Often featuring lighthouses, bridges, or quaint country homes,
Thomas Kinkade's soft-focus landscapes have permeated American
visual culture during the past twenty years, appearing on
everything from Bibles to bedsheets to credit cards. Kinkade sells
his work through his shopping-mall galleries, QVC, the Internet,
and Christian stores. He is quite possibly the most collected
artist in the United States. While many art-world and academic
critics have dismissed him as a passing fad or marketing
phenomenon, the contributors to this collection do not. Instead,
they explore his work and its impact on contemporary art as part of
the broader history of American visual culture. They consider
Kinkade's imagery and career in relation to nineteenth-century
Currier and Ives prints and Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," the
collectibles market and the fine-art market, the Thomas Kinkade
Museum and Cultural Center, and "The Village at Hiddenbrooke," a
California housing development inspired by Kinkade's paintings. The
conceptual artist Jeffrey Vallance, the curator of the first major
museum exhibition of Kinkade's art and collectibles, recounts his
experiences organizing that show. All of the contributors draw on
art history, visual culture, and cultural studies as they seek to
understand Kinkade's significance for both art and audiences. Along
the way, they delve into questions about beauty, class, kitsch,
religion, and taste in contemporary art.
"Contributors." Julia Alderson, Alexis L. Boylan, Anna Brzyski,
Seth Feman, Monica Kjellman-Chapin, Micki McElya, Karal Ann
Marling, David Morgan, Christopher Pearson, Andrea Wolk Rager,
Jeffrey Vallance
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!