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‘Painter of Light,’ not right
Sam Morris
Thomas Kinkade says his painting “Viva Las Vegas” isn’t meant to accurately depict the Strip. “I removed some of the more flamboyant new structures,” he says.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 | 2 a.m.
Sun Coverage
Beyond the Sun
Thomas Kinkade, the “Painter of Light”(TM) who describes himself as “America’s most collected artist,” recently rendered Las Vegas in a painting that went on sale this week.
The painting is titled, with singular lack of imagination, “Viva Las Vegas.”
If you live in Las Vegas, the first thing you’ll notice is that Kinkade’s vision of Vegas is quite different from what you would see if you were to fly over the Strip.
The painting is like one of those “what’s wrong with this picture” puzzles from when we were kids. The Luxor, for instance, is waaay off the Strip and oriented incorrectly. The fabled Fabulous Las Vegas sign is utterly out of place and out of scale. Even after you figure out that the painting’s point of view is actually facing west down Tropicana Boulevard toward an apocalyptic sunset, the placement of landmarks is eye-crossingly confusing.
Kinkade was in town last weekend for the unveiling of the original painting, and the event, in a banquet room at New York-New York, was a combination of art gallery, cocktail party and sales event. Several hundred Kinkade kollectors wandered amid the easels and stacked paintings bordering the room, which were punctuated by bars and carving stations.
Original and reproduction paintings of cozy cottages and snowscapes (available in small, medium and large) were being marketed with the relentlessness of Strip-adjacent time shares. In the Kinkade manner, this gauntlet of paintings was called “the Walk of Light.”
Before taking the stage to auction off an instant pencil sketch that he called, naturally, “The Cottage of Hope” (it fetched $8,500 from a San Diego couple), Kinkade agreed to a rare, brief chat with this reporter, the sun-shunning, heat-loathing Writer of Shade(TM). He walked me through the creation of his latest city portrait (he has also painted tributes to San Francisco and Salt Lake City).
“I was flying into Las Vegas in a small private plane, and I flew over the Strip,” said Kinkade, a frequent Vegas visitor. “And this vintage view struck my eye, the sunset over Tropicana Boulevard. So I had this idea that I want to paint (Vegas) almost like a fantasy world. I used a few different motifs to enhance it. I created this sense of swirling birds, seagulls, that’s kind of a fantasy — you don’t see a lot of birds in the sky around here,” he said with a chuckle. “But I love the idea that the activity is continuing; it’s as though everywhere you look, there’s action and activity going on.”
Kinkade acknowledges taking more than a few liberties with the Las Vegas skyline.
“I removed some of the more flamboyant new structures,” he says, massively understating the oddness of the finished product. The massive CityCenter complex, for instance, is nonexistent. There’s no Wynn and no Bellagio, either, even though that’s where Kinkade and his wife, Nanette, were staying on this trip.
“I also got rid of Hooters,” confessed Kinkade, 51, who is revered as a rock star among his collectors, but is just a guy, sort of shlubby, sweating through his untucked Western-style button-up shirt. “I love Hooters as a place to visit, but I wouldn’t want it framed on my wall. So I noticed that Hooters and Kinkade have sort of the same number of letters, so I thought I’ll put my own hotel in there.”
Generations of Las Vegas performers seem to be in town for this frozen moment in time. Marquees and billboards advertise shows by Liberace, Wayne Newton, Frank Sinatra and Celine Dion. Elvis — “the patron saint of Vegas entertainment,” Kinkade calls him — hovers benevolently over the scene, on the side of the Goodyear blimp.
“Every painting I do blends time frames,” Kinkade explained. “The great thing about being an artist is I can make the past join the present in some reality of the future.”
The painting, which retails in reproduction for $190 (unframed on paper) to $1,020 (framed on canvas) at the Kinkade gallery at the Fashion Show Mall, has near-microscopic detailing. Kinkade jokes that if you used a magnifying glass you might discover “some wild passionate sex going on” within a hotel window.
And it looks quite different from most of Kinkade’s other work, not only because it doesn’t depict a radiantly bucolic scene.
“I used a field of warm colors and then I used cool colors as accents; I usually do the reverse. And a lot of my work is very rendered; this is more impressionistic and vibrant,” Kinkade said.
