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I was once told by a philosophy professor that Thomas Kinkade's art work looks much like that of Hitler's. I'd be interested in finding out if that's true. In fact, I'm going to go do some research on that right now, and I'll let you know if I come up with anything.
Sfter a five second search, here's what I've found:
http://www.adolfhitler.dk/
new_pa...new_page_98.htm
After a viewing of the previous site I just think Hitler was a hack, period. Although I think I see where that professor was coming from when he told me that Hitler's work resembled Kinkade's. It's that same mushy nostalgia-and-sunshine bit.
And Thomas Kinkade can still go to hell. I had to frame too many of his prints about 6 years back. Hmm, that was sometime right after 9/11.
P.S. Now that my posting here has gotten totally out of hand, your kids' artwork rocks!
"I can't get the--trees--DAMN! I will kill everyone in the world!"
Kinkade's houses are very similar to mine in that every frickin' light in the house is on and it's daytime.
He must have teenagers.
OMG, I LOVE Felix Gonzalez-Torres! I saw that same exhibit, the pile of candy on the ground, and I cried in front of it. When I saw it, though, it wasn't exactly a pile; it was more an ocean, like the candy was the water and the ground was the beach, and the waves were slowly receding with people taking a piece of it every time they left.
There's another Gonzalez-Torres piece that I like very much: two stacks of poster-sized papers that you can take, one that says "somewhere better than here" and one that says "nowhere better than here."
When I read about the Kinkade/Hitler comparison, my first thought was "that's a terrible thing to say about Hitler". And that pretty much sums up my opinion of Kinkade's work.
I love them both! And how precious is it that my favorite of the two was created by fluttering eyelashes 
Oh--and Flea? I would love to have a print of "Black and White" framed and on my living room wall. It just sends my brain into overdrive. Interesting how something done just in simple black and white can be so alive.
I would be happy to hang either of those fine works of art on my walls.
DH and I decided several years back that the only art on our walls, apart from family photos and whatnot, would be art that our kids made. We have framed a couple of pieces (just cheap frames from the hobby store) and they look fantastic! Now I have a big stack of other stuff they've done, waiting to be framed.
This resolve is reinforced every time I visit an art museum. I would LIKE to think I have an appreciation for modern art, but when I see two identical white canvases in black frames hanging side-by-side, with some bullshit explanation of minimalism or whatever, it kind of sends me into a berserker rage.
The Blanton Museum here in Austin had a display a while back wherein some guy got naked, bit himself all over his body (wherever his teeth could reach), took pictures of the bite marks, then made PRINTS from them. I'm sorry, this is someone who needs MEDICATION, not an art grant.
Both works by your children are brilliant. the snowball family emphasizes similarity and individual differences ( maybe unintended by the young artist - but who can say) and the black and white is austerely beautiful and demonstrates this young creator's marvellous sensitivity to perceptual phenomena. (Art in America writers couldn't have done a better review, methinks :-D) I had my first visual deflowering by Things Thomas KinKade back about ten years ago, when out of curiosity I dragged my husband through a Thomas KinKade shop in a central Washington State town. Mind-numbingly bad visuals! But one good thing resulted, i have increased my art-critical vocabulary by "Kinkade Krap", a most useful term to drag out when seeing art dreck.
Great blog!
Oh, please. That doesn't look a thing like a Rothko. I do like Christopher's artistic visions and the execution thereof, though.
You should put a candy dish on your desk, Flea, and tell your colleagues that each one they take is like whittling away the flesh in someone with a wasting disease. Use something easy to gorge on, like M&Ms, and see if it slows down the nibblers at all.
I, too, like the '60s pop art/op art playfulness of Snowball Family. There's a new Thai tapas place in Lakeview (Sura) that kinda matches it.
