He makes art critics cringe, but Thomas Kinkade — whose idyllic paintings of storybook cottages and pastoral landscapes glow as if lit from within (some of them literally are, with tiny LEDs embedded in the canvas) — has arguably given more pleasure to the masses than any artist since Norman Rockwell. In theory, one could make the case that Walt Disney, Charles Schulz or Margaret “Big Eyes” Keane is more deserving of such an extravagant claim, and yet, it’s only Kinkade whose work was recently estimated to be hanging in roughly one in 20 American homes.
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In the end, I suppose it all comes down to what you consider “art.” Do black-velvet Elvis paintings count? How about dogs playing poker, or silk-screen renderings of Campbell’s soup cans? That’s where the critics enter the picture once again, as few take Kinkade’s kitsch creations — which have been mass-produced as coffee mugs, collectible plates and dust catchers of all kinds — seriously enough to qualify them as art. But as the French Impressionists might attest, revolving in their graves, being featured on calendars doesn’t necessarily demote genuine masterpieces to the relatively inconsequential status of “visual culture” either.
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That’s just one of the many fascinating threads director Miranda Yousef explores in her insightful and highly entertaining documentary “Art for Everybody,” which delves into the darker side of the self-anointed “Painter of Light.” Working closely with Kinkade’s widow, Nanette, and their four kids (with no mention of the girlfriend he was seeing when he died of an overdose of valium and alcohol in 2012), Yousef delves into the personal archives — and unresolved demons — of the popular phenomenon.
Yousef’s far-from-hagiographic portrait opens with audio recordings by a tortured teenage Thomas, who doesn’t hesitate to claim, “I do frankly consider myself a genius.” And that he was, though more in terms of self-promotion and positioning his wholesome work to a Christian audience than anything he added to the medium itself. But what would this brooding young artist, whose early sketches resemble something by R. Crumb or the “In the Court of the Crimson King” album cover, think of the success (and faith) he ultimately found? Later in the film, Kinkade can be heard saying, “Above all, I want to avoid painting silly and sweet pictures, charming pictures, happy pictures. I want to paint the truth, and … the truth of this world is pain.”
So how did he wind up rendering the world in such a dishonest way in canvas after canvas, painting only romanticized environments: peaceful-looking gardens and cabins, the nation’s capital draped in American flags or San Francisco populated exclusively by heterosexual white crowds? (The doc generously overlooks scads of second-rate dross, featuring garish NASCAR rallies and tacky Disney tie-ins.) Early on, Yousef dangles a tantalizing hook — what the family refers to as “the vault,” where hundreds of original paintings are stored, including many early works that show a very different side of the artist — strategically withholding its contents until nearly an hour into the film.
First, she must establish Kinkade’s multimillion-dollar empire, which he built with business partner Ken Raasch from a modest print operation in his Northern California hometown of Placerville. From the beginning, Kinkade saw a philosophical and financial benefit in making his work widely available via limited editions — a populist decision that made him the poster boy for what Walter Benjamin called “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and arguably that most successful of hacks, who put commercial gain ahead of artistic achievement (though one could say the same of Jeff Koons).
Operating out of strategically lit mall stores that did for stone bridges what Abercrombie & Fitch did for men’s abs, Kinkade’s dealers hired artisans (not artists) to hand-embellish canvas reproductions with paint, enhancing the highlights and thereby making each one “unique.” Like some kind of born-again Bob Ross, he appeared on the QVC shopping network to hawk his wares and participated in hours of corny featurettes with titles like “The Art of Adventure” and “A Lifetime of Light.”
Whether or not Kinkade’s work is to your particular taste, the appeal is clear: Claiming spiritual inspiration, he sanitized the world of ugliness and sin, offering up cozy, anodyne environments — a sentimental virtual realm that evoked evangelical notions of heaven as vividly as Giotto’s saint-filled skies had some seven centuries earlier. But even Kinkade’s most fervent collectors will chuckle at bitchy remarks from aesthetes such as Christopher Knight, who quips of a Kinkade home radiating so intensely it appears to be on fire: “That cottage is where the wicked witch lives … I’m not going in there!”
Come to find, Kinkade’s first professional gig was painting hundreds of backgrounds for X-rated animator Ralph Bakshi’s 1983 feature “Fire and Ice” — a violent adult fantasy full of caverns and swamps. But that was hardly the only time Kinkade’s imagination went dark, as college flame/muse Susan Boat recalls of her bipolar ex-boyfriend, who did angst-filled figure studies and self-portraits in which an ominous orb loomed above his head.
“Part of me still wishes that there’s a storage facility somewhere where he made that work,” says art historian Daniel A. Siedell, who wrote extensively about the theological implications of Kinkade’s oeuvre around the time of the artist’s death in 2012. Cue Yousef’s big reveal, as the filmmaker finally shares images unseen by the public until now.
Like every archival clip Yousef includes in her documentary (culled from thousands of hours of footage found in a company storage locker), these selections are meticulously curated and highly revealing. There are portraits that suggest the torment of Francis Bacon alongside stunning landscapes that use J.M.W. Turner’s innovative light techniques in even bolder, more expressionistic ways than the twinkly comforts we typically associate with Kinkade’s escapist fantasy-verse.
Even Susan Orlean, who wrote the dismissive 2001 profile for The New Yorker that gives the documentary its name, seems impressed by what she sees. Orlean once bet Kinkade a million dollars that his work would be featured in a major museum during his lifetime — a wager that amusingly plays out during the documentary. As the critics admit on camera, Kinkade’s early exploratory trials suggest another direction his artistic career might have taken.
Much like Penny Lane’s endlessly amusing “Listening to Kenny G,” Yousef’s illuminating doc appeals to all sides, from Kinkade’s haters to his most ardent defenders, revealing dimensions altogether absent from his enormously popular oeuvre.