Think LeRoy Neiman.
“When he was active, Neiman was associated with Las Vegas because he had a touch that was vibrant and alive; he painted a lot of casino subject matter,” said Kinkade, who also puts himself in the company of Maxfield Parrish and Norman Rockwell. “So I kinda, in a way, made the painting a little bit of a tribute to his style.”
Kinkade said he started his art career as a background painter for films, making matte paintings for special effects. And Las Vegas, through Kinkade’s eyes, is “the equivalent of a motion picture experience. It’s theatrical. It’s larger than life. Everything about the city inspires.”
Las Vegas, he concluded before heading off to address his fans, “is an eternal city like Rome, it’s a city of shrines. I wanted the sense that there was luminosity embroiling the scene from the sky and then from the different man-made shrines to entertainment and gaming. I wanted (the painting) to have a sense of the sky suggesting eternal life and down here we have the temporary playgrounds of mankind.”
Discussion: 10 comments so far…
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Why paint it as if you were a digital camera? We have digital camera's for that--instead, an artist takes a scene and communicates something about what he sees.
It's like he paints with light!
I think it's terrible that you mentioned his sweatiness and "schlubby" appearance while failing to mention that his art is divinely inspired through this gifted man's relationship to Jesus. Quite likely his perspiration is due to a medical condition. Just like the jealous media to ridicule an infirmity!
Thomas Kinkade's millions of fans around the world see past the media's attempts to smear this magnificant painter.
Schlock artist
Mr. Kinkade: I try to be as objective as possible when looking at artwork. Even though I'm not particularly fond of your work, I do respect that you are making work, and that you have a financially lucrative market for your (literally) Trademarked style. However, to place yourself with the likes of my beloved Norman Rockwell is going to far. Mr. Rockwell made great social commentaries, and reflected a stylized perspective of Americana that is appreciated by both educated and un-educated art lovers. I believe your work is only appreciated by collectors without "an educated fine art eye"
To Todoran:
Absolutely right! I could not agree more.
The Kincade Kollectors aren't particularly discriminating in regard to the art they collect. They see prettified, quaint scenes of heartstring-jerking, tepid emotionality. Kincade's work is technically precise and well-crafted, but it also is appallingly banal work that treats the viewer in a condescending manner.
And Launce:
It seems that Mr. Kinkade is another religious person solely focused on the external, on appearances. I find that disingenuous in an artist - but right on course for people who parade their religious views as models of charity and love, but use them for profit. As an artist I find Kinkade pitiful. The aesthetic of his work is puerile, romantic, meaningless drivel. The aggravating thing is that people buy this crap.
We live in a Kinkade world where the mundane is worshiped as being "for the people," where anti-intellectualism runs rampant, where people see technical ability as artistic ability. Thomas Kinkade's work is the embodiment of all that is mundane.
Kinkade is to art what Velveeta is to cheese: They both have the appearance but not the depth or taste that is required for complete fulfilment and satisfaction.
In the 70's we had Keene paintings that collectors snatched up as if they were real art, and now we have Kinkade, with his "sofa-sized" paintings! There's no accounting for taste!
I'd find it hard to find fault with Kinkade's product. After all, If there are legions of customers willing to buy, what difference does it make if some don't like it. Many artists no doubt dream of attaing even a small fraction of his success. I'm a detail type of person, I'd probably perfer a more "correct" layout, but this is Las Vegas. Throw in the Sands and the Landmark to spice it up a bit. From the angle of the pivture above, All I recognize is the MGM and the (huge) L.V. sign. Remember the movie where the baby was made really huge and terrorized the city? It was as though the Horseshoe, Hard Rock, CircusCircus, etc. were all clustered together. I guess Kinkade followed that example.
McDonalds sells millions/billions of hamburgers..doesn't mean that they are any GOOD!
*his "special connection to Jesus"..LOL
WWJD? LOL Oh..I love how people use religion to sell their products! It's so cool.
I enjoy Mr. Kinkade's works--but a few years ago the L.A. Times published an article about how he is an incredibly mean and dishonest person. I couldn't find the article on the L.A.Times website but I did find this article about a lawsuit against him:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...