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Today, I wrote a letter to QVC, the on-line home shopping TV channel. I asked them to stop offering Kinkade's work and to find another artist with integrity. I can't believe they don't know Kinkade is a fraud and a crook.
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Why would any artist of integrity want to be on QVC? The line between commercial decorator art and actual fine art has been blurred beyond all recognition. I have and will sell designer art but it is not fine art unless it is an original drawing or painting, or a graphic where the artist has created the plates and pulled the print, with or without assistants, which is not forbidden here or anywhere else in the world -- they're referred to as proteges.
That's what Kinkade would have you believe about his art factory where he employs fresh-out-of-school artists who need the work and don't mind debasing their artistic principals by becoming art whores for Kinkade.
LW- I dunno. I think that Kinkade's work is crap, but he has the right to sell them, and people have the right to buy them. I have known people who buy cheap art, and chose a particular picture because it goes with their color scheme.
As far as newbie artists working for Kinkade, hey, everyone has to start somewhere, and put food on the table. No one is forcing those artists to work for Kinkade.
Presonally, I think that he is a creep, and that his business practices are shoddy, but there is only one reasonable way to stop him. People need to stop buying his junk. As long as there is a market for his works, Kinkade will still be singing all the way to the bank.
As far as using his Christianity to sell his junk, ministers have been using religion to manipulate people for years.
Anybody has the right to sell most anything except what is against the law. His product is misrepresented by the sales people who don't believe they are going to be scrutinized like advertising. A lot of consumers do ask smarter questions about how the art is produced and they are consistantly lied to. The rumor is out, there are class-action lawsuits and individual lawsuits against galleries who sold Kinkade as art produced personally by the artist when, in fact, that is a lie.
Now it looks like law enforcement could deal with this just like they would with counterfiet money. This would make what Kinkade has done outright fraud.
He is not really in the studios producing the prints and often not in the studio when his elves are painting. He may start a painting, in other words sketch in the general composition, and then paint in some of the canvas...or he may not. You can tell the paintings that he hasn't worked on -- they are better than his own work. The "paint-overs" or "embellished" commercial off-set lithographs which are mounted on canvas are assembly line, touched up with a bit of white and a little color. Trouble is, the print, without even exposure to UV, will change color where it is not painted over, just like an old magazine. It's a disgrace and there is really no rationlization for it. It's common knowledge in the industry and he's known as "The Pet Rock of the Art Industry." I would add, "The Pet Rock of the Junk Art Industry."
The frames, BTW, are plastic. If anyone has paid the $1,000.00 to $5,000.00 and more for these manufactured wall accessories, they should be sent to the corner with a dunce cap on.
Dys is not only a potty mouth, but I see now that he is also a ditto-head.
I detest Bush on moral grounds and Kinkaid on cultural grounds. His consumers are only to be pitied, not detested.
They are both from the part of our culture which will be our end -- mediocrity.
OMG. GWB is the person who really paints those Kinkades?
It's all Bush's fault, ya know.
Bush couldn't hold a paint brush if his life depended on it -- come to think of it, he can't eat a pretzel without choking on it either. Let's see, do you think he could paint with a brush and eat a pretzel at the same time? You're asking for it.
I always do.
Bush is far from conservative enough for me, or tough enough.
Be glad he stands up for your ass against the world instead of just knuckling under to the criminal U.N. like Kerry would, and Clinton did.
Bush is the kind of knucklehead should be cleaning spittoons for a living.
He's doing nothing but stirring up ****.
Sorta like Kinkade.
But you guys don't really wanna be on topic, do you?
(Which is basically what Kinkade does when he puts his knife into the paint on the pallette -- really, he's putting the knife into the consumer's heart and collecting their hard earned money for junk art).
Lightwizard wrote:He is not really in the studios producing the prints and often not in the studio when his elves are painting. He may start a painting, in other words sketch in the general composition, and then paint in some of the canvas...or he may not.
I'd never heard of Kinkade and it doesnt sound like I'd like his stuff in the least, but this seems like a bad argument against him, let alone for a law suit. I mean, isnt that exactly what the old masters did too? Rembrandt and the like?
(Not comparing this man with Rembrandt, if you'll note - just saying that this
practice isnt particularly unheard of or scandalous in art history, and thus seems a bad ground for a lawsuit)
No, there is no real evidence that Rembrandt had a staff of artist who created his paintings and, no, there were no prints where they hand-colored the final product. He may have not pulled the prints in the case of his etchings, but that's not out of the ordinary.
Kinkade is strictly a commercial wall accessory product which is passed off a limited edition fine art. They aren't limited to the same image just being rearranged over and over and sold as something original.
There are some students of Rembrandt who went on to paint in his technique and there are one or two canvases that have been in doubt as the student also signed the name Rembrandt to the art. This is also not out of the ordinary.
De Chiricio, the great Italian surrealist, was noted to paint more than one version of a certain composition but he had no protegees.
Check out his site -- you will believe you've just entered a Hallmark greeting card store. The "new release" would be appropriate on a sympathy card. With all the really great art out there, even some of the decorator art, this imagery is unoriginal to the point of being banal, sticky with sentiment and integrally inert.
Many people don't care if the pics are originals by Kinkaid or not. They actually like that stuff, as phoenix has pointed out. My last manager loved them, used his pics for a screensaver. That was where I first began to examine his product and realized how much I disliked it.
