Stuck on Eden

January 15, 2016 10:12 AM

Matt Schneider, who writes for the Christian publication Mockingbird, achieved a bit of viral fame back in 2014 when he wrote a critical assessment of Thomas Kinkade's body of work. He received some passionate responses from Kinkade's fans, which prompted a followup. Now, a year after that first response, Google has seen fit to push his original article near the top of hits for Kinkade searches, so he decided to take one more look at the beloved Christian painter: "Critical Thoughts on the Evangelical Embrace of Thomas Kinkade’s Escapist Art".
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI (28 comments total)

Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Tripe.
posted by y2karl at 10:23 AM on January 15, 2016

I love to create beautiful worlds where light dances and peace reigns. I like to portray a world without the Fall - Thomas Kinkade.

See, that's so weirdly arrogant and stupid to me. From my Christian-upbringing-now-atheist standpoint (and CS Lewis, at least, comes down on the same side), a world without the Fall would - well, first off it wouldn't have churches, because you don't have churches without Jesus and you don't have Jesus without the Fall. But a world without sin - that would be so beyond our imagining. From a Christian standpoint, our individual relationship to God would be so different from what it is now, and perhaps so much more immediate, that it just doesn't even make sense to presume that you even could paint a world without a Fall.

And on a material level - no Fall means no wars, no slavery, no forcing people down into the mines to dig metal, no forcing people into the factories to make bricks. No human evil. What would the Earth look like in that case? As fantastic as Bosch's garden, I suppose. But certainly no cozy little towns, because those are all built on slavery, genocide and poisoning the land.
posted by Frowner at 10:38 AM on January 15, 2016 [25 favorites]

I get what he's saying, but he seems to ignore the sort of art favored within evangelical circles long before Kinkaide was born. Religious paraphernalia has always been festooned with soft, dreamy escapist imagery of the sort KinkaideCo™ churned-out. Kinkaide merely grokked the marketing possibilities.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:41 AM on January 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

A world without the fall means a world without knowledge, right? Which makes sense, since Kinkade's oeuvre is so singularly mindless.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:45 AM on January 15, 2016 [6 favorites]

Jon McNaughton has the same skill as Kinkade, and employs it in the service of the same worldview, but with the hostility overt (and hilarious).
posted by Countess Elena at 10:50 AM on January 15, 2016 [7 favorites]

Yikes!
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 11:00 AM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I’ll grant that one single Kinkade-esque painting isn’t a problem on its own. What’s problematic is when an artist devotes his entire career to willfully ignoring the present marring of this deeply fallen world.

That's a really great point.
posted by redsparkler at 11:07 AM on January 15, 2016 [7 favorites]

I wanna have a drink with this guy.

(My initial comment was going to be that "I think I got a little turned on reading that", but the fact that he's an Evangelical Christian made that thought feel somehow skeevy. ....I do still wanna have a drink with him, though.)
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:10 AM on January 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jon McNaughton has the same skill as Kinkade, and employs it in the service of the same worldview, but with the hostility overt (and hilarious).

Subtlety is for socialists and wimps who are too afraid to say what they think with their paint and their ink. 'Murika is a great, God-fearin' white nation, as portrayed by McNaughton!

Seriously, except for "Runaway Slave," the notable people of color are either Obama, stereotyped middle-eastern terrorists, and a few people of color who look like he re-painted a white person to be inclusive. "Liberalism Is A Disease" is the most diverse painting.

Oh, there's an out of work Hispanic looking man, who has .. a shovel. Srsly.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:18 AM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

I find it somewhat odd that he didn't mention the pyramid scheme aspect of how Kinkade's art was (and presumably still is) sold. Basically Kincade's company, Media Arts Group Inc., extracts a lot of money from gullible Christian would be business owners who trust them because they're a "Christian company" and so they don't look too closely at the agreements they sign. Here's a link to a bit more detail.

In an article writing about Kinkade and sin, the omission of the sin of greed is striking.
posted by sotonohito at 11:19 AM on January 15, 2016 [11 favorites]

Well done article. As an atheist, I still agreed with most of what was said. I sometimes think of myself as a Christian without any god, salvaging the humanist message from the surrounding wreckage. I believe that we do need to grapple with the darker side of life to be full human beings. Thanks for posting this, AlonzoMosleyFBI .
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:20 AM on January 15, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jon McNaughton has the same skill as Kinkade, and employs it in the service of the same worldview, but with the hostility overt (and hilarious).

