The pile-on on Thomas Kinkaide - it's not about the art -

[Atman]

109. First of all, sorry for the disconnect in the thread...

I was looking at the thread tree and didn't see your name. Yes, of course I was addressing you...I just didn't realize I was addressing you. All that nonsense out of the way, your post did in fact seem to be disparaging prints. Prints and specifically giclees. Any print must be limited to an edition, or labeled as an open edition. You and I apparently know that, and the ignorance of this is what Kinkade preyed upon. People who thought they were getting "original" art just because he spewed some DNA into his oils, or touched up the highlights on the giclee with some fresh paint.

These days you upload any photo or painting on your computer to Cafe Press and they'll print it on a wood-framed stretched canvas. On one had, this is AWESOME, because it allows less-reknowned artists to make prints of their work and sell them, just like the big players. But it all gets back to the soul, the integrity of the artist. If you say it's an edition of 25, then dammit, you'd better not print more than 25; and if you sell those 25, you'd damn well better not just print more of them. You close the edition. It is DONE. That is why Kinkade is total bullshit. He was like an artist playing Wall Street games, inventing ways of re-selling shit that had already been sold. That is why I can't stand him. That, and his stupid paintings.

So, what it boils down to is that we just disagree one what can be called "art." I'm pretty much open to anything...I have a set of postage stamps from St. Lucia hanging on my wall. Each tiny stamp mounted and matted in a nice 5x7 wooden frame all its own. Is it art? Maybe they're just postage stamps. But the art on the stamps (indigenous flowers of St. Lucia) is beautiful, and again, gives me pleasure. Kinkade gives me gas. But I still refuse to say that means his crap is not art, anymore than my postage stamps -- which someone talented artist painted in earnest -- are not art.

I guess I just can't understand why people can't admit that art they don't like can still be "art." After all, lima beans and Brussels sprouts are still considered food, but I hate them both. It doesn't mean I don't accept that they're food.