{"id":81,"date":"2006-09-24T12:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-09-24T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2006\/09\/24\/81\/"},"modified":"2006-09-24T12:07:00","modified_gmt":"2006-09-24T12:07:00","slug":"81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=81","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>THERE\u2019S KITSCH AROUND THE CORNER:  I didn\u2019t become aware of the Thomas Kinkade phenomenon until lately, when I noticed that a small Kinkade litho print that my brother bought for my mother\u2019s house.  Right after that, I finally noticed the Thomas Kinkade Gallery not far from my humble abode here in Northern New Jersey.  So I took a walk over to it and looked in the window at the displayed artwork.  It seemed a bit . . . . formulistic, shall we say.  Cloyingly sentimental, perhaps.  Trying a bit too hard to evoke some longing for the good old days.  Just the kind of stuff that my mother likes! (Smile)<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve seen this kind of art before.   Growing up and dwelling much of my life in the working class suburbs, I\u2019ve come to know the cheap stuff pretty well; the sentimental Norman Rockwell knock-offs, portraits of the sea and rustic villages, the black-velvet craze of the late 70s and early 80s, etc.  I once saw two big black velvets side-by-side at an outdoor market along Route 46 in Little Ferry; one was Elvis, the other was Jesus.  I\u2019m really sorry that I didn\u2019t get a picture of that.<\/p>\n<p>The interesting thing is how Kinkade, \u201cthe painter of light\u201d, is using cutting-edge American marketing techniques to stay above the K-Mart gallery scene (and thus keep his prices up).  His stuff is as mass-produced as anything I saw in the home furnishing section of Two Guys (a classic proletariat-oriented department store chain that went under in the late 70s) back when I was a kid.  And yet, the Kinkade organization is convincing a whole lot of people that these things are unique, collector\u2019 items, heirlooms, an investment.  Having an exclusive gallery in \u201cUpper Montclair\u201d, a rather tony suburban neighborhood noted for its artistic sensibilities, certainly doesn\u2019t hurt.  <\/p>\n<p>Hey, I certainly won\u2019t begrudge people for their tastes.  I\u2019m not exactly on the cutting-edge of artistic sensibilities.  I\u2019m a sucker for sentimentality too.  It just amazes me how effectively Kinkade is making a good buck on stuff that really isn\u2019t all that different from what you can get in the Wal Mart home furnishings section.  You can find lots of \u201clight\u201d there too!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, here are pics of the Kinkade Gallery of Upper Montclair, with an autumn display theme.  Note for the legal beagles, these shots were taken from a public sidewalk, where the US Constitution says that everything (other than perhaps a top-secret stealth bomber at an air base somehow visible from a highway) is fair game for \u201cartistic expression\u201d such as photography.   Hey, my own \u201cworks of art\u201d are hardly any less worthy than Kinkade\u2019s, even if I haven\u2019t found a way to make a buck off of them!  Enjoy.<\/p>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jimgworld.com\/beta\/kinshop1.jpg\" \/>&nbsp;&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jimgworld.com\/beta\/kinshop2.jpg\" \/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THERE\u2019S KITSCH AROUND THE CORNER: I didn\u2019t become aware of the Thomas Kinkade phenomenon until lately, when I noticed that a small Kinkade litho print that my brother bought for my mother\u2019s house. Right after that, I finally noticed the Thomas Kinkade Gallery not far from my humble abode here in Northern New Jersey. So [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}