it was hated art for the same reason everything else ends up hated: overexposure. they took an arguably 'neato' style and put it everywhere from fridge magnets to sweatshirts. it was hated because it went from hard-to-acquire originals to "i picked up a framed 200 dollar signed print from Tuesday Morning for 100!" it became food for the masses. and the avant garde HATES food for the masses.

Adele is a good example of how to say "fark you" to the machine. come out rocking, be enjoyed and adored.. then pull the fark back and get the hell out of dodge and disappear for a couple years.

always keep the demand exceeding the supply. the quickest way to 'ruin' anything is to make it available to everyone.

Yes, his paintings were white bread. But white bread isn't shiat because of who eats it, it's shiat because it lacks character, flavor, texture, or anything else that might distinguish it from foam rubber.

Likewise, once you've seen one Thomas Kinkade painting, you've seen them all -- and in 20 years, like so much kitsch, no one is going to know the fark he was.

St_Francis_P: Did somebody really bother to hate Kinkade, or is this another paranoid victim of his own imagination?

Both. There is a tiny tiny minority of people who give a shiat about good art, but that doesn't stop people from feeling ostensibly oppressed by them however. Conservatives get really bent out of shape by anything that looks like 'the other.' Agree with them or you're a threat.

James!: I hope this causes a surge of Tomas Kinkade purchases to "stick it to the libs".

Sales Of Kinkade Artwork Surge (new window)

Confabulat: So Republicans want to be associated with crappy hack art now. Got it. Makes a lot of sense really.

Read up on the biography of Samuel Morse, before the telegraph he was an artist. Who wanted to do nothing but spread the word of God with art. And we're not talking feel good Catholic or Episcopalian stuff here, we're talking fundamentalist evangelical stuff. The sort of stuff we see today. Oh and as for the telegraph? He saw it was a way to spread the word of God to people everywhere. In many ways the modern GOP would love Morse. Also there's the fact he didn't actually invent the telegraph apparatus and his claim to what we call Morse code is rather shaky. And no he wasn't a nice guy, didn't even have that going for him.

jbc: How many songs does the world need about a homely chick being dumped?

Are you familiar with the entire genera devoted to being dumped called 'country and western?'

logophile: always keep the demand exceeding the supply. the quickest way to 'ruin' anything is to make it available to everyone.

Someone called the Beatles, well two of them anyways, would like a word.

EatHam: there are some pretty excellent parodies of him out there though.

Mugato: "Lumpenproletariat"...is that some manner of werewolf?

I thought it was a precursor to breast cancer.

All the haters just prove how great his art is!

Just like they prove that Samantha Brick is the hottest woman in the world universe.

Mr. Coffee Nerves: This is why my entire portfolio is in paintings of Dale Earnhardt Sr. smiling benevolently down on Dale Earnhardt Jr. racing at Talladega.

You really need to get into the plate sets. Lithographed ceramics is really the only way to fully capture the soul of the Intimidator faithfully. He's also a cologne that smells like gasoline and burnt rubber.

I think Lumpenproletariat needs to be an actual word.

stpauler: And then there's the fact that:
Now Thomas Kinkade has left us, but his legacy lives on with his paintings now hanging in an estimated 1 out of every 20 homes in the United States alone, providing light and hope to so many

I was searching Craigslist for something or another and came across a poor sap that was trying to sell his signed Thomas Kinkade print for 500 dollars. Lord knows what he actually paid for it, but it's going to make beanie babies look like a sound investment. People that bought at the height of his market are going to get burned bad.

Hey, conservaderps respect anybody who can create surplus value and display public piety.

He was no bob ross, that's for sure