Part One: Thomas Kinkade: the Evil-est Painter

Robert sits back down with Randy Milholland to discuss Thomas Kinkade, the most financially successful American artist and con-man.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media Ah.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that lies
about its guests and gets them made the suspects of
ongoing murder investigations. Welcome to the program, Randy Millhall and Randy,
have you ever been expected suspected of a series of
violent crimes?

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Only a triple ridgis sign.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Oh that's a good crime to be suspected for. Well, Randy,
today we're going to come up with a crime and
insinuate to our listeners that you committed it, although you know, honestly,
before we started this podcast, you were talking about having
just moved to la and people looking at you suspiciously
because you are, like me, a hulking man with a beard.

(00:49):
I used to have a much longer beard too, and
I know those looks. And honestly, when I started the
rumors that Jamie Loftus had killed all those people in
Grand Rabbits, I was just trying to make her more
empathetic to the struggles of men like you and me,
you know, so that she knows what it's like. Yeah,
we're the really the the largest discriminated against group in

(01:11):
this country.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
I cannot, I cannot let you continue this bit.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Why not who men who look like extras from one
of the Dwarf heavy Lord of the Rings movies. Like,
what's wrong with that?

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Are you saying that?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Because like a lost shirt?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
I did not know that you were wearing a lego
Lost T shirt. I am Randy, Welcome back to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
It's a pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
You're the artist and writer behind the Something Positive webcomic.
You are also the legal guardian of Popeye the Sailor Man.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
Yes, that is actually accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:50):
And you came on the show for the first time.
I think it was last year to talk about Scott
Adams because I've been a fan of your your work
for a while and I was I found out that
you were a fan of the pod and I was like, oh,
this will be I like to do that. You know,
this will be great. We'll have Randy on for the
one episode about an artist that we ever do. Surely
there aren't that many like world class historical monsters who

(02:12):
are also working illustrators, right, how many could there be? Anyway,
this is your third time back on the show, you.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Know it is amazing. Yeah, a lot of artists.

Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yeah, I mean I get when you think about all
of the other kinds of art that produces monsters. I
guess it's not surprising. Just don't trust people who are creative.
You know, if anybody has a creative thought around you,
just start hitting.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Them what by job by job titles ahead of creative?

Speaker 3 (02:50):
I feel at.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, well you're about to be attacked if our
listeners do the job anyway, Randy, what do you know?
What have you heard about Thomas Kincaid?

Speaker 3 (03:05):
I know he's dead, yes, and yes, despite being dead,
that's gonna be a real highlight of I know that
being dead, his signature still appears on brand new art,
which leads me to think there's some type of assembly
line going on. Uh, that's really it. Like I think

(03:28):
my grandmother had one of his prints, and that's about it. Like,
I know love artists? Are people in art loved to
dunk on him?

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yes he does. He gets his art gets attacked, and honestly,
some of the dunks you strike me as people being
like a little bit up their own assholes. But I
don't like his art particularly either. But no, he's not
a bad We're not. We're not just going to be
doing an episode where we make fun of this guy's
art because it's bad art. He both occupies a place

(03:58):
in culture where he contributed to the kind of right
wing derangement of our society. And more to the point,
he just like I am, a deeply unethical man who
took advantage of his customers.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (04:11):
And he also is kind of the kind of the
Ford of of paintings. Like when you said about there
being a h An industrial factory aspect to what he
did is very much accurate, although maybe not entirely in
the way that you had predicted. But Randy, you want
to learn about Thomas motherfucking Kincaid.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
I know. I was excited to and then I saw
that this meeting is schedule for three hours and I'm
a little more nervous about it now.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
And how long straight to We'll see how long.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
Bring those like Ford and all the anti semitisms. I'm like,
you can't wait to see what pamphlets t well not
that bad?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Well, well, Randy, I will say the working title for
this episode is the Panther of Light was Worse than Hitler.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
That was for your eyes only, Sony. That's not an
accurate title. Sometimes sometimes you just you know, hyperbole is
a necessary coping mechanism. When you have to write eight
and a half thousand words about Thomas Kinkaid, the Painter

(05:23):
of Light. Anyway, here it fucking goes eight and a
half thousand something like that. Pretty normal script. Yeah, it's
a lot to write about Thomas Kinkaid though. Anyway, cold open, closed,
We're back. So I think probably more than half of

(05:45):
the people listening have some awareness of who this is
just after I mentioned his name. He is one of
the best known, if not the best known artists in
the United States. And like you said, Randy, you think
you have a relative who might have had one of
his prints. A lot of people do. Right, If you've
ever been walking through like a relative's house or a
particularly opulent Airbnb and seeing a garish painting or a

(06:07):
series of garish paintings featuring idealized rule or small town
life with kind of a distinctive fifties Americana feel and
a use of color and light that feels simultaneously quaint
yet sinister, you are familiar with the work of Thomas Kincaid,
And if you aren't, Sophie's going to put up on
the screen some examples for the listeners. I'm going to
try and describe this. This is going to be one

(06:29):
of the more visual episodes we've had, just because we're
talking about a painter. That's part of why we're we're
doing adding video now, although I promise most of our
episodes won't be about painters.

