From: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org (believers-digest) To: believers-digest@smoe.org Subject: believers-digest V6 #67 Reply-To: believers@smoe.org Sender: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-believers-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk believers-digest Friday, March 22 2002 Volume 06 : Number 067 In Today's believer's digest: ----------------- picasso insignificant [Simona Loberant ] Re: picasso insignificant [meredith ] Bad President ["Ron Rosen" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:57:32 -0800 (PST) From: Simona Loberant Subject: picasso insignificant Last weekend's concert featured an intro to Blue Guitar that described an article on Thomas Kinkade ("painter of light") in which he was quoted as saying "picasso had a talent but didn't use it in any significant way" ... I totally did not believe that anyone would say that out loud to a newspaper reporter! So when doing research today at work I decided to look up the keywords kinkade and picasso on a database of 200+ newspapers and there was the article. I thought I'd share it with the list since several of you were at the concert. And hey, you don't have to be at the concert to enjoy this. I apologize in advance to any thomas kinkade fans, this author really rips on the guy. Thomas Kinkade: Profit of light Painter/QVC regular says he's divinely inspired to mass-produce works and expand his empire Section: Life, Pg. 01d MORGAN HILL, Calif. -- Inside a 400,000-square-foot factory set amid the Central Valley's rolling green hills hums the sound of . . . art ? Nearly 500 paintings emerge daily from this immaculate place, a cross between a spic-and-span hospital and an orderly exotic-car factory where each product carefully shuttles from station to station for twitching and tweaking. But look closely: Each image is a mere high-tech clone of an oil-on-canvas original. And yet some cost in excess of $10,000. Today, workers squeegee, peel, glue, dry and highlight The Light of Freedom , which depicts the Stars and Stripes fluttering before a World Trade Center-less Manhattan skyline. The sea of prints boasts a dizzying sameness that would make a Xerox machine jealous. Into an adjacent warehouse walks the controversial man (he says Picasso "had a talent but didn't use it in any significant way") behind the name (Thomas Kinkade) behind the trademarked moniker (Painter of Light ) behind the company (Media Arts Group) responsible for this assembly line. Sipping water and fiddling with trail mix, he sits contentedly in a living room set used for remote QVC broadcasts that showcase his work. Life is good. Media Arts, the mass-market company he took public in 1994, has soared on the back of his popular reproductions -- an unvarying cascade of idyllic, people-free images with titles like Home Is Where the Heart Is and The Garden of Prayer. Currently, the company licenses out the Kinkade name to great success. Nearly half a billion dollars of success to date. And Kinkade hopes life is about to get even more lush. Besides the publication of his first novel (Cape Light , ghostwritten by Katherine Spencer) and the recent opening of a housing complex whose $400,000-plus homes were "inspired" by his art (The Village by Taylor Woodrow Homesin Vallejo, Calif., outside San Francisco), Kinkade has plans to take on the Goliaths of his metier . Not landscape masters Vermeer or Frederick Church. Try merchandisers Walt Disney and Martha Stewart. "But I'm broader," says Kinkade, 44, an affable, barrel-chested man with a tidy mustache who is utterly convinced of his mass-produced destiny. "It'd be hard for me to envision a Disney line of upper-end home furnishings or a Martha Stewart theme park. But we can do both," he says. "A Thomas Kinkade fragrance? Maybe. Thomas Kinkade Saturday morning kids' programming? Sure. The only limit is our imagination." That's not to say the commercially minded Kinkade doesn't want to join the pantheon of art's elites. Critics may scoff, but Kinkade places his work beside that of two heroes, fellow populist Norman Rockwell ("I've seen every single thing he ever painted") and renegade pop genius Andy Warhol ("He is my hero, and I'm his heir apparent"). Although still enjoying the deep-pockets fan base that has even given rise to next month's Kinkade collectors-only cruise, Media Arts has posted four straight quarters of losses, and 15 of its 360 Thomas Kinkade galleries, which pop up in tourist towns from coast to coast, have closed. In January, the company named a new CEO, Ron Ford, who vows the Kinkade brand has staying power. "We're not in the art business. We're in the hope and inspiration business," says Ford, 40, alluding to the Christian subtext in Kinkade's work. (The painter became a born-again Christian at age 20 during a revival in Southern California.) His barometer of Kinkade's potential? "My mother," he explains. "Her dream is to own a Thomas Kinkade painting. In fact, when she heard I was coming to work here, she cried." Devout followers Kinkade does have a passionate following. "They're like a cult. The cult of Kinkade," he chortles. One such fan is Don Davis, 58, a retiree in Mesquite, Texas. Davis saw his first Kinkade painting in a Dallas gallery in 1990. "It was just pretty. Peaceful, calm, real and, of course, filled with that light," he says. Davis currently owns 44 Kinkade works. Only two are in a closet; the rest cram his modest home. "It's pretty tasteful, although I think the breakfast nook, with nine, is borderline," he says. He has spent around $80,000 on this collection. "My favorite Kinkade?" Davis muses. "Well, that'd have to be the one I don't have yet." The Kinkade faithful show up by the hundreds to get his autograph at his in-store appearances. They road-trip to his boyhood farming town of Placerville, Calif. They commit details of his life to memory; letters pour in congratulating Kinkade on his upcoming 20th wedding anniversary to Nanette, with whom he has four daughters, ages 13 to 4. "My fans name babies after me," he says. "People are moved by what I do. If the critics want to attack, let them attack. I must, as Christ himself said, be about my Father's work." And the critics do attack, or at least those who'll even bother to comment on Kinkade's oeuvre. "His works are facsimiles of something inherently dead. Escapism is not art," says Kenneth Baker, art critic for the San Francisco Chronicle . "He might as well not exist. He could just be a branding concept. He might as well be selling hamburgers." One expert isn't even sure of that. "This phenomenon is artificial and not sustainable," says