Taking Stock: Value of Kinkade's art to stay in beholder's eye

HG in Rochester, Minn.

Dear HG: I think Thomas Kinkade, known as the Painter of Light, was a genius. He enthralled millions of Americans with nostalgic, Norman Rockwell notions of bucolic, rural life when things were exactly as they seemed to be and all things appeared untarnished, uncomplicated and wholesome. Rockwell painted people, while Kinkade painted Arcadian cottages, meandering streams, pastoral villages and enchanting garden paths. Aficionados like you probably hear the harmony and melody in his colors and feel the poetry of his images. Personally, I can't stand his work, though I am in awe of his skill and technique. And I hold Kinkade in significantly higher esteem than Christos, who wraps cities in pink and plastic slime, or a guy called Warhol who copied Campbell's Soup cans and dollar bills. Inarguably, visual art is defined as the representation of a subject in the form of a painting, a sculpture or a composition from materials such as rock, metal, glass, plastic, etc. However, the prices paid are determined by the collective, subjective opinions of a confluence of tittering, high-strung poseurs with unctuous personalities who compete for approval and social standing among the glitterati of the art world. The importance of their opinions is a function of the esteem in which the poseur is held by the effete gadflies who write about the artists, the galleries that boast their work and the fawning wannabes who suck up to all of them. However, the final imprimatur derives from the colony of the uber-wealthy whose status among themselves is measured by the millions with which they're willing to outspend each other for a de Kooning, a Wyeth or a Dali. Frankly, it's quite similar to the stock market.