The first reaction from the arts community is one of shock at the mass reproduction, of seemingly monotonous images, being sold fraudulently in the millions as “paintings”. Perhaps it is the fact that originals are no longer sold that gets their dander up, and that people are paying enormous sums of money for what are essentially machine reproduced copies (lithographs) that are then hand-retouched by individuals who are trained to apply predetermined dots and squiggles of paint. These “luminous canvas lithographs” are only outdone in price by the paper Master Edition pieces that Kinkade has personally highlighted over a foundation of apprentice applied highlighting and affixed a thumbprint to. These are called “semi-originals” and fetch $30,000-$60,000 US apiece.

The accusation of professional jealousy begins to rear it’s ugly head and the arts community starts to withdraw from commenting at all, so as not to be viewed in a negative light for criticizing those who obviously adore this work. Make no mistake Thomas Kinkade is a very talented artist. He is also a man with a mission, and it is the mission, not the art that should have members of all communities sitting up and taking notice.

The deluge of Kinkadistic images is pervasive. You can buy Kinkade coffee mugs, calendars, and stationary with your Kinkade credit card. You can live a Kinkade “inspired” home north east of San Francisco, settle down in your Kinkade imaged lazy-boy chair and read inspirational books co-authored by the artist, basking in the warm glow of affirmation that you are a good person simply because you own these images. You think this way because that is what the Media Arts Group Inc., (MAGI) has worked very hard to convince you of.

You see the artist is open about his strong Christian faith, and about his personal crusade. In his own words he wants to “blanket the world with the gospel through print”, believing that his paintings are powerful weapons in the ongoing war against non-belief and “ the corrosive effects of Modernism…which is responsible for South Park and Gangsta Rap” among many other cultural manifestations of our current era. His steps in this campaign are to first promote himself as the most commercially successful artist in the culture, followed by building a successful corporation around himself with lucrative licensing contracts and manufacturing plant. These two steps will then finance his fight against the MODERNEST LIE.

To put a finer point on it, he targets the largely ignored Christian sub-culture by selling images that are steeped in the sentimentality of home, family, faith in God and a simpler way of life. He has sanitized the past by removing the hard edges of reality and creating allegories of an impossible Eden and marketed it to a group that is desperately searching for such beauty. Upwards of 80% of his buyers have never owned something that they consider art.

But it is beyond just the selling of images that he hopes will inspire hearts to greater faith. Men and women are encouraged to purchase prints because they represent their faith and in doing so they are purchasing a little piece of Heaven that they can tack on their walls. Kinkade has iconized purple hazy landscapes with cottages and they are hung and regarded with evangelical reverence that rivals Crucifixes.

Christian writers are recoiling in horror from the imagery in Kinkades' works. The lone perfect cottage amid the garden. He intentionally does not add people to his paintings because he prefers for them to imagine themselves there. Yet it is this very disconnection and remoteness of these family cottages that suggests a serious removal of community from Kinkades’ universe of Eden. Jesus taught that a Christian is to love his God and to love his neighbor. This desire for isolation from the world and its realities goes against the central pillar of Christian doctrine. Kinkades’ work promotes a siege mentality of faith while preaching a false fantasy.

His loathing of the Modernist Lie is based on a monocular view that the art world is ruled by the closed culture of the gallery system that he believes to be inbred and solely about the artist with extreme contempt for the audience. He likes to think of himself as the new Norman Rockwell, bringing art back to the people. Yet when you compare the work of the two artists (ignoring the motivations of both men) you can not help but notice that while his paintings are devoid of life, Rockwell’s are literally exploding with people. Yes, the common man embraces both, but where Rockwell lovingly explored the ups and downs of reality, Kinkade has made a point to expunge it from his works.

The hallmark for evangelicalism is its disdain for pretension and high culture, yet like the church in the Middle ages, he sees art as a main conduit to the masses…although in the middle ages it was the aristocracy that paid for the art. It is ironic that he is guilty of that which he accuses modernist art of being. The methodology is not unlike the priests of old, marketing of his printed tranquilizers for the masses has resulted in the art he creates being irrelevant. It is about brand recognition. The Artist is a spiritual guide and his values are for sale via lifestyle art. He is bringing the message to those who can’t afford his prints by any means open to him, and by making the Kinkade name synonymous with middle class values, and like the televangealists before him, he is reaping in money hand over fist. In the end the art has become about HIM.

It is easy to blame Kinkade for this, yet he is merely a product of the system. A nation of great monetary wealth but extremely poor in its opinion and funding for the arts in from grade school up to museums. There is no shame in enjoying a painting by Kinkade, but one should enjoy it because they love it, not do it because they think it will make them a better person. A better person would go out into their community and invest in people. Art as a means of expression or escape is vital to a vibrant society, and the money spent on a Kinkade print would be better served in the classrooms of the nation.