What is art?

[theatokos]

My arts salon met over the weekend and the subject of Thomas Kinkade came up, why I can't remember. There are many visual artists in this group: cartoonist, painters, many sketchers, some one who does computer graphics for big name films. One of the visual artists had never heard of Kinkade before. We all groaned, wondering how that was possible when his art is sold in licensed stores in malls everywhere. Over the last few days we've been posting articles about Kinkade back and forth to each other. We all agree that we loathe his work. Below is a slightly expanded version of what I wrote to the group.

Yet, his paintings *are* pretty. Nice colors, bucolic scenes, technically proficient.... they're peaceful. But they lack that "je ne sais quois" of something with soul; they're flat. It's an interesting argument: is art always something that is provocative (I would say no)? Can it be something merely aesthetically pleasing? Is it the blatant marketing of his work that is so distasteful? Don't all artists wish for the success that he has?

Kinkade's work is all about marketing. It is merely the selling of a fantasy, a momentary distraction from reality. And he basically says as much in interviews. He says he's selling hope, but really he's selling "Art"- trademarked, copyrighted, all rights reserved.

My only entry point into these questions is to think in terms of music. Kinkade is the pop music of art. I will say that Britney Spears is no Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (amazing, and sadly dead, opera singer) and her music isn't even as musically interesting as Beck (or, insert your own band here). But sometimes it's nice to just groove out to something well produced, that I don't have to work to listen to, or doesn't ask me to bring my own thoughts and experiences to.

Maybe that it's it: art asks us to engage with it, to think and feel and interact, we have to meet the artist some where along the way. Even if we are not moved emotionally or challenged intellectually, we get caught up in the beauty or the experience. It's not just a 100% passive experience. And that's what I find so boring about Kinkade's work: it asks nothing of me.

Comments

[donkeyfly.livejournal.com]

i guess i think of art as always having an idea behind it. the idea can be to have no idea, but that should be the purpose not the accidental result. kinkade seems to make artless decoration, but i probably wouldn't normally refer to it as art. maybe. i don't know. this is a very confusing question for me, especially when i hang out with ceramic people, because some people make functional ceramics and they are definitly making art, some people make functional ceramics and they are maybe making art? i don't know.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

I do think that ceramics is art - maybe it's the craft in "arts and craft". Utilitarian craft can still be artistic. It has an idea, is given much deliberation. Throwing in functional art definitely changes the discussion.

I also had a thought about Rie Munoz (http://www.riemunoz.com/news.htm) (linked for those not in the know). I think that Rie Munoz is in a Kinkade category. I think what speaks to me about her work is that I'm from Alaska and it reminds me - in a colorful way (important in the grey dreariness of AK) of the places and people there. But otherwise it is just whimsy. Nothing wrong with it, but it is certainly lower down on the art scale for sure. It doesn't really ask anything of me.

It was interesting to be mocking Kinkade, realizing I have two Rie's hanging in my apt.

The Art Debate

[(Anonymous)]

I can not believe that you just compared Rie Munoz to Thomas Kinkade!!! For me a better comparrison would be to compare Barbara Lavalee with Thomas Kinkade. Barbara Lavalee who ripped off Rie Munozs work (well, that debate is still ongoing), however I find it so. Barbara Lavalee's work is the souless version of Rie Munoz.

Thomas Kinkade is not art it is a brand. It just sells by being what it is not becuase of what it is.

Your Sis

Re: The Art Debate

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

Oooh, I like your analysis! I think you are right about the Rie/Lavalee thing. I've always prefered Rie. But she IS whimsy. And I do love me some whimsy.

[automata.livejournal.com]

I think Kinkade is the drunken Las Vegas motel kareoke singer of art.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

HA! I love that!

Yeah, he's sort of the American Idol of art. Lacking all subtlety. Just because you can sing a tune doesn't mean you should. Volume won't convince me you actually hit the note.

But there I go with the music comparisons again!

[howilearned.livejournal.com]

Something about the comparison of Kinkade's art and pop music doesn't gibe with me. I'm not a fan of either, really. But pop music (not necessarily the same as mainstream "popular" music) at least has variety. Some of it can even be fun and, dare I say it, interesting. Or at least, engaging. There's a visceral component perhaps?

Kinkade's art is not engaging, I suspect even to the people who by it. It's like smooth jazz; something that might be nice to have in the background but if you actually listen to it, is empty. It's like wallpaper. And from painting to painting there is almost no variation.

Does that make it Not Art? I doubt it. There certainly is an art to it. Its an interesting phenomenon and one that in some brings up the question of whether art always need to be some sort of nexus of intellectual ideas, whether it really needs to SAY somthing complex or be in RESPONSE to something. That philosophy seems to have made a lot of uniteresting, overly and heremtically intellectual work in the past century or so, as well as turned out the occasional work of transcendent beauty.

Eh.

[ewigweibliche.livejournal.com]

yeah, this is an interesting discussion. In fact, Feast Bay has been having a very lively online debate about it. It's especially interesting because so many members are trained artists, in different fields and mediums. The basics of technique over substance come up, intent, the few vs the masses, who decides what are is anyway?, etc. It's like Dan Brown vs Tolstoy - at least people are reading, right? Maybe not though.

The discussion also makes me reflect on my own art. I have a pretty voice, but have I ever really Sung? Have I made Art? I doubt it. Or it's been rare and not entirely under my control. Interesting discussion indeed.

Man, one of these days you and the goddess ought to be up here for a FB. You'd fit right in.