What racial slur, you idiot asshole?
That’s the artist name I was trying to come up with. What utter crap.
Sorry, Canvas, got a bit carried away there. This whole ‘purpose of art’ is something that has been on my mind for some time; nothing personal.
Oh, but I believe I WILL. Sure, as someone said, he had his cute little show that taught this technique and that, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. But I never saw him paint anything besides landscapes with snow-capped mountains, a babbling river, happy pine trees, and a little shack next to the bridge over the water. Completely uninspired.
Want to learn how to paint? Take a class – one where the instructor expects everyone to paint something DIFFERENT.
Forgot to mention – I had a chance to COPYEDIT a Thomas Kinkade “book.” (I have no idea how many there are – if there’s only one, then obviously it was the one mentioned here.) This was going to be a big deal – hardcover, four-color (this client usually sends me mass-market novels), big tour, the whole schmear. But the project got put on hold and by the time it was ready for editing, I was booked with other things.
[Seinfeld]That’s a shame.[/Seinfeld]
His stuff belongs on the same shelf with the Precious Moments statuettes.
For Pete’s sake, Lib, will you please tell us how ‘Asian’ is a racial slur?
Kinkade blows. Liking Kinkade is one of those deal breakers for me. If you aspire to own one of his ‘works’ you and I ain’t gettin’ along. No how, no way…
Is it me or does Kinkade look like Dr Bombay?
And yet he sounds like Kenny G.
Hee. What a nice way to summarize.
Several Kinkade gallery owners are suing him because they say the fact that he’s selling stuff via newspaper circulars and QVC and every other outlet known to man means that he is devaluing the work in their galleries.
I feel sorry for them, and yet I don’t.
Altoid nailed it. It’s not that it’s “not to our tastes.” It’s the sheer hubris of the man.
One of the meanest gifts I ever gave was a Thomas Kinkade page-a-day calendar. One each page was not only a Kinkade painting, but also a little homily from the master himself about living life and happiness. It was funny until the person started to mail individual pages back to me occasionally.
re: horrible whale painter, Wyland is exactly who I was thinking of anyway. There was a gallery of his. . . stuff. . . in Portland with a big hideous mural on the side.
Might I suggest that we not get into the art/ not-art argument, and be quite inclusive in that regard, but instead get into the “GOOD art” versus “not-good art” debate. It’s too hard to say what is art and what is not (lets fall on the side of acceptance), but we can all agree that Kinkaide’s art exhibits certain . . . characteristics which put it into one of the two latter categories.
Agreed by me, Capybara. I was fortunate that my first experience in an aesthetics class was with a professor whose thesis was “If it was made by humans, it can be art” - and I recall that we understood that by “art” we were referring to activities within human society because to do otherwise would make the subject unwieldy and vague. It sounds really tautological right now, but anyway.
When I went back for a second helping I ended up just despising this other professor. I remember actually banging my head against the table b/c she stated, with absolute certainty, that Warhol’s brillo boxes were just thrown together as a random joke and way of taking on the establishment & held no artistic choices. I was convinced otherwise - for cripes sake, he at least had to make a decision about how many boxes he could fit in his car to take to the gallery, plus he decided how to stack them. On the other hand, I’m no Warhol scholar so I don’t really know.
Can anyone clarify that for me?
Whew! Thanks, cuz I was thinking “wow, I thought I made my idiocy re: art pretty clear” hehe!!
I am finding this converse REALLY interesting though, since it IS an unexplored area for me.
If anyone feels like it, and if the OP doesn’t mind the slight hijack, I’d appreciate links to sites with “real” art, so as to have a mini-education about it’s pros cons etc.
No link, but The Art Book by Phaidon Press is one of the best intros I’ve seen. One representative work each by 500 artists, from antiquity to today. And despite being almost absurdly cheap to buy, it’s beautifully printed and edited. You can find it at most larger book stores or at Amazon.
Hmm. Should the non-Kinkaide-cursing discussion start up in a cafe thread? Widen the audience? Start a ‘what is art/ kitsch/ artifact/ crap?’ discussion in a non-pitty mode?
EXCELLENT PRIMO suggestion - that’s actually what I thought I was gonna find in Cafe when I first checked SDMB.
Ya wanna start it up?
CanvasShoes - am still assembling web pages for you, what a terrific question you posed. And I really agree w/El_Kabong’s “Art Book” suggestion. I also love “The Art Spirit” by Robert Henri.
Personally, it isn’t Kinkade’s blandness and pedestrian style that annoys me, or even his inexplicable popularity (he is to painters what Rod McKuen was to poets, or Kenny G to jazz musicians), but, rather, the fact that HE DOESN’T ACTUALLY PAINT WHAT HE SELLS! Basically, people are paying $5,000 for prints of paintings. He’s a pure huckster, up on a level with Ron Popoli (if I’ve mispelled his name, he sells junk on a large number of infomercials) and the two Charles (Ponzi and Barris), sharing with these three men the same level of ability-to-sell based on quality-of-product.
Wow. I carefully read all three pages of this thread to make sure what I want to say hasn’t already been posted four times and Governor Quinn posted it hile I was reading!
Personally I don’t like the images but I have nothing against anyone who does enjoy a scene of a quaint little cottage and a babbling brook. My primary objection is not to the work itself but to Kincade’s shameless promotion of the idea that his work will appreciate significantly in value. I know for a while he was pushing a series of prints by including some of his evry own DNA in a seal. I don’t know if he licked them or bled on them or glued a bit of hair on there. A calendar with 12 pretty scenes of cottages and lighthouses can be had for about $15. Kincade charges hundreds and in some cases thousands of dollars for a glorified poster with some “master highlights” thrown on. Personally I would rather frame and hang a $8 poster form the museum gift shop than give that guy one nickel of my money. Better yet, I 'd rather go to my city’s annual outdoor arts festival and buy a truly original (one of a kind, made with the artist’s own true hands) painting of an outdoor scene for two or three hundred bucks.
Could you provide us with your reasoning here. Obviously, you have seen that a great many posters are quite confused by your repeated claim. You had to have seen those posts between your frist and second posts, yet still did not post any evidence nor any Cites for your statement. :dubious:
If you are going to throw a weighted term like that around, at least you could back it up. If you can’t, you should apologize to the OP.