The Evil of Thomas Kinkade 8/30

Here's the headline in today's business section of the Dothan Eagle:

Greed may have driven Enron's implosion

You have to admit, you were starting to suspect as much.

The Old Master

There's something vulpine about art galleries. I know there has to be more to it, but at its core the business involves hanging pictures on walls. For that they get a 200% markup?

Now, I'm no art expert, but I know what I hate, and in that category the snowy, heartwarming, "let's bring on some yesteryear" efforts by Thomas Kinkade take center stage. I've seen people go nuts over his stuff, but I've also suspected a marketing scam at work, like those Wade Cook seminars. If you thought so, too, you were right.

Case in point: Larry and Susan DiGiovanni are liquidating a warehouse full of Kinkades they bought in a fit of greed-induced moneylust, spurred on by the Kinkade machine:

As required of potential "dealers," the DiGiovannis first had to attend "Thomas Kinkade University" or "TKU" in California. There, they learned about inventory control, management, finance and marketing. The course was one week.

Essentially, a Kinkade gallery is a franchise deal. You set up the store, they ship you the schlock, and in five years you're supposed to be pulling in a quarter million annually if you follow the program. The DiGiovannis found out the hard way that Kinkade's licensing agency has the only sure-fire profiting plan and so they're suing the corporation "claiming it misled and defrauded them of their life savings - more than $1.3 million." To understand how this happens, it helps to know that Kinkade buyers tend to enter the art world as if it were a series of concentric circles, each one incrementally approaching originality and, ultimately, the master himself:

As with most of his works, Kinkade didn't actually paint the DiGiovannis' Cobblestone Lane - almost all his works are reproduced by machine. But this one, called a "master's edition," was touched by the painter. "He actually highlighted it" with dabs of paint, said DiGiovanni. "It's likened to a semi-original."

If you're in a gallery and considering a Kinkade purchase, it helps to know the pricing lingo, e.g., is it an artist's proof, a retouched proof, a gallery proof, a Renaissance proof (what the hell?), a studio proof, or a publisher's proof? Then there's the "Master's Edition" category, referred to above, and the edition size to consider.

Jesus wept, the stuff is so horrid, and you can just picture a gallery owner giving you the pitch: "Ah, you like "Beginning of a Perfect Day," do you? Yes... it is so peaceful, isn't it. That's part of Kinkade's vision for us, to be happy when we contemplate his...treasures. This one? Well, there were less than 6,000 paper and canvas lithographs produced, making this signed canvas proof very exclusive indeed." Under those terms, the one shown at right would run about $12,000.

The Wunderkind Uberfreak

Nick McDonell's book Twelve is a Less Than Zero knockoff but the kid is on a whirlwind press tour and the toast of the town, a veritable "Young Hemingway." According to the buzz, however, he had a few lucky breaks:

He grew up in a family of writers and editors on the tony Upper East Side of Manhattan. His mother, Joanie McDonell, is a novelist. His father, Terry McDonell, managing editor of Sports Illustrated, has a career that has spanned Esquire, Rolling Stone, Us, Men's Weekly, even the Hearst-owned San Francisco Examiner.

Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson are close family friends, with Hunter doing the blurb. Naw, the Raven isn't jealous. Nope. Not one bit. Not even a little bit. We wish McDonell well as he enters Harvard this fall.