The death of Thomas Kinkade... on Good Friday

For a long time I did not get it.  The world seemed in love with the work of artist Thomas Kinkade.  It was happy art that painted a world not exactly as it was but as it might be -- some say should be.  I have never been much of a fan.  It is fairly predictable stuff and it has been so abundant as to be almost irritating to me.  But I admire the intention.  Art has become the domain of the shocking, rude, ugly, and insulting.  The moderns whom the critics seem to love show nothing but disdain for virtue and appeal to what is base rather than inspire nobility in the viewer.  They put together crap and find government, academia, benefactor, or museum to pay them for this crap that claims to be art.  It does nothing to make us feel better.  Its most usual response from the viewer is a wince, a quick look away, and steps to the next piece in the crap collection.

As I said, I am not much of an admirer of the Kinkade work but I do admire the artist.  He was a man of some skill who probably would have received most of the critical success that eluded him if he would have shocked us instead of giving us a glimpse of a better reality than the one we usually face.  His tidy little cottages and richly colored landscapes were often a diversion from the unkept side of this world and the landscapes marred by our abuse of God's gift.

I just have to admire an artist who inspires us to be better than we are instead of those who throw our faults, failings, weakness, excesses, and vulgarity right back at us, make us pay for the privilege of viewing it, and then mock our loss of hope and joy.  Kinkade made a boatload of money providing us with the better version of our reality but his efforts have been universally panned as little more than the starving artist, couch sized, sofa art you can pick up at the Holiday Inn this Saturday only for $19.95 (any size).  Maybe so.  But I tend to think our world would be a better place if there were more Thomas Kinkades and fewer Mapplethorpes and company.  But that is just me.  You come to your own conclusion.