Questioning Kinkade’s Karacter

The saga of discussion about Nicholas Laccetti’s “Let There Be (the Painter of) Light™“ continues. Davis Woods-Morse from Portland writes:

You wrote a blog post about Thomas Kinkade in 2011 without mentioning that he went bankrupt and got arrested for DUI in 2010? It’s as if you were writing about the escalation of housing prices and the vapidity of mortgage backed securities. Maybe this is a re-print of something from 2006 when there were malls and TK had stores in them.

(Can we just interject that it wasn’t a blog post? It was a feature in the magazine. An essay. There were no comments on the bottom. This is the blog, where there are comments. It seems pointless to keep pressing this, but somehow it seems significant to some of us! Anyway. We’re planning to try harder to make the two more visually distinct.)

Laccetti responds:

I’m aware of Kinkade’s financial issues and DUI arrest (I linked to info about them in one of my comments on the blog). However, the essay is mainly a critique of Kinkade’s theological project as expressed through his art, and only scratches the surface of his business practices. His company’s mass-produced items are still sold in many stores across the country—a couple months ago I saw a Kinkade collapsible Christmas tree (it turns into a wreath) for sale in Skymall magazine. His film was released in 2008, and he is still chosen to produce special prints for all kinds of franchises that want to bank on nostalgic Americana (Disney, the Yankees, etc.). A friend of mine from Nebraska, after reading this piece, regaled me with stories of acquaintances whose homes are decorated solely with Kinkade paintings. So while this is a valid observation, I don’t think I would make my argument any differently with it in mind. It’s true that some of my thoughts about Kinkade have developed over the course of years and only recently were put into writing form, however.