Too young of an age to cut out. Kinkade's work was beloved by millions of people. Having viewed some of it, I can see why. The art establishment, not too surprising, HATED his art. I think this is for two, and possibly three to four, reasons:
1) Aesthetically-beautiful - The snobby people that make up much of the art world absolutely disdain any art that is aesthetically beautiful. To them, if it is aesthetically beautiful, then it's not art. This probably has to do with the reasoning that the "masses" will love aesthetically-beautiful art, and thus anything aesthetically beautiful cannot be considered "real" or "true" art. Now don't get wrong, what the masses like isn't always correct. There are objective standards to things I think. Far more of the masses like Justin Bieber over Beethoven I'd bet, but I think Beethoven produced far superior music to Justin Bieber! Far more of the masses like pointless Hollywood movie franchises while you could have a very quality film with great plot, character development, etc...that doesn't do nearly as well, but is true art. And not all (painted) art has to be aesthetically-beautiful. But just because art is aesthetically beautiful doesn't mean it isn't art and just because the masses like it doesn't mean it isn't art.
The difference between something like painted art as Kinkade produces and much of modern art is that aesthetically beautiful art takes actual skill to produce. No random person can just paint a beautiful picture. It takes some serious skill. Which is why, in my opinion, that so many people love his work doesn't at all devalue it. By an objective point-of-view, he was a good artist.
Even with music, this can be very true. Although there is a lot of, well, crap music-wise that the masses like to listen to, there's also a lot of objectively good stuff as well. For example, certain works by Madonna, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Sarah Brightman, etc...I think are fantastic. They require real talent to create, are totally original, and bring joy to their listeners. So that the masses like or don't like something and that the "elites" like or don't like something probably doesn't really tell us anything about whether a film, book, music, painting, etc...is objectively a good work or not. And there's always some subjectivity there too. And I am veering way off on a tangent here!
2) Commercialism - This is a definite negative in the art world, populated by far leftists and hence socialists and people who disdain business, commerce, capitalism, commercialism, you name it. Selling art for commercial purposes is HERESY to many of them. Selling aesthetically beautiful art on things like mugs, prints, clocks, music boxes, etc...as Kinkade did, is absolute heresy!
3) Christian theme - If you notice, anti-Christian themes are perfectly acceptable in the modern art world. Take a cross of Jesus Christ and stick it into a jar of urine? It's art. Take a statue of Jesus Christ and cover it in dung? Art. Other crazies are things like a melting toilet, a stuffed shark, or taking an empty cigarette box and nailing it to a piece of cardboard. In I think it was the late 1970s, a trick was even played on the art world where someone let a chimpanzee splash paint on a canvas randomly. Critics hailed the "work" as "genius."
Kinkade's work, on the other hand, was very Christian and very patriotic. Nothing anti-Christian or anti-American. So probably not going to engender much popularity among the politically left-leaning people who make up so much of the art world "establishment."
4) Jealousy - I'll bet there's a dose of just plain old-fashioned jealousy on the part of much of the art world that a guy like Kinkade produces such art (aesthetically-beautiful, patriotic, and Christian), and was so successful.
Mr. Kinkade made millions of people very happy and made lots of money doing it, so good for him. He also didn't care what the art world thought of him. What will be interesting is to see how he is treated in the coming decades, or even centuries, as so many artists that are now valuable were disdained during the times they lived by the establishment. Will Kinkade be the same, eventually becoming accepted by the art establishment now that he's dead?
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