Legacy of Thomas Kinkade: Finding New Homes for Religious Art
ALPHA OMEGA ARTS
By Ernest Disney-Britton
You can say many things about Thomas Kinkade, and people certainly are, but he made collecting fun, and that's the future challenge for those who love religious art. For a long list of reasons, many being theological, we tend to forget the fun ingredient but Kinkade did it by concentrating on what I consider to be the top two challenges -- Community & Marketing. He understood that first of all, collecting is a shared experience, no matter how much money you spend; and secondly, he understood that we live in a browsing culture for the visual arts unless we can make it practical for our homes. That is what I admired about Thomas Kinkade. He identified the two obstacles, and he tackled them both.
Like no other American artist since Walt Disney, The Painter of Light nurtured a sense of community around collecting his art -- gathering people together to experience his art in large groups, and not as a tiny elite closed club but instead with mass appeal. That's something the Roman Catholic Church discovered centuries ago and used to its great advantage. In contemporary society, Kinkade added the emphasis of establishing a network of dealers focused on sales, and not on educational (or even spiritual) viewings, and like another very popular mass appeal artist of an earlier century: Gustav Klimt, our modern day Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade also focused on the decorative appeal for the home -- yes, fun & home have been keys to his success.
I am reminded of an apartment leasing agent who after extolling all the virtues of the pool-side parties, the workout room amenities, and a general sense of community of a new development, asking me "Wouldn't you like to call the Hannaford home?" She understood the human desire for community, and she understood her own mission -- sales, and I did call the Hannaford "home" for several wonderful years. The collecting legacy of Thomas Kinkade is the same. As we continue to watch the drama of his secret life unfold, I choose to focus on his greatest gift which was making Religious Art a fun experience that Americans wanted to take home to share with friends & family.
By Ernest Disney-Britton
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| Thomas Kinkade Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee, Courtesy of Gallery |
Like no other American artist since Walt Disney, The Painter of Light nurtured a sense of community around collecting his art -- gathering people together to experience his art in large groups, and not as a tiny elite closed club but instead with mass appeal. That's something the Roman Catholic Church discovered centuries ago and used to its great advantage. In contemporary society, Kinkade added the emphasis of establishing a network of dealers focused on sales, and not on educational (or even spiritual) viewings, and like another very popular mass appeal artist of an earlier century: Gustav Klimt, our modern day Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade also focused on the decorative appeal for the home -- yes, fun & home have been keys to his success.
I am reminded of an apartment leasing agent who after extolling all the virtues of the pool-side parties, the workout room amenities, and a general sense of community of a new development, asking me "Wouldn't you like to call the Hannaford home?" She understood the human desire for community, and she understood her own mission -- sales, and I did call the Hannaford "home" for several wonderful years. The collecting legacy of Thomas Kinkade is the same. As we continue to watch the drama of his secret life unfold, I choose to focus on his greatest gift which was making Religious Art a fun experience that Americans wanted to take home to share with friends & family.
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