Next time I pass one of those dreadful Kinkade "galleries" at a mall, I think I'll go in...and react viscerally with terror to infernos within. "Save the baby, my God, somebody save the baby!" I'll shriek. If the employees haven't thought of it that way, I know they'd remember it after the shrieks of terror. Heh.
hmph.
well i happen to LIKE abstract and minimalist art. not so much a fan of shitting clowns, though, and Bruce Nauman generally annoys me. besides, the idea of stacked TV's is so obviously stolen from Nam June Paik - except Paik would have been classy enough to refrain from the use of shitting clowns. it also annoys me when artists refuse to admit that their work has richly complex meaning and say stupid crap like "ummm, because, like, artists are clowns?" that piece has NOTHING to do with that, and if Nauman actually thinks so, he is stupider than i thought.
however, i also happen to like both of Christopher's pieces, and think that you're not so much coming from a "my kid could do that!" approach (Most Annoying Thing Overheard In A Museum Ever), but the opposite, more like "my kid has some serious vision, man..."
to which i wholeheartedly agree.
personally, Christopher's oeuevre reminds me a lot of the Russian Suprematism movement, which was the first group of artists to abstract completely from the idea that art was supposed to "look like something". very sophisticated.
Have you been reading my mind, flea? I was thinking about this (yet again) the other day, and I think I finally hit a definition of good art that I like.
Good art is measured on three scales: authenticity, communication, and skill. you can manage with low skill or low communicative values if the other two parameters are really great, but only under certain circumstances. Authenticity isn't something you can compensate for, though.
So, all kitsch - including Kinkade - is bad art because it's so obviously not authentic. it also communicates really simplistic messages, and with these two variables the way they are no amount of skill is going to make that good art. Good kids' art is usually great on authenticity and communication, and low on skill. Good art from foreign cultures (or very ancient art) is usually appriciated by us for its skill and authenticity, because we cannot decipher the messages (but you can feel they're there).
Notice how this definition can be applied to any kind of creative endeavour, like music or cooking. Or writing a blog. Whaddya think?
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I love both pictures, but my personal favorite is black and white. The soaring motion, the minimalistic Japanese feel, the notion of torn paper, the off-center composition (he's really into that, huh?), and then those delicate lines giving the white phantom-figure depth. Any chance we could get it in higher resolution?
Oh, and another thing: I don't think there is more shit in abstract art or in conceptual art than in any other genre. It's just that at any given time, there is a lot of shit art. Have you ever seen the stuff they used to show in galleries in the second half of the 19th century? All of this great stuff was going on, impressionists were making a revolution, and the galleries were showing stuff like this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/
wiki...bat_de_coqs.jpg
So you know, let time decide.
I'd never eat the candy.
And who could eat the last piece? If you get the concept, wouldn't that be kind of devastating?
You know what bothers me about Thomas Kinkade? That cottage is freaking huge! No one needs a house that big! Especially not with those whimsical overpitched roofs, which are going to make the heating bills suck even if people do manage to turn the lights off from time to time.
Why yes, I do live in an area with a lot of whimsical-cute huge-summer-home construction, how did you guess? Kinkade is bad enough on a wall, but splattered all over the landscape it's really retchable.
ANYWAY.
I liked Snowball Family the best. I would totally buy a print of that. Or at least, you know, a postcard.
Have I mentioned that T's mother sent us a huge Kinkade painting for my birthday several years ago? Telling her "no thank you" and returning it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But we couldn't have just stuffed it in a closet the way we do with most unwanted gifts. And I just couldn't live with it dominating my wall.
That's much better artwork than I ever made as a kid.
The successful modern artist who irritated the heck out of me is Jeff Koons. I got to go to the Guggenheim in Bilbao several years ago (actually 7 years ago, which makes me feel unreasonably old) and there, in front of an incredibly beautiful titanium building that looked like a flashy, sleek, silver-gold fish and artichoke and ship all together, was this cheesy puppy made out of flowers. And the puppy was 43 feet tall.
The funny thing is that I looked at some pictures of it, and I don't hate it as much as I did. I still think it's cheesy and dumb, but it's easier for me to see why Koons might have done it.
An acquaintance of mine has a Kinkade with wiring so all the little lights actually light up when you plug it in. He is thrilled with it and finds it reaaaallllly cute. Seriously.
A few people already pointed out my first thought, the global-warming-inducing ever-active lightbulbs (including the actual ones in Suezboo's friend's place? So wrong.)
