Kincade's 'art'
is the quintessence of tacky, tacky, tacky low class 'art' that only the brain-dead suburbean crowd likes. (Do you get the impression that I don't like his stuff??)
Morley Safer did a profile on Kincade on 60 Minutes and his reportage made Kincade look like a idiot (although a very rich idiot). It was priceless.
By the way, most of Kincade's "oil's" are electronically produced and his simply paints a bit of extra paint over the produced 'painting'! In my view, he's no worse than a meth dealer.
A little clarification
for those of you not in the US. Thomas Kincade is an artist who was one of the first to use the print-on-canvas method of the giclee. He turned it into a mass market extravaganza. 99.9% of Americans think a giclee is an original oil on canvas. They think they are buying the real deal. He went even further and opened "art galleries", and I use the term loosely, in malls across the US. He designed these "galleries" to look like real galleries, i.e. individually lit paintings, faux paneling on the walls, etc. So all of the Walmart-shoppers in America buy these "paintings" and brag to their friends that they have an "original" Thomas Kincade hanging in the living room of their single-wide mobile home. He is a joke. There you go, now you know.
Wow, Barry
I agree with your last sentence as written -- "he's no worse than a meth dealer" -- but I suspect that you actually meant to write "he's no BETTER than a meth dealer". Which is absurd.
Anyway, taste is subjective, as you know full well from your recent Ralph Lauren bedding thread. There are lots of people who wouldn't pay $150 for Blue Poles, let alone the $150 million that it's now estimated to be worth, and it's nonsensical to call someone "brain-dead" just because she'd prefer to hang a pretty landscape in her house rather than a giant canvas covered with paint splatters.
Most people buy chairs because they're comfortable, affordable, durable, and conventionally-designed. They don't WANT bright-red cone chairs around their dining table, and THAT'S FINE... Right?
Similarly, people often buy art because "those colors go with the wallpaper, and it's just the right size for that empty spot on the wall over the LA-Z-Boy"... and THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Just as every chair doesn't have to be an "important design", every canvas or print on a wall doesn't have to be high art.
Kinkade makes a good living giving the people what they want. Maybe that shouldn't bother you so much.
[edit: corrected my confusion between Blue Poles and No. 5, 1948]
And Riki...
Why do you think "99.9% of Americans think a giclee is an original oil on canvas"? Do you have a source for that incredible statistic?
And really... "All of the Walmart-shoppers in America buy these 'paintings' and brag to their friends that they have an 'original' Thomas Kincade [sic] hanging in the living room of their single-wide mobile home"? How could you possibly know that?
Kinkade's website uses words like "replicate" and "reproduce"; he doesn't misrepresent his prints as originals. Thousands of copies of each image are available, and most are priced at a few tens of dollars each. No matter how much you enjoy sneering at Americans and at what you seem to believe is their universally poor taste, it's ridiculous to assert that they're all so stupid as to believe that each of those copies was hand-painted by Kinkade.
As a Brit
I assumed Riki was exaggerating for comic effect?
We have Tretchikoff..
http://www.vladimirtretchikoff.com/
Barry, I am not trying to...
Barry, I am not trying to bark up your tree here, but you really laid down the law with taste in regards to Kinkade. You can dish it out but can't take it? You seem to get really offended when anyone dislikes something of yours. For all you know Riki has a secret Kinkade stash in the basement ....
Just to give a little perspective... I think it's ok to bash something. Just not SOMEONE on the board... you always seem to think we could have said something nicer .... but you really let us know how you feel about Mr. Thomas K!
See, there's nothing wrong with design/art bashing after all! Just don't take it personally....
Fastfwd
I have years of experience selling art, both originals and prints. I do not believe I was underestimating the percentage of US customers who cannot tell an original from a print. A giclee, due to its' very nature of being printed on textured canvas is easily able to fool the untrained eye. And that inability to distinguish, I might add, is not unique to America. I have seen "galleries" in both Prague and Brussels full of giclees, trying to pass off their crap as original.
Actually, I'm a little confused by your previous post. Are you really trying to defend the artistic talent of Thomas Kincade? If so, you might be interested in a category on ebay called "Precious Moments" statues.
Yea, I was probably too strong
about T. Kincade (considering how touchy I can be), but the piece that was done for "60 Minutes" got well under my skin; he's one of those "nice, new age" suburbean types that I enjoy making fun of.
In my opinion, people who buy Thomas Kincade and display that stuff on their walls, probably shop at WalMart, go to Church a bit too often, probably vote Republican and most probably own guns and hunt for Bambi each fall. Nice people, but probably a bit uninformed! (None of that stuff appeals to little ol' me.)
Now, I'm living in the midst of that mentality (in Minnesota) and individually, I have no problem with people who do things differently than I, but as a group, they can sure give me a bit of a pain.
No big deal, really.....society will probably survive Thomas Kincade's awful art, as well as my probably twisted opinions!
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