(Untitled)

[daphnep]

Over breakfast, Dan asked "do you think Thomas Kinkade's work will ever be in a real museum?"

"I hope so," I replied. "In fact, I'd like to curate that show, myself."

I told him what angle I'd like to take, and what context, and we mulled over speculative titles. I can already see the street-side banners:

Happy Little Trees: Duchamp to Kinkade

Comments

[kylecassidy]

warhol is the obvious choice, but i think it's kind of an insult to warhol who was able to successfully market things that his assistants made but he didn't have the sinister mythology, and he never peed on a winne the pooh statue in a hotel lobby....

[daphnep]

Ha ha!
Good point, but Warhol has plenty of bad behavior in his biography. In fact, that might be a possible subset of the exhibition: behind-the-scenes shenanigans of the artistes.

[low_delta]

I like it, but... Ross was known not for his paintings, but his teaching and his attitude. Ross's story is about the commercialization of painting, if anything.

I would say Norman Rockwell. Rockwell and Kinkade both play on nostalgia. But there's an interesting counterpoint between Kinkade and Norman Rockwell. Rockwell had impeccable technique, and tugged at your emotions with believable scenes drawn from idealized lives of families. Kinkade... didn't.

find the same comfort in ... clearly glowing cottages with picket-fenced gardens

Speak for yourself! ;-)

[daphnep]

I think we need Ross to get to Kincade.

For me it's not a straight line, from Warhol to Kincade, without the "happy little trees" and the idea of "anyone can make that, if they hold their brush just right."

And I won't speak for myself--I was thinking, rather, of this article:
http://www.ocweekly.com/2001-04-12/features/aaaiiiiiiiiieeeeeeee/

I asked myself, after writing this post, "What do I think, personally, of the paintings?" I looked long and hard at the little church picture I posted. I decided they're a little skeevy, to me. It's like a kid's book illustration, but without the story to go along with it, and geared for adults, which makes it unsettling...like an adult sitting on Santa's lap. In spite of my fascination, I take no comfort there.

[low_delta]

That's a perceptive take. I can't get past its skeeviness simply because people buy this crap? but that's the reason why they do, of course.

So you see a line between these artists? The "anyone can make art" ethos. How does this fit in with the commercialization and commodification of art?

[daphnep]

All of them (to my reading) set out to subvert the conventional art market. The conversation goes like this:

Duchamp: Anything can be art, art depends on context (the urinal and other "ready mades")

Warhol: Anything can be art, and art can be mass manufactured, and mass-manufactured art can be re-manufactured to make more art, and the whole jumble stands alone even outside of the artist's making (soup cans, silkscreens, Brillo boxes in museums today from production provenances after Warhol's death)

Bob Ross: Anyone can make art, and painting is all a trick of technique (if you just hold your brush right)

Kincade: If I hold my brush right (Ross), and then re-manufacture it(Warhol), and set factories to work reproducing it, Brillo-box style, and then reintroduce it in the gallery (Duchamp style) the definition of "art" changes once again.

[evilegg]

I think Kinkade is more along the lines if Precious Moments and Hummels.
The store I managed in Gainesville sold the dreadful shit, and how it worked is we sold LOTS of it to a small group of people. It was a go-to gift item for a class of people and a way to status signal with a twist of Jesus. I think that was the genius of it. People who might normally not have a distinct measure of surplus income that translated into something also acceptable to showboat about owning without looking superficial. To those hardcore Kinkade collectors there was nothing superficial or one-trick about his talent, the depth of the meaning of the artwork or the man himself and his devotion to Jesus and his wife. Kinkade reminded them of who they wanted to be. Warhol didn't do that.

[daphnep]

Oh, dear, I've been misspelling his name all along! Ha.

I think Kinkade took himself far more seriously than the makers of Precious Moments, and so did his followers and customers. He's a manufacturer of "Art", not of knick-knacks.

Warhol reminded people of who they wanted to be, in an era that aspired to stardom and fame and recognition, when the life of drugs and sex and rock 'n roll and "15 minutes" still had allure, before we'd been that route for decades and suffered, culturally, from the likes of Lindsey Lohan.

It's that "twist of Jesus", though, that I find most perplexing.

[evilegg]

Twist of Jesus was the justification to buy! I believe this market had previously only filled their walls with family pics and maybe some needlework. The people who bought TK were not the custom framing crowd.

I can see where a Warhol had an appeal to a certain set of people, but the people who could afford him were already those people or had a toe in that lifestyle, anyway. I have no grasp on how well he sold to the masses when he was alive and popular. I remember doing a large framed pop-art display and it got people to stop and come inside the store, but they always bought something else.

[lawbabeak]

You'd need Bob Ross's videos - the finished work means nothing without the happy little tree, distinctive slapping turpentine off brushes process.

[daphnep]

Yes, exactly.

That would fit nicely with the Warhol silkscreens, I think: a story about process. And then a break-down of the production and manufacturer of "original" Kinkades.

[malkhos]

The answer would be Norman Rockwell.

But this idea is too depressing to think about.

[daphnep]

I don't think so. I see Rockwell as a different direction--an illustrator, from a commercial background, and the artist himself had no pretensions about his work being Fine Art.

But Duchamp, Warhol, and in his way Kincade are all about challenging what fits into that category of "Fine Art".

Rockwell, to my reading, didn't intend to change or challenge mass culture's relationship to art in a fundamental way.

[malkhos]

He relies however, on the same kind of fictional idealization of rural America that you identified as Kincade selling point. I don't understand your points of contrast either, "a different direction--an illustrator, from a commercial background, and the artist himself had no pretensions about his work being Fine Art." That describes Kincade, except insofar as his work is more purely a commercial product, and even further removed from fine art in technique and every other way imaginable.

[daphnep]

No, Kinkade didn't sell his as illustration (an image made to illustrate a product or story), the story he told was of himself as an "Artist". People who bought his "paintings" thought they were buying contemporary art, a "real", hand-signed work by a famous painter.

Rockwell's weren't made to send to Sotheby's and hang on a wall to advertise how rich its buyer was, they were made to sell soap, and to accompany articles in Boy's Life.

One can very much argue that it's further removed from fine art, to be sure...and Rockwell has his own conversation going about that. But I envision a show about Rockwell would be a very different exhibition (and conversation) altogether--more about commercial design as it builds and skirts the line, into fine art. I see it as a detour from the Kinkade conversation.