Mid-Morning Art Thread

Part of me thinks that Kinkade was a technically skilled artist without an ounce of talent, and he leveraged his skill into a multi-million dollar industry producing pablum that caught the eye, but was devoid of exactly the sort of stuff that makes people stop and stare at a good van Gogh or Caravaggio.

But part of me thinks that the pompous art assholes who criticize Kinkade's work are smug elitists whose ideas about art have plagued us with the current modern art that makes many people want to grab a rifle and go up into a tower.

And the idea that Kinkade is somehow diminished because he was commercially successful is an arrogant, disgusting, self-important reflection of their own failings, and a not-so-subtle call-out to socialism, and the thoroughly discredited image of the starving artist.

Nobody can tell me that Caravaggio or Gentileschi or Vermeer would have remained true to art for art's sake and wouldn't have cashed in on making millions. Some of the world's greatest artists were commercially successful, and many painted stuff expressly for income. And it defies reality to assume that nobody else ever laid a brush on Raphael's or Michelangelo's or Rembrandt's work.

Yes... art, at least to me, can be proof that God works through the hand of man. It can also be pretty pictures that please some of us.

posted by CBD at 09:30 AM

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