I’d have to see Parrish’s work to tell.
The problem with Kinkade is they all look the same. The man isn’t an artist. He’s a hack. He doesn’t even do his own work.
He also wrote a book, as mentioned. My god-this man is a millionaire, and I’m slaving away at Kmart. Why?
Schmaltz factor aside, I find his works to be technically deficient as well, especially in perspective and draftsmanship. Andrea Mantegna he is not.
But here’s a question: If people are buying his framed productions with the idea that they really are collectible and will appreciate in value some day, do we have any data to indicate his valuation on the secondary market? In other words, how does he do on eBay?
On the other hand, maybe I don’t really want to know.
Athena, I present to you G. Harvey
Guinastasia, meet Maxfield Parrish
Because God hates you! 
Just kidding. Anyways go here and here for some samples of his work. Bear in mind that your monitor probably won’t reproduce the sensuality of his paintings very well, but its enough for you to get a taste.
More Maxwell Parrish
Apparently, he’s not doing all that well on ebay. Here’s the highest auction of his crap that I could find. Notice no one’s bid on it yet! The stuff that does get bid on all seems to go for less than $100, so I’d say he doesn’t exactly have great resale value.
Whew. I’m glad to hear that the Invisible Hand of the Market is working. $10,000 asking!!! Holy cow. But with no bids…some people are going to be in for a rude awakening when they try to sell this stuff.
Unless, that is, they think Kinkade’s works are so beautiful that they’ll never sell’em.
Kinkade is just an example of a new phenomenon of mass market “art,” albeit probably the most extreme example. Wyland is sort of the undersea equivalent of Kinkade except he doesn’t have quite as many retail outlets. I blame television.
Well, one TM “painting” hanging in the corner of someone else’s house isn’t likely to set me off. But here in WC, we have a TM “gallery” where you can see a bunch at once. The horror! The horror! And the prices.
Frankly, its not awful painting, and if some kid did it, I would say nice job. I wouldn’t buy it, but all alone it isn’t crap. But a dozen of them. Eww! And the prices. I couldn’t sleep at night knowing I was charging several thousand dollars for a painting of such mediocre quality, much less a print or lithograph of it. It’s immoral.
I actually know (not a friend, but runs in the same business circles) an artist who does something similar, but is substantially less talented. He’s a former CPA and paints in acryllic. He does sell the originals for about $25,000 and up, and then sells some sort of reproduction process. He also puts them on trivets (coasters for pots and things). He makes a ton of money. He has a very different style than TM, but basically, they are pictures without people in them.
It’s not so much that the work is either bad or run of the mill, it’s ripping people off who don’t know better that makes these guys jerks. :mad:
So, after asking the eBay question, and prompted by Tuckerfan’s reply, I poked around a bit myself and came across this Kinkade original with a $40,000 ask, but
Sounds to me like the Kinkade market exists in its own micro-ecology, and no real art appraiser would touch his stuff. That’s just too bizarre. In the rest of the world. $59K (or even $40K!) can get you some mighty fine real art. And lots of it, too, if you didn’t want to blow it all on one piece.
Sarcasm, right?
I know art is subjective, but IMO Kinkaid’s “art” is so much soulless drek.
There was one other thing in the article in USA Today which bothered me. The man makes a lot of noise about being a devout Christian, but then talks about encouraging a “cult” of followers. The impression I got was he likes how they seem to think he’s the epitome of Christian art. Now, this is just a renegade Episcopalian talking, but a devout Christian encouraging a cult of personality centered on himself bothers me.
CJ
And, what’s worse, is that there are plenty of good, talented, lesser-known/local artists that people could be patronizing. My wife’s an artist, and we attend a lot of local gallery shows. If you’re willing to drop $3000, you can pick up a truly spectacular, one-of-a-kind piece of artwork. Heck, a lot of stuff sells in the hundreds-of-dollars range, so you could probably pick up a half-dozen great pieces. We’ve bought a number of things, all very good, all much better than Kinkaide, all one-of-a-kind, for under $100.
The shame of it is that, usually, sales at local galleries are not all that strong. The $3000 (or, even, $100,000, like Silo’s parents spend over time, as evidenced here) would actually be a pretty substantial infusion of cash for many galleries, and probably most artists. It’s too bad that one person can command such high prices for mass-produced prints, when there’s a ton of artists who are much better, sell original art, and are lucky when they sell enough to pay their expenses.
