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‘Art for Everybody’ Review: An Illuminating Look at an American Painter Far Darker Than His ‘Art’ Let On
Thomas Kinkade's popular oeuvre reflected only a fraction of his identity, as revealed in Miranda Yousef's well-researched film 'Art for Everybody.'
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. 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, self-promotional 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.
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