Biljo White wrote:

I think it amounts to fraud -- as you say, people are conned into buying
'art' they are told has monetary value, only to find out later that its
appraised or auction value is almost nothing. Also, he has turned the
'print' con into an art of its own - peddling worthless photomechanical
reproductions as 'prints' for absurd prices.

Nah, fraud implies some degree of intelligence, and even wit. I think
of Courbet (towards the end of his life) who threw himself into that
whole heartedly, having a couple of hacks paint Courbet-like pictures,
and the signing them; or Dali who signed vast amounts of blank paper
before his death.

Kinkaid popularity is symptomatic of something both emptier, and more
dangerous - the need for the broad mass of people to operate on faith,
rather than reason. That faith can be anything - from Catholic dogma or
Islamacist self-ignition to the new Scientism of Kyoto; from tulip
mania and beanie babies to the NASDAQ; from nationalistic fervour to
peace-mania. Modern "schools" of art; ARC.

All these are based on the unquestioning acceptance of one set of
axioms over another; and people tend to them because, just like math
for Barbie, questioning one's own beliefs is hard. It's much better to
allow someone simply to provide one the answer.

Personally, I think Kinkaid is of great value, but in a perverse way.
The fact of his popularity puts the lie to a broad segment of academic
thinking, and obviously upsets large numbers of group thinkers from the
art-as-intellectual-exercise-or-therapy side (look at the length of
this thread). OTOH an examination of the actual popular images reveals
a good deal about the nature of general society - much more than an
academic counterpart, like Warhol - that buyers/believers tend to
gloss over. (That alone may help it keep it's value over longer
periods). Why are they generally devoid of people? Why - even in the
most luxuriantly summery images - is there often snow in the ground?
Why is having one's hut lit with arc lamps considered comforting? And
when he does venture into some sense of realism, why does his world
stop in the mid 1920's?

Cheers;
CB