Go into the light

STROKE OF GENIUS No, this is not Luis Guzmán. It’s master painter of our time, Thomas Kinkade.

Photo: John Storey/Corbis

The last time you woke up on your living-room floor with a PBR hangover after yet another drunken night of galleryhopping, didn’t you wish Chicago galleries were different? It may be fun to go to openings with your hipster friends and admire photographs of women urinating or paintings your cat could have executed with more panache, but wouldn’t it be nice to see art that’s uplifting? “Tranquil, light-infused” art that brings “hope and joy to millions each year” by promoting “traditional values”?

Thomas Kinkade, Painter of Light™, promises his art does all this and more. Yet Chicagoans must travel to the Oak Mill Mall in Niles to find a masterpiece such as Victorian Christmas III (1994), a depiction of a snowbound three-story house with so much light pouring from its windows that viewers may suspect arson. And you’d have to visit Kinkade’s nearest Signature Gallery—in Naperville—to have your soul soothed by the gazebo, tranquil stream and masses of SweeTart-colored blossoms in Pools of Serenity (1999). Kinkade has been producing his prints of cozy cottages, breathtaking sunsets, stone bridges over bubbling brooks and other inspirational scenes since 1984. Many of his works reflect his strong Christian faith, like The Good Shepherd’s Cottage (2001), in which sheep converge on Jesus as he stands in the doorway of a handsome mock-Tudor. How good is Kinkade? Well, he’s retailed $1.7 billion in paintings, which makes him perhaps the best artist of all time.

Kinkade does not receive as much respect from the museum world as his fellow Art Center College of Design alumni Jorge Pardo and Yves Béhar, but his innovative distribution system has enabled him to touch the lives and beautify the bathrooms of many more Americans: His mass-produced prints are affordable because he allows collectors to purchase them on canvas or paper, depending on their budget.

They may also have their prints touched up by Master Highlighters—specially trained artists who enhance the pieces with oil paint—while clients watch. Licensing agreements with companies like Hallmark and Spode give the...

Read more in next week's issue of TOC: Trump On Chicago!

Is this some kind of joke? Yes, actually. The above was part of TOC's 2008 April Fool's issue. Read more about it here.

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