and redemption. Sin and grace. This is where I wholeheartedly disagree. To impose certain spiritual criteria on art is to make it less authentic. The only reason I compared Kinkade to Monet was to emphasize the fact that in those particular paintings, the whole gospel message was not present. And that’s okay. I was not at all putting Kinkade on the same level as Monet. I was simply showing that even one of the most highly regarded artists of all time didn’t portray light and sin in all of his works.

All this being said, I think it’s a waste of time to evaluate Kinkade as if he were on the same level as other famous artists. If I took a picture of what I thought was a cool looking tree, I would probably frame it and put in on a shelf. That’s it. Do I want it to be critiqued by photography critics at a professional level? Of course not, I just wanted to take a cool picture. I don’t have the equipment, resources or training to be a professional photographer, so I don’t want to be critiqued as one. Last night I looked for about two (maybe three) hours for any sort of critique by any acclaimed contemporary American art critic of Kinkade’s work. Do you know what I found? Virtually nothing. I found a few paragraphs here and there, but for the most part, nothing. Art critics today won’t even take the time to critique Kinkade’s art beyond “it’s irrelevant, we’re done here.” Why? Because it’s not fine art. It’s art, but not fine art. It’s not even worth being critiqued. If people like Kinkade, that’s fine. If it makes them feel good, that’s fine. Would I consider it art? Yes. Good art? No. Kitsch art? I don’t really care, because it’s just not worth my time.

I hope this untwists some underpants.