Be fair now. Rockwell and Warhol aren’t immune to charges of having cranked out a lot sentimental or pop-oriented crap to pander to the mass market, either. But they both did rise above it once in a while.
Kinkade does have some technical skill, admittedly. But we’ll never know if he has some actual artistic talent hidden underneath.
Over 1,000 dollars? Shit!
And I noticed something about the paintings-as they were loading, and all blurred, they looked, well-better! Nice, colorful blurred images.
[insert comment about “all art being subjective” here"]
ya know, once I had a dream. It was a Thomas Kinkade print. That was 10 years before I saw one of his works, consciously at least. When i saw one of his works for the first time (on a mousepad, no less), last month, I immediately thought of my previous dream.
And its not like I think of those scenes every day, in which case he would truly be banal, it was just that one particular dream that I remembered. So I like him because he happened to capture my state of mind at that unique moment in time.
That said, I dont appreciate him being in every freaking mall next to the same old freakin stores. then again if I want uniqueness I should move out of Orlando 
And if he indeed tries to pass off brushed over works as original art, yeah, thats offensive too. But i’m not even gonna compare him to Rockwell and Warhol due to subjectivity issues (except to say that from what i’ve seen of warhol, i wouldnt even classify him as an artist.) None of them was Hieronymous Bosch.
Just because someone has a recurring theme doesnt mean they are any less of an artist…well, okay it does, but there have been plenty of one-hit wonder bands that have more musical talent than, say, Aerosmith.
For instance, I like Vladimir Nabokov, whose themes are limited to:
– Sexually Obsessive person (Ada; Pale Fire)
– Person persecuted by da “man” (Invitation to a Beheading; Bend Sinister)
– Person involved with crime (King, Queen, Knave; Despair)
and, when he’s really being wacky:
– Sexually Obsessive, persecuted person commits crime (The Enchanter; Lolita)
To add some objective note to this post, let me state that for the record I dont even LIKE cottages 
In Thomas Kinkade’s personal hell, he will be forced to “highlight” nothing but sad clowns paintings on black velvet.
And none of them will ever sell.
Oh, and weasels will rip his flesh.
Evidently Kinkade is also not self-aware enough to know the extent of his own mediocrity. From the OP’s link, we hear him say that Picasso “had a talent but didn’t use it in any significant way.” Regardless of how he came to this dubious conclusion, I think one inference we can draw from the statement is that Mr. Kinkade must think he is using his talents to the utmost capacity. Yet to anyone with a critical eye it still ends up looking like diarrhea from a bird that ate too much fruit salad.
But then again, the fact a market exists for his stuff just further proves that there is a sucker born every minute.
Which leads me to this Wyland character. $195,000 for this? You’ve got to be out of your mind!! For that kind of money, you can get stuff that any museum would be proud to own – and this is not it. Who in this world has the combination of wealth and gullibility to spend this amount on such dreck? What incredible hubris on Wyland’s part.
Yeah, yeah, all art is subjective. And I think these guys are shysters.
This man has the supreme arrogance to compare himself in any way to Norman Rockwell. Granted, Rockwell did some corny stuff, but he had a history of creating socially relevant artwork, and he just had far more range and technical skill. As far as I can tell, anyway. One of the most difficult things to paint is people. Rockwell was a master at this, but as far as I know, Kinkade doesn’t paint people. (Not that this makes him bad in itself, but I can’t properly compare his abilities and talents to Rockwell, since he never has done anything similar to Rockwell, either in subject matter, or technical merit.) And as far as comparing himself to Warhol - well, that’s just bizarre.
Compare Kinkade’s drek to this page of Rockwell’s work, which has a few of his civil rights paintings: I especially appreciate “Murder in Mississippi”. Kinkade is not worthy to clean Rockwell’s brushes, as far as I am concerned.
Also, as a Yosemite National Park fanatic, I have to say that I despise his pukey Yosemite painting. I don’t think he’s ever been there, or if he has, he missed the whole point of what Yosemite is about. It’s not all pretty whispy light and whispy clouds fricking everywhere. Yosemite doesn’t deserve Kinkade’s hackneyed interpretation, where he gratuitously adds fricking CLOUDS EVERYWHERE!!! What the hell is his problem?!?
Compare Kinkade’s Yosemite to a Albert Bierstadt Yosemite Painting. You be the judge!
Yes, DesertGeezer, very much sarcasm. <whew> glad I checked back on this thread - I would not want to get a reputation as a Kinkade fan!
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