I just got back from a People Magazine readin' doctors appointment. There was a recent article
about a lawsuit involving TK. Couldn't get the article on the net,
but found this, (much better)
If this has been posted elswhere, I apologize:
California; GOLDEN STATE; Future Clouded for 'Painter of Light's' Galleries
The Los Angeles Times; Los Angeles, Calif.; Feb 3, 2003; MICHAEL HILTZIK;
Thomas Kinkade, the self-styled "Painter of Light," whose works
are available through richly appointed galleries found in shopping
malls around the country, obviously views his calling as more
elevated than that of a mere dauber of paint.
His works, he says in a video playing on his company Web site,
"are messengers."
"They go into the home," the artist continues, "and day in and day
out they share that message silently with people who maybe need
a little inspiration, a little light in their life."
Something in this speaks profoundly to great multitudes, judging
by the sales racked up over the years by Media Arts Group, the
San Jose-area merchandising firm of which Kinkade is the largest shareholder
and more or
less the sole asset.
But Kinkade and Media Arts have not been speaking much lately
to people like Larry DiGiovanni. "We've asked them a number
of times for help," DiGiovanni says, "and they've turned a deaf ear."
DiGiovanni is the owner of a string of Kinkade galleries in the
Minneapolis area that are in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings.
The former defense company executive, who says he was
led to believe he could match his $225,000 salary by becoming a
Kinkade dealer, is facing the loss of his life savings.
The story he tells of his venture with the Painter of Light is mirrored
by legal complaints coming in from many other corners of the
nation that Kinkade and Media Arts have systematically defrauded
their dealers, sucked them financially dry and reduced many to ruin.
This column is not the best place to debate the artistic stature
of Thomas Kinkade. Suffice it to say that he does not exemplify
the school that deems it art's purpose to evoke what Aristotle
termed "pity and terror" in the viewer. The Kinkade school,
rather, regards art as a sedative. His subjects tend toward
cozy cottages in floral bowers, Elysian gardens and
cityscapes at dusk. It's probably no accident that the
hushed atmosphere of the typical "Signature Gallery"
suggests not an art museum suffused
with natural light but a mortuary.
Still, there's no point in pretending this isn't a remarkable
venture. Many California entrepreneurs, especially during the
heyday of high tech, turned moneymaking into an art;
for his part, Kinkade figured out how to turn art into money.
Kinkade produces his original canvases at a California studio.
These then are reproduced on textured paper or canvas
backing, at which point a cadre of "highlighters" on hourly wages,
some working from paint-by-numbers guides, apply paint to
each print to accentuate, for example, the hearth-lit glow
from a mullioned window.
The products then are marketed
through the network of 300
privately owned Signature Galleries
and a few other supposedly carefully vetted outlets.
For a while, Kinkadiana enjoyed fabulous success across America.
Burly, bluff Thom seemed to be everywhere.
He executed a landscape live on the air for
"Good Morning America" and sat for a profile by
"60 Minutes" that managed to be both fawning
and condescending. There was a ghostwritten novel
("Cape Light") on Kinkadian themes, along with
Kinkade- esque Christmas ornaments, statuettes,
night lights, water globes.... The list goes on.
Folks lined up to become Kinkade dealers.
Media Arts, which Kinkade
co-founded in 1990 and took public in 1994,
required applicants to attend, at their own expense,
"Thomas Kinkade University," where they were
assured that as dealers they could expect a profit
margin of as much as 18% by selling what were
blue-chip collectibles.Many committed themselves
to opening one new gallery a year, at a launch cost
of more than $200,000 each, plus inventory that
came to $300,000 or so more.
Dealers say they made money -- at first.
But sales crested after 2000. Media Arts
revenue fell by 25% the following year,
which the company blames on the crummy
economy.
Yet the dealers have their own ideas about why sales have slowed:
Media Arts has been flooding the market with cheap reproductions
of the same art for which they're forced to charge top dollar.
Although dealers are prohibited by contract from discounting
the paintings by even a dime, Kinkades have been showing
up at national discount chains, puncturing the carefully
wrought myth that they are collectibles with a generous
scarcity premium. One Louisiana gallery owner,
Tom Baggett, contends that after the discount outlet
Tuesday Morning announced a consignment of Kinkades,
his best customers, a group of elderly widows who had
thought nothing of building collections out of $4,000 and
$8,000 Kinkade prints, stormed his premises in rage. They
demanded he buy them all back.
Anthony Thomopoulos, who became chief executive of
Media Arts nearly two years ago, says that this is the
inevitable fallout of a major change in strategy.
In the view of Thomopoulos, a former ABC Television
president, the dispute boils down to whether the company
has licensed Kinkade's name to too much merchandise,
or not enough. Thomopoulos' position is that the company
historically left entirely too much juice in the Kinkade orange.
One of his great triumphs, to hear his management
team talk, is a recent deal with La-Z-Boy Inc. for a
Thomas Kinkade line of recliners.
This is a common enough quandary in the
entertainment world from which Thomopolous hails,
where big stars may face the choice between holding
out for a few exclusive commercial endorsements to
preserve long-term demand or cashing in by taking
on all comers. (It's the difference between
Paul Newman, say, and Jason Alexander.)
But the new management at Media Arts does not want
to acknowledge the plight of dealers who signed up
under the old terms, when the company pledged to
preserve the scarcity value of the Kinkade name,
only to find themselves stuck with high-end versions
of the same kitsch anyone can buy off the Internet or
QVC.
"Certain people become disgruntled or upset with the
new ways," Thomopoulos says dismissively.
Of course, he has to talk like this, or a jury somewhere
may wonder whether the profit-margin projections
some prospective dealers say they heard at
Thomas Kinkade University weren't deliberately inflated
to suck them in. Or a jury may wonder if Media Arts
contributed to the collapse of some dealers by insisting
they open new galleries in districts where the existing
ones already were struggling.
Indeed, some gallery owners allege that they were
pressured to open more locations because the
Media Arts executive in charge of the network was
receiving a personal royalty and apercentage of
inventory sales for every new gallery that opened --
a sum that came to about $7.5 million over three years.
The company notes that the executive's pay
arrangement was disclosed in its public filings.
Media Arts' response to most of the dealer lawsuits --
beyond denying that it has defrauded anyone -- has
been to try to force the cases into arbitration,
where they won't become a public embarrassment.
Despite the turmoil, Thomopoulos contends that
Media Arts is back on the rise. "The company is
strong, the brand is strong," he says.
Nonetheless, there are a few signs that theKinkade
fetish may be heading the way of Beanie Babies. On
EBay one recent day I counted no fewer than 6,600
Kinkade itemson whichauctions had recently closed
at asking prices ranging from $14,000 down to a
couple of pennies. For the vast majority of those
asking more than a couple of hundred bucks, there
were no bids, or none that met the sellers'minimum
prices.
Some dealers say their experience is similar.
Maurice Tynes, a lawyer for Baggett, the Louisiana
dealer, says: "The core collectors have discovered
they didn't have anything that was so exclusive
after all. At this point, you can't give the stuff away."
Michael Hiltzik can be reached at
[email protected].
http://campus.queens.edu/depts/english/kinkade%20future%20clouded.htm
