Who Gets To Say

 

Are financial rewards and artistic accomplishment mutually exclusive?

The recent death of Thomas Kinkade made me wonder. Kinkade in case you haven’t watched news in a month or so, or have been living in a cave for a while was a painter of great commercial accomplishment, but universally scorned by the critics and the Art Glitterati alike.

Mr. Kinkade’s fans didn’t give a hoot; they continued to buy and presumably will continue to buy, probably with greater frenzy now that the supply has been limited, despite the howls of all of the talking heads.

So are the fans, who invest their money and passion wrong? If they are are the critics right? Is there no middle ground or should w all just give up and collect paintings on black velvet?

Mr. Kinkade’s work certainly won’t please everyone, all of the time, but does that make it bad? Can work that isn’t revered be as important as work which is universally acclaimed?

One of the many criticisms of Mr. Kinkade was that he never sold the originals of his paintings, offering instead only prints. Can that possibly be right? Can an artist hold back his original works and sell off copies and not deserve the scorn of REAL artists?

If Mr. Kinkade sold his prints as originals he would be clearly in the wrong. People pay for art and expect to get the original or at least a numbered print and they don’t much care for a print run-off on an inkjet printer for pennies and passed along for hundreds of dollars.

But the vast majority of Mr. Kinkade’s clients didn’t mind his prints at all. They loved having a “real” Kinkade in their homes and the lightness of the composition made it proper for the living room. Prints worked just fine for them and certainly if that is the case then Mr. Kinkade would have been a fool not to sell them.

But is it art?

Norman Rockwell was another painter who labored long and hard without much respect from the art critics. His work now is revered as it should be and should have been, but it took years for the quality to work its way passed the common nature of the subject.

And yet that very commonness is what makes Rockwell so approachable. You’d invite him into your home as a pal and display a Rockwell in the main room without a moments doubt that the neighbors would get frightened by the “Art”.

Mr. Kinkade shares that common quality with Rockwell and it will be years before we can tell if his art will achieve a place in the hearts of the public. It already has a place in their homes.

He, Kinkade, never claimed to be a serious artist. He claimed to be a painter of light. The light in his works shines almost too brightly but that is what appeals to so many fans that light in a dark and troubled world.

Me, I’m of the Big Tent School of art, I like almost all of it and think it should all be included in the world of art appreciation. I don’t set exclusive standards and find that for my eye, Weejun holds as much art as Ansel Adams, Leroy Neiman handles color as well as Van Gogh and Pininfarina deals with flowing lines like no one since Michelangelo.

But like or despise it you as a working artist should at least know what it is all about. If the public can’t make up its mind and the critics have an already closed mind then the art community has to step up and say, “Back off until you have created something of your own. This is an exclusive club and you have to play to get an opinion!”