What could improve a Thomas Kincade painting?
October 31, 2013 1:45 PM   Subscribe

Artist Jeff Bennett has found the best way to make Thomas Kincade artworks palatable. You add some Star Wars!
posted by Joh (33 comments total) 33 users marked this as a favorite
 
A very good way, certainly. Not the best way.
posted by gurple at 1:46 PM on October 31, 2013 [7 favorites]


Very nice. It reminds me of this Banksy piece that was just in the news.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:46 PM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


One of those paintings I spent an entire vacation trying to reassemble as a massive puzzle. As can be applied to a lot of Mr Kincade's work, it all looked so similar I never finished it.

A looming Death Star would've helped out immensely.
posted by glaucon at 1:48 PM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


It's "Kinkade" we're talking about, right?
posted by CCBC at 2:00 PM on October 31, 2013


Then there's the completely un-subtle Drone Wars on Kinkade by Anthony Freda.
“Thomas Kinkade, to me, represents a kind of shallow, and meaningless patriotism,” Freda tells ANIMAL. “He is the visual equivalent of chanting ‘USA!’ or slogans like ‘support the troops’ while also supporting the fraudulent pretexts that are sending our brave soldiers into harm’s way.”
I heard from somewhere that Kinkade actually supported people buying his paintings and adding things to them. I can't recall if it was my art professor who spent one early Friday morning mocking the cliched images, or the nice older couple who were just such big fans of Kinkade.
posted by filthy light thief at 2:03 PM on October 31, 2013


The painter of blight
posted by joelf at 2:07 PM on October 31, 2013 [7 favorites]


What could improve a Thomas Kincade painting?

Fire.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:08 PM on October 31, 2013 [22 favorites]


Fire.

Oh, you beat me to it.
posted by dave*p at 2:10 PM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


I swear to you I googled "Thomas Kinkade" and google suggested "Thomas Kincade", so I thought I had spelled it wrong.
posted by Joh at 2:16 PM on October 31, 2013


/studies pixels

Only Imperial Stormtroopers would be so accurate!
posted by Artw at 2:18 PM on October 31, 2013 [4 favorites]


The burning cottage (FIRE) was probably my favorite.
posted by Atreides at 2:25 PM on October 31, 2013 [4 favorites]




Joan Didion:

“A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels,” she wrote. “It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire.”
posted by mlis at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2013 [11 favorites]


I swear to you I googled "Thomas Kinkade" and google suggested "Thomas Kincade", so I thought I had spelled it wrong.

Don't feel bad. Googling for Thomas Kincade gets a superior result.
posted by ActingTheGoat at 2:42 PM on October 31, 2013 [3 favorites]


I thought these were better than the Cthulu ones, as they still had the soft, saturated texture of the surroundings, and even the AT-ATs and Star Destroyers maintain the pastels and mysterious glows that come with the Kinkade paintings.
posted by Metro Gnome at 2:48 PM on October 31, 2013 [4 favorites]


I doubt I'm the only one who has difficulty distinguishing between a Kinkade painting with some Star Wars characters photoshopped in, and Lucas' bloody-minded remastered episodes of the saga with Star Wars characters photoshopped in.
posted by chavenet at 2:53 PM on October 31, 2013 [4 favorites]


I like Lisa Hanawalt’s improvements.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 3:37 PM on October 31, 2013 [3 favorites]


Painter of lightsabers.
posted by Halloween Jack at 3:55 PM on October 31, 2013 [3 favorites]


I'm having a hard time coming up with any story that is not improved by the addition of this postscript...
The launch of healthcare.gov was mired with technical problems. A looming Death Star would've helped out immensely.


INT. OVAL OFFICE - DAY

[Emperor Obama is seated in a high-backed chair behind a large desk; Senator Ted Cruz stands bravely before him]

EMPEROR OBAMA
"Everything that has transpired has done so according to my design. Your friends, up there on Capitol Hill, are walking into a trap, as is your precious Tea Party. It was I who allowed the Republicans to know the location of the debt ceiling. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them. Oh, I'm afraid the Affordable Healthcare Act will be quite operational when your friends arrive."

TED CRUZ
"Your overconfidence is your weakness."

EMPEROR OBAMA
"Your faith in the Free Market is yours."