Speaker 1 (06:38):
Yeah, check out the YouTube. Yeah YouTube dot com slash
at behind the Bastards.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
If not, let me describe the first one we've got
here is the perspective in this painting is really fucked.
But it looks like almost.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
It might be me because I'm like, yeah, tractor, Yeah
is tiny.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
That truck also even with the distance, looks tiny like that.
You've got a soldier walking towards like a cottage farm house,
but there's some bus that's clearly dropped him off on
a dirt road. He's walking home. Looks like about World
War two. Maybe it could be Vietnam era, probably more
closer to Vietnam around the tree so you know, yes, yep,

(07:21):
waiting for him. Yeah, so they've been waiting for him. Yeah,
it's a soldier returning home. The cabin. Part of where
I say sinister is like it's a daytime picture, Like
it's clearly the middle of the day, Like you can
see blue sky and a lot of you know, bright clouds.
There's a lot of light on the ground. But also
the cabin is glowing from the inside in a way

(07:44):
that I think it's supposed to seem warm and homie.
That makes it feel like like a cabin from a
fucking Sam Raimi movie. Like it feels like there's a
devil inside there, and the soldiers come back home having
just survived the war, to confront the evil that's devoured
his family.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
He does have an ecronomic on in that backpack.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Yes, that's why it's so bulgye Yes, yeah, that he
just this is an alternate history where we won Vietnam
by bringing the dead Eites down upon them. Honestly, pretty
good movie in that premise, or bad movie in that premise.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
There's a role playing game in that I think, actually.

Speaker 2 (08:19):
Yeah, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
So.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
The second picture we've got here is kind of a
very classic Kincaid. This is a cabin in the woods again.
You've got like the whole cabin lit from the inside
in a way that is supposed to be homie but
also seems kind of vaguely sinister. Everything sparkles a lot,
there's almost a glossy feel like. It feels like if
you've ever put you've been like painting miniatures and like

(08:44):
done like a glaze or something over them. It feels
like the whole picture has been kind of glazed in
that way.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
And then the third one we've.

Speaker 3 (08:51):
Built, it looks like a Christmas village building.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Yes, it does look like it is that. That's the
best way to describe it. Randy's if you've ever if
you ever had a relative who like what every year
on the holidays would put up one of those Christmas
model villages. All of his paintings of cabins look like that.
And it's a lot of small town paintings too, very
much like kind of the best touchstone for that if
you haven't seen a Kincaid somehow. And then this last one, surprise, surprise,

(09:18):
he's super Christian and not the good kind. And we've
got this painting of a cross on top of a
mountain and like the clouds are kind of like retreating
from the path of the that of the cross like
that that gives it a line straight to the sun
which is setting. It's this I don't know very again,

(09:39):
it almost looks AI generated, right, I think a lot
of people's first reaction to seeing these in the year
twenty twenty four, if they weren't familiar with Kincaid, would go, oh,
are these like some AI art? Right? It almost that
like hyper real, like shiny look that all of the
AI shit has his work kind of has.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
Yeah, that's very unpleasant. Yeah, so much.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
But yeah, I find it off putting too, And I
think there's a good reason why my head immediately goes
to and I look at it now, Oh, this kind
of looks like a lot of AI art, because every
AI image generator has scraped a shitload of Kincaid's work.
He was incredibly prolific and incredibly popular, and I do
think he actually has probably wound up having an influence

(10:28):
on because of how well his stuff like It doesn't
just sell, people will post kincaid paintings to like Facebook
to get engagement, and I think that that has to
a significant extent influenced how a lot of these image
generators work and a lot of the crap that they
put out. And we'll be talking about that more later.
But for those of you who haven't been able to
see the art, or those of you who just want

(10:49):
to hear someone smarter than me describe it. I want
to quote Joan Didion's description of Thomas Kincaid's style. A
Kincaid painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It
typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent
coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap
designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit

(11:12):
to really effect as if the interior of the structure
might be on fire. The cottages had faxed rooms and
resembled a gingerbread house. The houses were Victorian and resembled
idealized bed and breakfast, at least two of which in Placerville,
the Chinchester McKey House and the Comelback Blair House, claim
to have been the models for kincaid Christmas paintings. So
it's very much a lot of it's kind of this

(11:34):
idolized rural California chic and it's yeah, I think I
think Joan kind of gets it right there. It does
there's something vaguely evil about his paintings.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
But suddenly I want to thinkcaid painting of the gas
station from Texas chains on.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
Mass that's actually there's kind of a whole style of
like meme art, that is, people taking Kincaid paintings and
like turning them into pea pieces of horror. We'll talk
about that in a little bit, but it's remarkably easy
to do. Now. Kinkaid is the kind of guy who
is mostly remembered as making like wal art for hotel