Peter Sealey, former marketing chief of Coca-Cola and co-author of Simplicity Marketing. "I think he's got too much stuff out there, and as supply exceeds demand, you'll see a decline in interest." A 'darkness' in his heart Kinkade and his artwork don't appear a perfect match. Where the paintings are ethereal and somewhat feminine (gardens and cottages are to Kinkade what paint drips are to Jackson Pollock), he retains the roots of his blue-collar upbringing, evidenced in his burly bearing and rough hands. He could be a truck driver just out of a day spa. He is likable and well spoken, long-winded and candid. Asked whether his art reflects who he is, he laughs. "Now it does, yes, because I'm all about a simpler way of living. We have no TV connection at our house (a gated compound in the mountains outside of Santa Cruz, Calif.). I like to hole up where it's quiet," he says. "But that's not who I was." Kinkade ground his way through a perturbed youth. "There was darkness in my heart," says the artist, who was raised by his mother. His father walked out when he was 5. "I had anger and frustration at the world around me. I had a chip on my shoulder. I was in the stinky small town, and I wanted so badly to be raised in New York, where all the museums were," he recalls. "I was embarrassed by our home, because it was so shabby. And among my friends, I was the only kid from a broken home. So I guess maybe God became the father I never knew." Kinkade says he got through those times thanks to "sharing humor" with his brother and sister. The latter proved an artistic influence ("She loved musicals and art," he says), which led him to study art at University of California-Berkeley. He then set off for Hollywood, where he painted movie sets. Eager to make his mark, in the early '80's, Kinkade decided to peddle his art out of his car trunk. Word soon spread of the inspirational artist whose work glowed with a surreal light, something Kinkade says is a gift from on high. And that's not the only one. "Well, it was almost as if God became my art agent. He basically gave me ideas. And one of the foundational ideas he gave me was a way to create multiple forms of art that looked like the original, but weren't just a poster," he says. Kinkade's divine yet technical inspiration was the perfection of a process by which an original oil painting -- he creates a dozen new images a year - -- is digitally photographed, transferred onto a plastic-like surface and glued onto canvas. Each print visits "highlight artists," mostly Hispanic and Asian hourly workers. In a paint-by-number style, they add a dot of red to a tree here, a dash of white to an interior light there. The process allows Kinkade to keep his originals, which he locks in vaults when they're not on tour in a mobile home. (His early paintings were sold; collectors say they trade hands in the low six figures.) There are nine versions of each reproduced image, from Standard Numbered editions, for a few hundred dollars, to Studio Proofs that feature a textured canvas, more highlighting and Kinkade's machine-etched signature - -- compete with his DNA, courtesy of mixing the ink with the painter's hair and blood. Where critics see mechanized saccharine, Kinkade sees goods for all income levels. While they compare his work to McDonald's Happy Meals (the Chronicle 's Baker), he is sure that in the future his work "will be seen as important." But right here, right now, all Thomas Kinkade really wants is to get along. "If my work became unpopular tomorrow, I'd receive that message," Kinkade says. "And because I'm a servant of art, I'd say to our culture, 'Culture, how can I reflect who this nation is and what it needs?' And then I'd go deliver it." On a print, mug, calendar, night light, novel, house, recliner and kids' TV show near you. TEXT OF INFO BOX BEGINS HERE Thomas Kinkade{trade} at-a-glance * Number of mechanically mass-produced paintings sold since his career blossomed in 1989: 5 million-plus. * Number of stores nationwide that carry Kinkade products: Nearly 5,000. * Revenue to date generated by Media Arts Group: $450 million. * Other Kinkade fare: Mugs, mouse pads, stationery, puzzles, Bibles, calendars, figurines, pillows, magnets and night lights. On the higher end: a line of La-Z-Boy recliners and sofas upholstered in Kinkade fabric. * Top purchasers of Kinkade paraphernalia (including QVC sales), by state: California, New York, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania. * Signature touch: Hides the letter "N" (for his wife, Nanette) in each image; occasionally, he'll also hide his wedding date (5-2-82) and MDA, Media Arts Group's stock ticker symbol. * Defining quote: "I always tell people I am the most American of painters. . . . Critics may condemn my work as sentimental slush, but I am in the long tradition of American artists, like (director) Frank Capra, who depict life as we dream it." (c) USA TODAY, 2002 Simona L. Loberant http://www.geocities.com/loberant "Every now and then go away, even briefly, have a little relaxation, for when you come back to your work your judgment will be surer; since to remain constantly at work will cause you to lose power." **Leonardo da Vinci Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards. HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 21:32:07 -0500 From: meredith Subject: Re: picasso insignificant Hi, Simona forwarded: >Thomas Kinkade: Profit of light >Painter/QVC regular says he's divinely inspired to mass-produce works and >expand his empire Wow. That sounded like something out of a Saturday Night Live skit. Scary!!! I gotta say I'm with the San Francisco Chronicle critic... ======================================= Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth ======================================= Live At The House O'Muzak House Concert Series http://www.smoe.org/meth/muzak.html ======================================= (: New England Patriots - Super Bowl XXXVI CHAMPIONS :) HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 19:21:21 -0800 From: "Ron Rosen" Subject: Bad President What a guy he was: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58812-2002Mar20.html HELP! owner-believers@smoe.org Send mail to believers@smoe.org Susan's CD's are available on your desktop at World Cafe CDs http://worldcafecds.com ------------------------------ End of believers-digest V6 #67 ****************************** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------- This has been a posting from the Susan Werner believers-digest To unsubscribe send mail to Majordomo@smoe.org with "unsubscribe believers-digest" in the body of the message