I will introduce this fun fact from my Wait-Wait-Don't-Tell-Me page-a-day calendar: "Outside the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, [Kinkade] urinated on the statue of Winnie the Pooh saying 'This One's for You, Walt.' " (actually cribbed from http://riannanworld.typepad.com/
..._got_to_lo.html since my calendar's at work and I am not)
I wonder if anyone would buy t-shirts or other merchandise with Christopher's work screen-printed onto them. Maybe the artist should start earning money for art school tuition?
"Stupid Man" (Winks at The Scarlet Pervygirl.)
Flea, Chris's Snowball Family rocks!
I've seen the Felix Gonzalez-Torres exibit. It was amazing!
I don't consider myself an artist, or even someone qualified to critique art, (hell, I can't even draw a straight line!) but I know what I like and don't like when I see it. I just couldn't tell you why.
Chris's stuff is way cool! And I second the notion of shirts and/or mugs!
oh, and the thing that bugs me the most about that particular Kinkade print?
the fact that there's a gaslit street lamp in the middle of the front lawn. why would that be there? why? makes no sense. do not want.
I think good art is what makes you feel good, honestly. I have seen art that I hate with a bloody passion (kincade comes to mind) but everyone thinks it is spectacular. My favorite artist is Ty Wilson, he is a graphic artist who uses thick lines to portray couples and I think it is completely awesome. Not everyone agrees with me though, of course.
Where have I seen that picture before of the woman with the guy more interested in the roosters than her? Where?
Love Christopher's art, think the snowball family is my favorite.
Ok, coffee came out my nose when you said "there's a blistering inferno inside every house he draws".
That's, that's just awesome.
Heh.
I don't know if it's just my laptop screen or something else on the page, but does anyone else see the glowing chili pepper lounging on the porch bench in the Kinkade image?
I have never wanted to kiss you so hard. I have simply never gotten the Kincaid fascination, and if I ever do, you have permission to poke my eyes out.
And I would definitely buy one of your son's paintings. We are always buying local artists or street artists paintings when we travel, they are so much better than the mass produced, reprinted crap.
Oh, and Flea - I LOVE Christopher's artwork. Snowball Family would go great in my office reading corner!
rahel: So, um, that guy really likes playing with his cock.
And in front of the ladies, eh?
*goes and hides in shame*
*not really*
Can I ask what medium Christopher is working in here?
I agree the house looks likes its over heated.
And I adore your son's simple style.
Denise, I think it's Microsoft Paint. He's very high tech.
shit, that *is* high tech. i was thinking construction paper and a hole puncher.
Yes! I see the glowing chilli pepper too! Tell me that's just something that got mixed up in there because of my browser settings and is not a part of the picture? Please?
"My God save the baby!" bwhahahahaha
I have always wondered who buys those Kinkaid pieces o crap.
Because Kinkade doesn't even paint them? They hire painters to paint his pictures "in the Kinkade style". Seriously.
Not Rothko, no, but "Snowball Family" looks like it could be a Josef Albers...
http://rateyourmusic.com/list/
al...8__josef_albers
As for Kincaid, bleargh. Naples yellow and periwinkle do not a dappled meadow make. "Painter of Light" my ass --- last I checked, that title belonged to Vermeer, dammit.
I found one Kinkade painting I liked. It was huge, and cost my annual salary at the time, but it was of mountains in the Sierras and the light and shadow and clouds were just marvelous. It was in the gallery in Monterey just up the hill from the wharf.
The rest of them I am pretty much allergic to, and my mum absolutely loves all things Kinkade and even bought his fakey-Christiany books. I doubt she knows he's really a nasty person who gets drunk and disorderly, pees on Disney statues (if she knew she'd freak! she loves Pooh), and getting/gotten (I don't pay attention to trash news but I think I heard about) a divorce.
kinkade should work on velvet ...
i love kids art. so pure. so brilliant. keep it. hang it. sell it!
my kid is all about painting her hair. i'm dying for her to lay something down!
re: conceptual art. sometimes it's awesome. like that AIDS death piece. i had a friend who used bars to bolt teddy bears to a huge board with all the iconic cartoon images and the bears had a tube that shot out anti-freeze. 'toxity of television' was the theme .. made sense! what do i know? a B in watercolors robbed me of summa cum ...
i like it here. can i stay?!
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