Last week, a small gallery in San Francisco hosted a group show called "Kinkade Cannibalized! An Exhibition of Augmented Thomas Kinkade Paintings." The idea, as reported in this SF Gate article, is that a number of artists take offense at Thomas Kinkade's blend of idealized landscapes and fairytale, his creation of banal, formulaic images that have earned him the title "master of light." The artists in the exhibition wanted to critique his work in order to "communicate a message." Though what this message entails is unclear, other than a certain bitterness—Kinkade is reportedly the most collected living artist in the US. The work in the show seems as hackneyed and dull as the paintings they seek to satirize:
One of Evans' works was called "The Bloodshot Eye of the Beholder." Evans created a "badly done San Francisco landscape with a bloodshot eye in the middle," explaining: "It gives you bloodshot eyes to have to look at Kinkade's works."
In all, there were more than 20 pieces, ranging from paintings and multimedia sculpture to a diorama light box, a meat cleaver cutting cheese and several collage works.
Whoa, snap!What's in it for purportedly "serious" artists to attack the work of someone they hold to be so beneath them intellectually and conceptually? How does bitch slapping constitute a valid and thoughtful critique?
That said, a couple of the works are somewhat interesting. I like that this one plays off the idea of a found painting:
This one is called Serrano's Kinkade II, though it has nothing to do with Kincade (other than being premised on a fictional and ridiculous backstory). It might've been more interesting as a revision/update of Serrano's Piss Christ, a contemporary examination of the abject and sacred. Of course, such an artwork would require critical thinking, purposeful reflection, not knee-jerk reaction.
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Actually, if you look closely, behind pooh, outside of the jar of urine (he) is submerged in, is part of a Kinkade painting. The piece is a humorous riff on Serrano's Piss Christ, a “true” story involving Kinkade. Oh, & the fact that “Cacophony Society” was mentioned in the SF Gate article was a dead giveaway of the shows intentions.
ReplyDeletePrank art show? Is this another “Fantasia Protest”?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10111/368435421/
“It was a time when every fringe group in the country was protesting something. We chose the most innocent thing we could think of... a classic Disney cartoon. Bringing together a broad coalition of interests, we had much to be offended by. Dancing mushrooms were a reference to drugs, hippopotamus ballerinas were offensive to dieters, color-coordinated, heterosexual centaurs were offensive to gays and lesbians, the springtime evolution sequence and nudity of animals was offensive to christian fundamentalists. Our environmentalists were especially upset about Mickey Mouse wasting water. Somehow, the absurdity of it all was overlooked, and every media outlet on the west coast picked up the story. We even made Time magazine before the hoax was uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. “