I found this image on his site, and my first thought was wouldn't Jeebus be driving a Maserati?
posted by Mental Wimp at 11:24 AM on January 15, 2016

I was sort of peripherally aware of McNaughton before, but doing a GIS now brought up this hilarious parody and a comparison of his style to Maoist and Nazi propaganda art (scroll down for the comparison pictures).
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:42 AM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Find the bodies hidden in these Thomas Kinkade paintings.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 11:47 AM on January 15, 2016 [12 favorites]

I love it when Christians talk art. These articles are great and hit some of the same points as Solzhenitsyn's Nobel Lecture, but with modern references and less florid prose.

I'm the target market for this kind of discussion as a recovering Evangelical and I always like seeing clearly-explained arguments against mindless "preach to the choir" entertainment and in favor of real and honest art.
posted by sleeping bear at 12:00 PM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

(There's an episode of The Dollop about Kinkade, including his hard-boozing side and the complete pyramid scheme that was the Kinkade Gallery system. There's also this trailer for movie they made about his life, featuring Chris Elliot in a wig that defies description.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 12:12 PM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]

Jon McNaughton has the same skill as Kinkade, and employs it in the service of the same worldview, but with the hostility overt (and hilarious).

'This painting shows Jesus trying to get a Desert Eagle pistol for personal protection and failing thanks to Obama's restrictions on same-day gun sales, while Pontus Pilate, Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, and Hillary look on in anticipation. Pontus Pilate, Hitler, Stalin, Bin Laden, and Hillary are riding wolves.'
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:26 PM on January 15, 2016 [6 favorites]

I am a devout Christian, a (liberal) United Methodist pastor, and I hate everything Thomas Kinkade has ever done. Give me a good Caravaggio any day.

May God have mercy on my soul.
posted by 4ster at 2:04 PM on January 15, 2016 [10 favorites]

I don't hate Kincaid's pastoral scenes. They make nice jigsaw puzzles.
posted by taterpie at 2:56 PM on January 15, 2016 [3 favorites]

He received some passionate responses from Kinkade's fans

Oh, lord. I don't know whether I want to see a selection of letter from that mailbag or whether I'd prefer to leave that particular morbid curiosity unsatisfied.
posted by orange swan at 3:03 PM on January 15, 2016

I'm the target market for this kind of discussion as a recovering Evangelical and I always castigate after reading an article like this that tempts me back into a mode of thinking that imagines that reading (or writing) an article about this sort of horseshit might somehow redeem that time of my life. It won't. It's bad art and bad thinking and a waste of time to maunder about how it represents poor thinking and a faulty worldview, and writing about it is only an extension of that waste of time. As is evidenced by this closing sentence ...

Thankfully, though, no amount of bad art (or careless blogposts) can disqualify us from the love of God.

... which, after reading, makes me realize that I've just been that dog returning to its vomit. Sigh.
posted by kneecapped at 4:59 PM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't hate Kincaid's pastoral scenes. They make nice jigsaw puzzles.


Huh. They actually would. Has anyone done that?
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:05 PM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

There's also this trailer for movie they made about his life

I don’t know how I’m supposed to tell what’s satire anymore. I feel like that with a lot of movie trailers these days.
posted by bongo_x at 6:55 PM on January 15, 2016

I thought all those posts were really sweet, actually. If you think about how he could have been doing something that wasn't just pretty mindless and actually worked out his shit...perhaps, perhaps.

A few years ago after he died, I was in a gallery in Carmel where the people there knew him and they said he used to be sweet and humble, but the last few times they saw him he was drunk driving on a motorcycle and dating an obvious gold digger. Awesome success + fucked up childhood = .... well, this, apparently.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:15 PM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

That wig!
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 7:54 PM on January 15, 2016

I was in a gallery in Carmel

...whose other most beloved artist is the equally soulless Peter Max.

I'm from that part of CA, but fuck a duck, it's a bastion of truly odious taste.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:12 PM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have a neighbor who collects that type of paintings, who has TK paintings all over her tiny apartment. It's her way of escaping the rather violent, falling apart neighborhood. TK had technique down. I wish he'd let more of his real self in, but that wasn't his market.
The point about 'sunshine and kittens' resonated for me. Sentimentality goes not only with rage, but even with brutality.
This same woman saw Christmas ornaments of animals made from REAL FUR. I told her about how they get that fur, tearing the skin off animals who aren't even dead yet, cats and dogs and rabbits. I asked her how she could desire such things. It blew my mind. I don't think she bought them in the end.
It bothered me a long time. People assign inflated value to these paintings. I about cringe to see them.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 10:08 PM on January 15, 2016

Huh. They actually would. Has anyone done that?

Yes, there are a ton, and you can often find them at thrift stores for like $1. They do actually make great and challenging puzzles!
posted by advil at 7:05 AM on January 16, 2016 [1 favorite]