[Cruz watches from the huge south lawn window as White House stormtroopers attack the Tea Party protestors]

EMPEROR OBAMA
"As you can see, young Senator Cruz, your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of this fully ARMED and OPERATIONAL Death Panel!"

[The Emperor hits the comlink switch on his desk]

EMPEROR OBAMA
"Fire at will, Surgeon General Lushniak!"
posted by Atom Eyes at 4:05 PM on October 31, 2013 [18 favorites]


I'm amazed he didn't target the most infamous of the Kincade paintings, the NASCAR one, which is just begging to have TIEs flying with the jets in the air and Stormtroopers marching up and down the field in the middle.
posted by JHarris at 4:24 PM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


Fire
That was a popular answer when the Goons had acrack at it a while ago.

Part the first

Part the second
posted by louche mustachio at 4:42 PM on October 31, 2013 [1 favorite]


A looming Death Star would've helped out immensely.

I'm having a hard time coming up with any story that is not improved by the addition of this postscript.


I HAD RELATIVES ON ALDERAAN AND THIS IS NOT FUNNY.

NEVER FORGET!!!!!!
posted by PlusDistance at 5:42 PM on October 31, 2013 [5 favorites]


I cannot even believe this FPP was not entitled "Thomas Kinkade, painter of Light Sabers."
posted by prodigalsun at 5:48 PM on October 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


In the 2013 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals showed promise, but were ultimately unable to defeat the Boston Red Sox. A looming Death Star would've helped out immensely.

i doubt it - everyone knows darth vader's a yankee fan
posted by pyramid termite at 6:12 PM on October 31, 2013


Someone once told me that the way they enjoyed Kinkade was to imagine that the houses were brightly lit because it the painting captured the moment just after a bomb had gone off inside.

When I saw Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter all I could think was that perhaps it was one of Kinkade's models, on which he practiced to get the lighting just right.
posted by heresiarch at 7:12 PM on October 31, 2013 [2 favorites]


There's something wrong with me that i would want to buy those.
posted by empath at 7:58 PM on October 31, 2013


Star destroyers don't go through the atmosphere.
posted by goethean at 8:07 PM on October 31, 2013


Star destroyers don't go through the atmosphere.

The Victory-class Star Destroyers could in most EU fiction and some video games gave the standard Imperial-class the ability but oh my god why did my life have to time out so Star Wars expanded universe trivia was seared into my brain the old fashioned way right before technology advanced to where I could offload memory to Google searches
posted by jason_steakums at 9:34 PM on October 31, 2013 [3 favorites]


Disney sells Kinkade prints with Disney characters and locations in them. Disney owns Star Wars. This kind of fan cash-in glurge should be available for actual purchase any minute now. And after that: the Avengers, in a softly-lit cottage, eating shwarma.
posted by sleeping bear at 12:21 AM on November 1, 2013 [2 favorites]


A looming Death Star would've helped out immensely.

I'm having a hard time coming up with any story that is not improved by the addition of this postscript.


#nanowrimo
posted by slogger at 6:31 AM on November 1, 2013 [1 favorite]


For a painter of light that sure seems to focus on the dark side.
posted by ckape at 9:59 AM on November 1, 2013


People that hate Kinkade's stuff don't hate it nearly as much a people who love his work, really love it. My parents grew up in houses whose walls both had numerous schmaltzy chromos, not unlike Prang's The Barefoot Boy, but also many that were much more heart rending than that, including images of children in peril on rickety bridges and roads, over which were protective winged angels praying for their charges below (and supposedly guiding them home), and such.

My mother, particularly, liked Kinkade's work, but couldn't bear his prices, on principal. To her, good art needed to be both morally uplifting or reminiscent of home and hearth, and cheap enough to share copies of, with those you loved. And hers was a sensibility echoed, right down to this day, in tens of thousands of American middle class homes, where hand me down chromos from the late 19th century, vie for wall space with proudly displayed Kinkade prints. Mock those sensibilities all you like, you're neither going to change them, or appear to have superior taste or intellect to those to whom such subject matter is dear, because of memory and associations with family, and "simpler times."
posted by paulsc at 2:44 PM on November 1, 2013


i doubt it - everyone knows darth vader's a yankee fan

Untrue. So untrue. Vader is Oakland all day.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 7:08 PM on November 2, 2013 [1 favorite]


« Older Words are weapons   |   "What ironical tricks are played on the poor... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments