light for light's sake: thomas kinkade and the meaning of style

Light for Light’s Sake: Thomas Kinkade andthe Meaning of Style

JUL IA MASON

Introduction

THOMAS KINKADE’S ARTISTIC STYLE IS INSTANTLY RECOGNIZABLE,unmistakable, and nearly unanimously bashed by those whoconsider themselves part of the professional art community.

His best known works depict idyllic pastel scenes of gardens, bridges,lighthouses, and gazebos ornamented generously with luminous high-lights, as well as cottages with windows glowing with such “lurideffect,” Joan Didion writes, that one could easily believe that “theinterior of the structure might be on fire” (73). Recognition of Kinkade’sart is facilitated by his popularity. With an estimated eleven millionprints hanging in homes across the country and innumerable productsthat bear his images, he may be the most collected contemporary art-ist in the United States.1 If there is not a Kinkade print—or aKinkade puzzle, plush toy, calendar, coffee mug, knick-knack, lamp,greeting card, or pillow—in your own home, chances are there is one(or many) in the home of someone you know.

Kinkade credits his overwhelming popularity to his accessible,romantic themes largely inspired by his Christianity. He celebratesthe mass reproduction of his paintings, rails against what he callsthe “inbred, closed culture” of Modernist art (qtd. in Balmer 53)and believes that God directs him to spread a message of faith,hope, and love by “engulf[ing] as many hearts as possible with art”(qtd. in Orlean). However, his success is also due to effective and,

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to some degree, innovative business practices that position him as apopulist willing to create art for the devout masses, art thatrequires neither critical interpretation nor tolerance of the amoral-ity, frivolity, or vulgarity commonly associated with contemporaryart. His artistic works (often described as representational, soothingworks with obvious or simple meanings) are presented as a responseor challenge to the kind of artistic works that are valued in thecontemporary art world (often nonrepresentational, shocking workswith ambiguous, or nonexistent meanings). Kinkade explains, “Theofficial art of our day … is an art of darkness, it is an art of alien-ation from the public … What I create is very much a reaction tothat system” (qtd. in Roberts).

Passionate reactions to Kinkade’s works demonstrate the polarizingnature of his art. There is very little written about his works, hispainting techniques, his personal life, or his business practices thatone might consider neutral or dispassionate. However, rather thanengaging in the ongoing disputes about the artistic value of Kinkade’spaintings, the ethicality of his business practices, or the authenticityof his spirituality, this article seeks to examine how the popularity ofKinkade’s art represents the changing relationship between art andculture in postmodern society. The purpose of this examination, likethat of Daniel Belgrad’s study of the popularity of Norman Rockwell,is “not to take sides in the debate [over whether the artist’s works areeither good or bad], but to sideline it, by explaining how … artworks, and why it works in its given social context” (61). Specifically,this article will inquire into how Kinkade’s success emerges from theformation of a certain type of subculture, one which embraces com-mercial art branding, class-based identification, and technologicalreproduction to flaunt its retreat into kitschy sentimentality.

Dick Hebdige, in Subculture: The Meaning of Style, his classic analy-sis of the development of punk and related movements among work-ing-class British youth, defines subculture as “a form of resistance inwhich experienced contradictions and objections to [a] ruling ideol-ogy are obliquely represented in style” (133). Although Kinkade’sstyle is seemingly one designed for mass appeal, it appeals particu-larly to those masses who feel excluded generally from intellectualculture, and specifically from the elite discourse of contemporary art.It is such a sense of exclusion, Hebdige writes, which spurs the devel-opment of styles “as symbolic forms of resistance; as spectacular

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symptoms of a wider and more generally submerged dissent” (80). Agreater understanding of the specifics of Kinkadian style, and anunderstanding of how this style functions within its particular histor-ical, cultural, and social context will illustrate the role of style incontemporary cultural formations.

Illuminating Kinkadian Style

Kinkade paints reality, only better. A viewer can quickly recognizethat a garden is the subject of Kinkade’s painting, Garden of Prayer,but most have never seen a garden in the luxuriant, pristine, andglowing way that Kinkade presents it. Kinkade’s self-assigned (andtrademarked) title, “The Painter of Light,” refers to his technique ofimbuing rustic scenes with both muted and vibrant (some might say“garish”) colors, as well as a dramatic yet soft glow (a Google searchfor “Kinkade” and “glow” returns over a million hits). This techniqueis quite intentionally connected to that of the nineteenth-centuryimpressionist artists in Kinkade’s promotional materials, in whichyou find series of paintings referenced as Kinkade’s “French Impres-sionist” collection, his “Studio Impressions,” and his “Plein Air” col-lection. Kinkade’s “light touch” is consistent with his airy subjects,which are mostly romantic idealizations of lush landscapes occupiedby a single cozy structure (and very few people, if any). Kinkade isunapologetic about the “lightness” of his art; he states “My paintingsare fantasies, an oasis of the mind, an answer to the longing of thehuman heart for sanctuary” (“Art Instinct”). He calls this way oftreating his subjects “maximalism” and charges artists with theresponsibility and “divine privilege” to “edit or reinvent experience”to make it more soothing (“Maximalism” 20).

For those who believe that the responsibility of artists is to chal-lenge viewers’ expectations, to disengage from consumer culture, orto critique institutions and belief systems, Kinkade’s approach (espe-cially considering its commercial success) is grating. Unsurprisingly,critics are quick to call Kinkade’s work kitschy, sentimental, simple,and overly idealistic. Art curator Ralph Rugoff, for instance, claimsthat Kinkade’s art gives viewers “a kind of retreat, or refuge, fromthe challenges and demands of contemporary culture” (13). Art criticChris Stamper is more direct, calling Kinkade’s work “openly

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escapist,” ushering viewers into “a sanitized world where life’s edgesaren’t as rough.” However, such criticisms are of little import to anartist who is, in his words, trying “to get rid of all the ugly parts oflife” (qtd. in Welbaum). Kinkade makes no claim to engaging hisaudience by creating dissonance through shock or offense, or requir-ing them to employ some critical apparatus to locate the meaning ofhis paintings. Such an undemanding relationship between art andconsumer makes sense within what Susan Jacoby identifies as the“resurgent anti-intellectualism” and “renewed religious fundamental-ism” that have become increasingly influential features of Americanculture over the last half-century (xviii, 22). If religion, as Karl Marxclaimed, is the “opiate of the masses,” Kinkade’s art is what thedevout masses hang on their walls as they sink into a drug-inducedstupor.

However, calling Kinkade’s work “escapist” is not necessarily dele-gitimatizing. The escapist purpose of Kinkade’s art is not unlikeprior attempts by subcultures to disengage from dominant culture.Discussing the appeal of glam-rock subculture in the 1970s, Hebdigewrites that glam-rocker David Bowie’s “entire aesthetic was predi-cated upon a deliberate avoidance of the ‘real’ world … Bowie’smeta-message was escape—from class, from sex, from personality,from obvious commitment—into a fantasy past … or a science-fictionfuture” (61). Traditionally, we have viewed this escape as an escapefrom conservative norms and traditional values. But what happenswhen a discourse embraces postmodern sensibilities that question tra-ditional norms and values, which, in the context of art, rejects estab-lished standards of aesthetic excellence? This opens up the possibilityof subcultures responding to this discourse through embracing thevery conventions that have been discarded. Where Hebdige’s youthcultures were revolting against a sense of order and constraint usingnoise and chaos, Kinkade’s fans are revolting against contemporaryart’s sense of disorder and perceived meaninglessness using order andsimplicity. Hebdige notes a similar response in the youth “teddyboy” subculture; this group’s style

… harked back to a more settled and straightforward past. Therevival recalled a time which seemed surprisingly remote, and bycomparison secure; almost idyllic in its stolid Puritanism, its senseof values, its conviction that the future could be better. (82)

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Subcultures “escape” the influence of a dominant culture by embrac-ing a style opposed to that culture. As Hebdige tells us, “individualsubcultures can be more or less ‘conservative’ or progressive;” there isno ideological litmus test for what can or cannot be rebelled against(127).

Calling Kinkade’s work “kitsch” is not necessarily delegitimatizingeither. In the case of punk subculture, “obsolete kitsch” was used tocontradict the codes of the dominant culture, to offer “self-consciouscommentaries on the notions of modernity and taste” (Hebdige 107).Celeste Olalquiaga believes that kitsch is a consequential and valuableform of art that is capable of challenging the way society belittles it.As she explains, kitsch “is based on the stealing of elements that areforeign or removed from the absorbing culture’s direct sensory realm,shaping itself into a vicarious experience particularly attracted to theintensity of feeling provided by iconographic universes …” (39). Inthis way, kitsch can be critical even as it remains accessible, populist,and idealistic, thereby offering transcendent experiences to a widersegment of society than “higher” forms of art. For Olalquiaga, thedismissal of kitsch is part of the larger struggle between social classesover control of the representation and experience of the romantic.

One can observe one of the sites of this struggle in the continuingdecline of the importance of what Nestor Garcıa Canclini terms the“middleman” in art. Before postmodernity, the middleman was a bar-rier between the work of art and the middle and lower class audience,a mediator who enforced approved methods of interpreting and evalu-ating art. In the age of postmodernity, members of the middle andlower classes are, in some respects, freed of the restrictions of themiddleman in two very important ways. First, the large number ofyouth receiving liberal arts educations develop an appreciation for artin all its forms (painting, graphic design, film, graphic novels, etc.)and carry these nonhierarchical interests into adulthood. Second, theinternet and the mass reproduction of prints equalize the experienceof visual art, making high and low art equally accessible and compa-rably detailed.2

Few contemporary art consumers express desire for professional orcritical mediation of their art experience, and Kinkade fans are no dif-ferent. In a Sixty Minutes segment entitled “Marketing Genius ofThomas Kinkade,” Morley Safer introduces the viewer to CindyDubois, an average looking, forty-something white woman who


seems terribly typical. Cindy and her husband, Rod, make their homein the suburbs of California, a home that very well may represent thenorm for middle-class America. The Dubois’ only deviance fromseeming normalcy is the interior of their home, which is littered withKinkade prints. As the camera pans the walls filled with framed cozycottages and fragrant gardens, the Duboises no longer seem average—they seem obsessed. In speaking of their collection, Cindy Duboisis unapologetic and unashamed: “I like the color that he uses, and Ilike the way that he uses the light, and I like the subjects that hepaints.” Having only nine months earlier become fans of Kinkade,the Duboises, surprisingly, had managed to collect 138 Kinkadeprints.

The first few minutes of the Sixty Minutes piece include Kinkademusing on the popularity of his art prints, saying that “Everyone canidentify with a fragrant garden, with the beauty of a sunset, with thequiet of nature, with a warm and cozy cottage” (emphasis added).Although Kinkade’s statement is arguably ahistorical and exclusion-ary, Safer qualifies it in his voiceover, saying that “If you like six sug-ars in your coffee, these are the paintings for you.” Safer later asks theDuboises: “Do you get some warm and fuzzy feeling when you …look at one of his paintings?” Safer’s characterization and questionabove hinge on two conventions of contemporary culture (including,but not limited to, art culture): the assumption that emotions areuncritical, and that strong emotion is irrational. As Fredric Jamesonargues in Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, the“modernist thematics of alienation, anomie, solitude, social fragmen-tation, and isolation” participate in “a virtual deconstruction of thevery aesthetic of expression itself” (11). This “waning of affect inpostmodern culture,” Jameson claims, brings with it the “ ‘death’ ofthe subject itself—the end of the autonomous bourgeois monad orego or individual” and the “end of the psychopathologies of that ego”(10, 15).

What follows for Jameson is that the “liberation, in contemporarysociety, from the older anomie of the centered subject may also meannot merely a liberation from anxiety but a liberation from every otherkind of feeling as well, since there is no longer a self present to dothe feeling” (15). The Duboises reject this rejection of strongemotion, unashamed of not only buying, but being obsessed withKinkade’s art (one might claim that validation of irrational obsession

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is an implicit defense of religion as well). The loss of the concept ofexpression in the postmodern era, Jameson argues, is marked by the“end, for example, of style, in the sense of the unique and personal”(15, emphasis added). However, the style of the Dubois home notonly rejects the sense of cool detachment that Jameson claims charac-terizes postmodern society, it also rejects the various middlemen whomediate our experience of it: the mass media that markets art, muse-ums that house artworks, presses that publish art criticism, and edu-cational systems that instruct individuals to appreciate only certaintypes of art. In other words, the Duboises have created their own gal-lery of pieces that speak to them, a gallery adverse to elite art conven-tions, and supportive of the personal in the consumption of art.

Directly following Kinkade’s story in Sixty Minutes, a host of dis-cussion boards, blogs, and newsgroups either lovingly praised orharshly criticized Kinkade, his art, and his business. Many of theseresponses contained what can only be described as “rants” expressingdisdain for Kinkade’s “art” and the profitability of his company. Notsurprisingly, much of the commentary regarding Kinkade’s massappeal referenced Kinkade’s admirers’ lack of “class.” Most of therespondents to a USENET news group devoted to “large format pho-tography,” for instance, replied with sarcastic critiques or general dis-missal. One such participant, Robert A. Zeichner, cited Kinkade’sproducts and popularity as a “compelling reason this country needs toinvest heavily in providing a good liberal arts education to every sin-gle child. If schools did a better job of teaching appreciation for art,music, and literature, perhaps such crap would fade away.” Zeichner’srationale for the popularity of Kinkade’s “crap”—lack of education—is evidence of the still strong grip of elitism left over from the cul-tural divisions of modernity, particularly in the art community.

Although many in the art world consider Kinkade’s work “tooeasy”—and thus invaluable—its simplicity is a point of pride for col-lectors. Vivian Kanargelidis, who opened a Kinkade Gallery inToronto with her husband in early 2002, states that Kinkade’s“paintings don’t need a lot of interpretation, like some contemporaryart does,” and believes that people purchase his prints because “itreminds them of a place that they’ve been [to] or want to be” (qtd. inWherry). By substituting the “language of the common man for thearcane posturing of the existing elite,” such gallery owners purposelydistinguish themselves from the discourse of traditional art museum


docents or gallery curators (Hebdige 110). And Kinkade’s Galleriesare physically different from traditional repositories of contemporaryart. Kinkade galleries, typically located in strip malls and shoppingmalls, invite individuals of diverse economic means to view and pur-chase prints and are, in some respects, a response to the pretentiousausterity of the museum or the exclusive intensity of the auctionhouse.

When inside a Kinkade Gallery, an individual hears no museumecho and no whispered voices, sees few visible markers of high-classpretense, and meets no art expert. Kinkade believes traditional artgalleries and museums are “intimidating” and “sterile” and is proudthat Kinkade Galleries offer a different environment entirely. Kinkadebelieves his galleries “upset the paradigm and turned it on its ear.We said our art galleries are going to feel like homes. They’re goingto feel comfortable” (qtd. in Kreiter 66). In these galleries, devoteescan find the same familiarity and comfort they find in Kinkade’sprints. The comfort Kinkade’s devotees feel within the presence ofKinkade products and services, and similar-minded devotees, is partof the brand that Kinkade has built. This brand speaks to membersof this subculture as members of a class whom, like Hebdige’s punks,mods, and teddy boys, have decided to tune in, turn on, and dropout of mainstream (art) culture. It is one way in which “the experi-ence of class [finds] expression in culture” (Hebdige 74). ForKinkade’s admirers, owning a piece of the Kinkade brand allowsthem to exercise that expression.

Branding the Painter of LightTM

Like other successful contemporary artists, Kinkade’s art is really sec-ondary to his brand.3 His mixture of romantic themes, accessible sub-jects, and clever product marketing has turned Thomas Kinkade,once a poor artist who sold oil paintings out of the trunk of his car,into a branded persona that can be superimposed onto every aspect ofAmerican life. Not only does the “Thomas Kinkade Company” sellmillions of prints, but through licensing deals, it distributes a widevariety of “Kinkade-inspired” products including flower arrange-ments, greeting cards, stationery, lapel pins, plush teddy bears, self-help books, novels, ceramic angels, and many other “collectible”

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items that feature his artwork. In addition, the Kinkade brand isapplied to more costly home products, such as dinnerware, towels,and linens, as well as La-Z-Boy and Kincaid home furniture.5

Through such licensing agreements, the Thomas Kinkade Companyfulfills its mission “to create the idyllic world of Thomas Kinkadeand invite people to experience it for themselves through … productsand services” based on a brand the company describes as “a placewhich focuses on faith and family, a loving home, and the peoplewho know and love us—a place where the light of love shines mostbrightly” (Thomas Kinkade Company). The fact that Kinkade is oftenable to paint more than one canvas per month ensures there arealways new works to feed the demands of brand expansion. The ThomasKinkade Company operates a very lucrative business enterprise whichprovides the general public with affirmative and accessible art, anddoes this so effectively that there is a Kinkade print in an estimatedone of every 20 homes in the United States. As Kinkade puts it: “Icreated a system of marketing compatible with American art” (qtd.in Orlean).

The tremendous success of this branding strategy has provoked yetanother criticism of Kinkade—crass commercialism. However, thiscriticism is half-hearted at best, as the days of artists needing tostarve to gain credibility are long gone (if they ever really existed).Critically acclaimed artist Damien Hirst, the British-born enfant ter-rible of contemporary art, has created some of the most expensive art-work of any living artist, and is unrepentant about his monetarysuccess, saying “Cash is a good thing. It makes people take you seri-ously, but it’s not the primary motivation for doing [art]” (qtd. inLagorce). And neither Kinkade nor Hirst are the first artists to brandtheir art. Andy Warhol is perhaps the most frequently cited artistwho branded his own work and used this work to explore the ways inwhich everything—from soup to celebrities—is packaged for con-sumption. Like no other artist before him, Warhol showed how art,mass-media, and capitalism are consubstantial. Rugoff explains thesimilarities between Warhol and Kinkade thusly:

… the artistic practices of Warhol and Kinkade demonstrateremarkably similar attitudes toward commercial art and market-ing. In very different ways, each artist has rejected that centralModernist myth that proclaims business and art to be unrelated


pursuits, and the uncompromising creativity of art utterly incom-patible with the profit-driven practicality of business. (13)

Rugoff goes on to claim that Warhol’s work was an endorsement of anew evolution of art: “business art, or the art of business” (14). Insome sense, Kinkade’s financial success is simply the logical extensionof the relationship between business and art that Warhol embraced.However, while Warhol is now widely acknowledged for his contri-butions to the advancement of art, Kinkade enjoys no such praise. Infact, criticisms of Kinkade often deny the connection betweenbusiness and art and therefore dismiss financial success or numericalmarket share as valid criteria for assessing art. As Kinkade himselfobserves:

The number one quote critics give me is ‘Thom, your work isirrelevant.’ Now that’s a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes,irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modernart. But here’s the point: My art is relevant to ten million people.That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture, not theleast. (qtd. in Orlean)

Even supporters of Kinkade are uncomfortable embracing (at leastpublicly) business and market-based assessments of art. Ron Ford,CEO of the Media Arts Group4, the parent company that marketsand distributes Kinkade’s work, answered such criticisms in 2002with nothing less than Kinkadian idealism. Ford claimed that neitherthe Media Arts Group nor Kinkade were concerned with the financialsuccess of the Kinkade brand, but rather, they dealt in “hope andinspiration” (qtd. in della Cava). Positioning Kinkade’s brand assomehow above or outside of market forces only serves to reinforcethe romantic ideals of the brand, unrealistic as they may be.

However, if one is to take “business art, or the art of business”seriously, one must be ready to apply both financial and aesthetic cri-teria to branding ventures. Beginning in 2000, those whom Fordcalls the “cult of Kinkade”—those interested in immersing themselvesin all things Kinkade—had the opportunity to live in Kinkade-inspiredhomes in a community in rural California called “The Village atHiddenbrooke: A Thomas Kinkade Painter of LightTM Community”(qtd. in della Cava). Potential residents of this community couldchoose among four floor plans (named after Kinkade’s four daughters)

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—the Merritt, the Chandler, the Winsor, and the Everett—and liveon streets with bucolic names, such as “Blue Sky,” “Stepping Stone,”“Solitude,” or “Shade Tree” (Hiddenbrooke). According to brochures,The Village at Hiddenbrooke offers a “vision of simpler times,” in a“neighborhood of extraordinary design and detail” (qtd. in Brown).Families who move into these homes are literally living within thewalls of the Kinkade brand.

As Janelle Brown reports, however, Kinkade’s real estate develop-ment projects (there are others in Missouri and Idaho) are far fromthe ideal offered by the name “Kinkade,” and in fact, the homes bearlittle physical resemblance to any of the structures in Kinkade’sprints. During her visit to The Village at Hiddenbrooke, Brown wassurprised to find none of the majestic trees and flowering gardens inKinkade’s cottage prints. More curiously, the development had nochurch. Based on Kinkade’s outspoken Christianity, Brown hadassumed that a church would be the center of the community.6

Instead of the overly sweet sentimentalism she had anticipated,Brown found satellite dishes and concrete patios protruding fromhomes squeezed tightly next to one another. Although distinctivearchitecture is featured in many of Kinkade’s prints, the exteriors ofthe homes in The Village at Hiddenbrooke looked similar to anyother planned community.7 It is telling, perhaps, that the residentsof The Village at Hiddenbrooke eventually abandoned all use ofKinkade’s name in any of their community documents.

The experience of living inside the Kinkade brand was perhapsbetter captured in 2004 when Jeffrey Vallance, an artist who uses hiswork to explore the reification of brands, curated a two-venue exhibi-tion of Kinkade’s paintings and products titled “Thomas Kinkade:Heaven on Earth.” After visiting the exhibit, which was installed atthe Grand Central Art Forum and California State University’s MainArt Gallery at Fullerton, art critic Robert Pincus described the “over-all effect [as] akin to a self-enclosed universe with its own iconogra-phy.” Through the exhibition of Kinkade’s works and products,Vallance managed to examine the theological, and perhaps ethereal,nature of branding. This was the first major exhibit, and perhaps thefirst serious consideration, of Kinkade’s work. Within the rooms ofthe exhibition, Vallance created an entirely Kinkadian world. A high-light of the exhibit was a collection of Kinkade’s most obviously reli-gious imagery contained within a chapel designed to resemble the


chapels depicted in so many of Kinkade’s paintings. Other areas inthe installation contained the “full scope of Kinkade collectibles,”displayed in a mock living room, dining room, bedroom, woodlanddiorama, and a Christmas-themed room, among others.

Although Vallance’s exhibition may have succeeded in allowingvisitors to inhabit the Kinkade brand, the failure of Kinkade-inspiredcommunities to reproduce the Kinkade brand faithfully, is, accordingto Jonathan E. Schroeder, “a warning—or counter-case” to artistshoping to “fulfill a need for aesthetic expression within a marketmentality” (88, 90). Thomas Kinkade, he writes, “provides a powerfulcase study of aesthetics gone awry, a warning about applying exces-sive art, or at least a romantic, historically uncontextualized vision ofaesthetics” to brand management. Schroeder continues:

[Kinkade] might have strategically aligned his core valuesthroughout this portfolio-enhancing venture, realizing his visionof the good life outside his faux-gilded frames. He didn’t. The Vil-lage at Hiddenbrooke might have been the culmination of Kink-ade’s lifework, a chance for an artist to manifest his aestheticvision, joining art and commerce, bridging the divide between aes-thetics and real estate management, and realizing the integrationof material and immaterial goals. It isn’t …

Here is an artist—with vision, aesthetic goals, and the power to“action this,” yet this vision was almost completely obscured whentranslated to broader economic practices. (94, 95)

Even though it reproaches Kinkade for failing to do so, Schroeder’sanalysis above presumes that brand management, even when repro-ducing core values some might label conservative or retrogressive, cango beyond crass commercialism. According to Schroeder, Kinkade’s“foray into real estate” is a cautionary tale about the difficulty in (notthe impossibility of) maintaining aesthetic concerns in the face ofeconomic forces, the difficulty of delivering brands through commod-ities. However, Schroeder also assumes that such a failure is uninten-tional. In fact, brands never intend to deliver what they promise.

In the printed collection of photographs and articles that accompa-nied the “Heaven on Earth” installation, Vallance writes that theexhibit takes the collective works, products, and branding of Kinkadeto their “logical conclusion” by allowing visitors to immerse

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themselves in all things Kinkade (10). However, while the logicalresponse to desire in a capitalist system is to buy one’s way into brandnirvana, achieving such immersion is intentionally unfulfilling. Thedesire created through identification with a brand is one thatdepends, in the Lacanian sense, on a demand that can never be ful-filled. As Rugoff concludes, Kinkade’s collective products are a par-ticularly demonstrative example of branding as a packaged form oftruth “guaranteed only by its inaccessibility” (16). Whereas part ofthis inaccessibility is psychological, another is economic. As FranLeach, marketing director for the Kinkade Community’s developmentfirm, Taylor Woodrow, admits “we couldn’t build a Thomas Kinkadehome because it’d be priced prohibitively” (qtd. in Brown).

Much like Kinkade’s paintings, the homes in these communitieshad only been “highlighted” with a few elements of the artist’s stapleimagery, such as white picket fences and thatched-style roofs. Notonly do the homes fail to deliver the Kinkade brand, but at an averageof $400,000, they are well out of reach of many of the middle-classAmericans that comprise his audience. However, such deficiencies area purposeful design of brands as representations of unattainable statesof being, what Jacques Lacan calls “a void that has acquired a form”(18). As Rugoff notes, consumers “may possess branded objects, butnever consume the brand itself” (16). This is where Schroeder’scriticism of Kinkade’s brand commodification falls flat. Perfect equiva-lence between brand and commodity is not only impossible, it isundesirable. The gap between these two allows companies to provideopportunities for consumers to signify their continued commitment tothe brand through the purchase of the commodity. This is whereKinkade’s company has established business practices that are bestunderstood through their exploitation and modification in WalterBenjamin’s notion of the role of “aura” in art.

Reigniting Aura in Mass-Produced Art

Hebdige writes that the impulse that signals the desire to break fromdominant culture, thereby forming a subculture, “ends in the con-struction of a style, in a gesture of defiance or contempt, in a smile orsneer. It signals a Refusal”(3). However, this refusal is not absolute.Although subcultures often seek to replace the core values of a


hegemonic discourse with their opposites (disorder for order, defiancefor conformity, indulgence for restraint, etc.), scholars have foundthat it is also true that “many of the values of the deviant groupmerely reiterated in a distorted or heightened form the ‘focal con-cerns’” of the original discourse (76). Kinkade’s populist appeal—hisattempts to democratize the appreciation of art by making it accessi-ble to those excluded by elite art culture—is not, as he has claimed,equally available to “everyone.” By its very oppositionality, it mustexclude those within the parent discourse. It is, perhaps, simply a dif-ferent type of elitism, a moral one rather than an intellectual one.

Although a subculture does attempt to displace privileged valuesand practices, it would be naıve to believe that it breaks totally orcleanly from its parent discourse. In fact, most subcultures repro-duce, to some degree, the values and practices of the discoursewhich they supposedly reject. In Kinkade’s case, the various incarna-tions of his galleries, editions, and painting techniques represent analternative approach to marketing and consuming art, but not onethat denies the influence of the entire artistic tradition. One can seethis in his attempt to associate himself to the cachet of the Impres-sionist painters, and even in his choice of oil on canvas as his med-ium. Kinkade rails against the specialized knowledge needed toidentify the hidden meanings within abstract art, but in his ownpaintings he hides references to his wife and family (he uses Ns torefer to his wife, Nanette, for instance), placing meaning in hisworks only accessible to those “in the know.” However, perhaps thebest example of Kinkade’s attempts to adopt the veneer of elite artculture is in his attempts to reproduce the “aura” once assigned tomaster artists and their works.

In “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,”Walter Benjamin examines the changing nature of art “in its tradi-tional form” as a result of changes in the technologies of reproduction(50). Specifically, Benjamin asserts that the use of technologies ofmass reproduction to create numerous copies of an artwork causes artto lose its “aura,” which he defines as the authority, authenticity, anduniqueness of a work of art. Benjamin celebrates this destruction ofthe aura by means of mass reproduction because of its capacity todemocratize art by making it physically accessible to a wider audi-ence. Although brand identity (originating in the artist rather thanin the piece of art) now serves the function once performed by aura,

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Kinkade employs a method of mechanical reproduction that attemptsto return aura to the work itself.

Kinkade believes that he was divinely inspired to reproduce his art,asserting “it was almost as if God became my art agent. He basicallygave me ideas. And one of the foundational ideas was a way to createmultiple forms of art that looked like the original, but weren’t just aposter” (qtd. in della Cava). The reproduction process for any of Kink-ade’s editions begins in roughly the same way. In a 400,000 squarefoot building in Central Valley, California, an original painting is firstdigitally photographed and printed on special paper. This paper isthen soaked in water to separate the paper from the image. After theimage is peeled off, it is applied to a real canvas, giving the print atexture similar to that of the original painting (Orlean). Without anyfurther processing or intervention, these particular prints, which aremore authentic and authoritative than posters, but less so than originalcanvas paintings, are boxed and sent to distribution centers across theUnited States to be sold as “Standard Numbered” editions.

To create higher priced editions, Kinkade’s paintings are repro-duced first by mechanical reproduction and then by a sort of manualreproduction. For each of the nine editions valued higher than theStandard Numbered edition, an apprentice highlighter applies actualoil paint over the reproduced printed highlights “in a paint-by-numberstyle,” adding “a dot of red to a tree here, a dash of white to an inte-rior light there” (della Cava). In this way, each canvas is unique. Inhand highlighting, there is a measure of authenticity and authoritycreated, even though the aura is generated by a proxy of the originalartist. What results are grades or degrees of aura; the greater the auraattributed to that edition, the higher the price. In a sense, this isKinkade’s attempt to segment his market by financial means—to sat-isfy the desire for brand engagement through increasingly moreexpensive consumer options.

Besides canvas prints and hand highlighted prints, there are stillhigher levels of editions that are created with a “textured brushstrokeprocess that recreates the artists [sic] actual brushwork” (“KinkadeEdition Definitions”). The top three editions are highlighted by one ofnineteen “master highlighters” that have been trained by Kinkadehimself. During “Master Highlighting Events” at Kinkade Galleries,these master highlight artists are brought in to apply touches of paintto Kinkade’s prints right in front of consumers, and in some cases,


taking the consumer’s requests for an extra highlight here or there(Orlean). These master highlight artists converse with owners of theprints while they apply touches of paint here and there—the artistsgiving the owners information about the art that is not widely avail-able, and the owners telling stories about how they came to knowThomas Kinkade’s work and what his art means to them. At the Mas-ter Highlighting Events, highlight artists are constrained by a fifteenminute timer set to ensure that they do not “over-retouch” the prints.In these cases, as the rarity and uniqueness of the prints increases, notonly are they made more authentic by the technological means ofreproduction but also through the mediation of an acolyte withinKinkade’s “inner circle.” In other words, Kinkade has reinstated themiddleman. The rarest and most costly editions, the Studio Proof andMasters Edition, are highlighted by Thomas Kinkade’s own hand, “overthe foundation of apprentice highlighting.” In addition, there is generallyonly one Masters Edition, often called a “semi-original”—created in eachsize for a single art work, each of which receives Kinkade’s ownthumbprint, indicating his oversight, final highlighting, and ultimateapproval of the reproduction (“Kinkade Edition Definitions”).

All of the editions, from the Standard Numbered to the MastersEdition are authenticated through the incorporation of ThomasKinkade’s own DNA. Each of the prints is “digitally signed”—notsigned by Kinkade’s own hand—with a pen that uses ink mixed withKinkade’s DNA collected from his blood and hair (“Demystifying”;“Kinkade Edition Definitions”; Orlean). The religious devotion ofmany of Kinkade’s fans is not inconsequential to the particular formsof the practices described previously to generate aura (and therefore theprevalence of Kinkade’s own Christianity is not inconsequential to theaura associated with his works). These practices are acutely religious innature. In buying Kinkade prints, consumers are accumulating thebody and blood of Kinkade, which is reminiscent of the weekly Sundayritual of communion among some Christians where church membersconsume the “body” and “blood” of Jesus Christ. In a sense, Kinkadeprints serve as holy reliquaries, containers of physical remains that aredistributed among faithful Kinkade followers (the “cult of Kinkade”)in the same way that finger bones of saints or wooden splinters fromChrist’s cross are venerated and circulated among Christians.

Benjamin believed the authority and authenticity inherent in theaura of an original art work are negated by mechanical reproduction.

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However, in contemporary culture, where technology has become anindispensable and largely invisible element of daily life, Kinkade hasfound that one can remediate aura without giving up the efficienciesof scale offered by technology. Beyond the mechanical technologythat enables the placement of his reproductions on a traditional can-vas medium, Kinkade also employs human apprentices to make theprint editions still more like the originals, further reinforcing theiraura. Although Kinkade’s reproductions are churned out in whatmight be called a production mill, such mediation has not limitedhis ability to flaunt the hand-crafted quality of (some of) his works.In fact, it is just slight differences between the mostly mechanicalreproduction processes of the Standard Numbered Editions and theMaster Editions that lead to vast differences in price. This is the gen-ius of Kinkade’s business practices—that he is able to attach largedifferences in value to the small differences in production among thevarious editions of his works. Such practices transform Benjamin’snotion of aura as an all-or-nothing attribute to a notion of aura as aconstructed and mediated commodity sold piecemeal to consumerswilling to pay for the “limited access” versions of art works from anartist who, ironically, stresses his works’ accessibility.

Kinkade’s Contribution to Art Appreciation

Although it is easy to dismiss Kinkade’s sentimental brand of art-work as merely kitschy, trivial, profit-driven junk that attracts a massaudience characterized by poor education, fundamentalist beliefs, andunderdeveloped aesthetic sensibilities, such consumer preferences areimportant because they signify the ongoing struggle for political,social, and economic dominance among cultural groups. As Hebdigewrites, “style is the area in which opposing definitions [of culture]clash with most dramatic force” (3). Admittedly, the “refusal” sig-naled by the consumption of Kinkade products is more Bartleby thescrivener than it is Johnny Rotten.8 However, it is still a refusal tobuy into the dominant “standard of aesthetic excellence,” and a wayof saying, “I would prefer not to,” to a host of cultural developmentsassociated with postmodern society (Hebdige 6). Such culturally con-servative refusals admittedly do not match the rebellious image asso-ciated with punk’s antiestablishment aesthetic, but attempts to


dismiss such preferences as personal weakness or collective ignoranceoverlook the cultural function of stylistic choices and the sophisti-cated network of practices that make such choices available and desir-able. These choices, regardless of their ideological affiliation, allowgroups to form by stylistically distancing themselves from culturalformations they perceive as dominant. The definition of “mainstream”culture is therefore always in flux, subject to the socially constructingclaims of groups donning the mantle of subversion.9

The ascendancy of Kinkade as (sub)cultural icon represents oneincarnation of art appreciation as a site of class struggle. Kinkade’smix of vocal Christianity, mass popularity, and aura-generating mar-keting reveals contradictions inherent to the project of making artmore “accessible.” Even as Kinkade reaches out to “everyone,” theimperatives of brand management require him to mediate access tohis art both through the mechanical means of production andthrough the human laborers employed as intermediaries betweenKinkade and his admirers. Even as Kinkade’s success suggests thatprivilege and expertise are not necessary to experience art, therebyslowly eroding the power held by current members of elite art insti-tutions, it also reconfigures these relations, creating a new elitedefined by its devotion to all things Kinkade. The consumer whobuys Kinkade’s art will never find complete fulfillment in the brand’sunreachable ideals through these purchases, even if the consumer sitsin a Kinkade-branded La-Z-Boy chair atop a Kinkade rug reading aKinkade novel by the light of a Kinkade lamp.10 However, brandsfunction despite such discontent and because of such discontent.

To dismiss Kinkade as insignificant or irrelevant to contemporaryculture is to miss the point. Kinkade is consequential, not because hehas sold millions of products and built a lucrative media empire, butbecause the cultural functions his products serve go far beyond thepleasure they bring to those who purchase them. The strong reactionsto his art—the rapture and the revulsion it inspires—situate Kinkadesquarely within a struggle over the future of American culture. How-ever, neither Kinkade’s critics (in their incredulous condemnation ofhis popularity) nor his supporters (in their romanticized defense ofhis success) provide a complete picture of the meaning of Kinkade’ssuccess, as neither can provide an account of how the evaluation of artemerges from the larger cultural context. For those of us interested insuch issues—whether you like him or not—Kinkade matters.

824 Julia Mason

Notes

1. According to ThomasKinkade.com, he is “America’s most collected living artist.” This

could not be verified.

2. The selective application of technological innovations can help to restore the aura of high

art. For instance, a Google Earth feature developed in a past few years is bringing “master-

works” to the public in amazing detail and excessively high resolution. In some cases, this

allows a viewer to see more detail (flakes in the paint, individual brushstrokes, canvas

textures, etc.) in a painting on their computer screen than if they were standing behind a

velvet rope a few feet from the original. It is unlikely that this technology will ever be used

on a Kinkade print.

3. In response to a 2005 show by artist Damien Hirst, Jerry Saltz, art critic for the Village

Voice, writes that, “The best that can be said about these canvases is that Hirst is working

in the interstice between painting and the name of the painter: Damien Hirst is making

Damien Hirsts.” Here, one can see the extent to which the artist’s brand holds primacy in

the creative and interpretive processes.

4. Kinkade and business partner Ken Raasch formed Lightpost Publishing in 1989 and later

partnered with the Media Arts Group to form the “Thomas Kinkade Company.” Kinkade

later acquired full equity by buying back all of Media Arts Group’s public stock in 2004

(Orlean; Harvey 24; “Kinkade Completes”).

5. There is no familial relation between Thomas Kinkade, the painter, and the founder of

Kincaid Furniture.

6. The “center” of The Village at Hiddenbrooke community is actually a plaza with a coffee

shop, cleaners, restaurants, etc.—a compact version of the standard urban downtown

(Hiddenbrooke Community Online).

7. While The Village at Hiddenbrooke appears to have few, if any, of Kinkade’s signature fea-

tures, later Kinkade-branded communities, such as The Gates of Old Hawthorne develop-

ment in Columbia, Missouri, and The Gates of Coeur d’Alene development in Coeur

d’Alene, Idaho, appear to have more. It appears that, as the stylistic influence of Kinkade

increases, so do the price tags of these homes.

8. Bartleby the scrivener is the title character of Herman Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the

Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street,” whose defining feature is his mild-mannered refusal to

perform basic tasks, saying simply “I would prefer not to.” Johnny Rotten was the lead

singer of the British punk rock group, the Sex Pistols, known for his foul-mouthed icono-

clasm.

9. It should be unsurprising that groups at every point on the American political spectrum

routinely identify themselves against mainstream culture. Such marginality is arguably part

of the raison d’etre of groups as ideologically disparate as the Green movement and the Tea

Party movement.

10. Kinkade has indeed published a series of eight novels in a series called Cape Light with

Berkley Trade and is listed as a producer of the film Thomas Kinkade’s Home for Christmas, a

story based on Kinkade’s early life.

Works Cited

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Brown, Janelle. “Ticky-tacky Houses from ‘The Painter of LightTM.’”Salon.com. Salon Media Group, 2002. Web. 7 Feb. 2004.

Canclini, Nestor Garcıa. Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering andLeaving Modernity. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. Print.

della Cava, Marco R. “Thomas Kinkade: Profit of Light.” USA Today.11 Mar. 2002. Web. 8 Feb. 2004.

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826 Julia Mason

Lagorce, Aude. “Is Damien Hirst Recession-Proof?” MarketWatch.MarketWatch, 12 Sep. 2008. Web. 10 Sep. 2009.

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Julia Mason is an assistant professor of English at Florida Atlantic Univer-sity. Her research interests include cultural studies, visual rhetoric, posthu-man studies, and professional and technical writing.


light for light's sake: thomas kinkade and the meaning of style

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