(12:10):
grade kind of shit. But he's probably the best selling
American painter of the last generation. And he is, by
any of any account, one of the wealthy, wealthiest artists
of any medium ever to live. He died worth somewhere
between fifty and seventy million dollars. So you were talking
about like basically no one in the arts ever makes
that kind of money, right, Like he is the yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
The only person I can think of who probably can't
close and many have the pass was like Charles Schultz
in his lifetime.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Schultz das maybe yeah, yeah, you know, yes, yeah, I
think you're probably right that, Like you have to go
to some of the most to the most successful commercial
cartoonists of and again you're still going back like a
generation to talk about anyone getting that kind of money
for this sort of work, And you know, part of

(13:00):
what makes him different is that those guys like Schultz
is making art that is consumed by tens of millions
of people. Right, That's why there's so much money, and
it was so much money in it for him. Painting
is a bit different, right, most paintings, you know, most painters,
if they get rich, do it because they make something
that gets you know, develops a value because of its

(13:23):
kind of cultural weight, and it gets sold to someone
very wealthy who's willing to pay for it, and then
it kind of gets deranged from any sort of real
value that can go back to the artist. Because what
happens with great paintings and valuable works of art when
they get bought by rich people usually is those rich
people put them in storage containers and trade them back

(13:43):
and forth with each other as a way of kind
of laundering money. That is most of the art market,
like the big art market. Kincaid made all of this money.
He didn't make this money selling originals to very rich people.
He made all of his money selling prints to middle
class people.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right.

Speaker 2 (14:02):
Uh. And that's that's completely unique. No one else really
has done it to the extent that he was able
to do it. And you know, it's counting stuff like
this is always kind of a crap shoot, but one
credible estimate says that sort of at the height of
his popularity, something like one in ten American homes had
a Thomas Kincaid print on at least one wall, which

(14:22):
is nuts. Like, that's a crazy level of penetration.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
I guarantee more now because I know his label has
licensing agreements with Harry Potter, Disney and the Disney brands,
Like there are yeah, looking marveled.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
There's Star Wars shit, yeah.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
The Star Wars ones I've seen, and there that's some
ugly composition. I feel kind of that's saying I don't
like busting of art, but it's just.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
It's it's he's turned into this is not really as
much of what it was for the most top part
when he was alive, but it's just kind of turned into, well,
people know this name, and they know that they can
get art from here, so let's make as many deals
as we can. But during his lifetime, it was really
just selling his work, and we're going to talk about
like how he actually made that profitable because it was
by taking the logic that we see use in multi

(15:10):
level marketing like pyramid schemes and by right wing populist
politicians and applying it to art sales. Right, that's how
he got this successful. And the fact that this worked
says a lot about our country, which is kind of
why we're telling this story in the Year of Our
Lord twenty twenty four. Is this as we watch an
election where one side is largely propped up by an

(15:31):
alliance of used car dealers, cryptos, scammers and fucking multi
level marketing con men.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
So yeah, you might be being generous on that one.

Speaker 2 (15:42):
Yeah. William Thomas Kinkaid the Third was born January nineteenth,
nineteen fifty eight, in Sacramento, California, better known as the
very crack of Hell itself. Have you been to Sacramento much?
I've not been to City of Trees? They call it

(16:03):
City a Tree.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
And yes, yes, Robert, yes.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
Uh it's okay. I had to live in reading Sacramento,
I know, I know, suffering too. Uh So he grew
up in Placerville. He grew up in Placerville. Sacramento's fine.
He grew up in Placerville, which was a quiet mountain
town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. His childhood is always
a sore spot for him. He does not, he does
not recall it as a nice one. But he's also

(16:29):
a professional fabulous, so he's going to lie about it constantly.
But one thing that is more or less accurate is
that he came from a broken home. His father abandoned
the family when Thomas was five. He was a painter,
although he never sold anything and mostly was an alcoholic
who survived off of part time janitorial work. Thomas is prob.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
That's most painters.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
That's most painters. Yes, drunken and doing janitorial work to
get by because painting is just not a great way
to get money. Nope, h Thomas. His brother Patrick recalls
him as a lovable, sad sack who was more of
a bit player in their childhoods than a father. Right,

(17:11):
this is not a situation where like he's gone entirely,
but I know it's a real bleak. Like he's like
a guest star in like a TV sitcom like Onis
once a season, he'll come in for an episode.

Speaker 3 (17:26):
Charles Nelson Riley.

Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah. Weirdly, one of the quotes from Patrick about their
dad sounds very similar to Doctor Evil's speech about his
father and Austin powers and I just have to I'm
not going to try to do the voice. But Tom
and I both certainly felt that we were more sophisticated
than he was. He'd go off on these tangents, these
flights of fancy about what he was going to do

(17:50):
with his life, these bouts of expertise that he really
had no expertise about. He'd be so into it, and
Tom and I would just sit there and smile and nod,
knowing that this was all nonsense. And then my father
didn't really have the capacity to carry out that plan.
He wanted to sail around the Sea of Cortes. He
had this weird little boat that in no way was ready,
nor was he a sailor. He had a hat and
a map. Wow, I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at your

(18:16):
sad childhood, but that's pretty funny.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
No, that's that's kind of like, that's amazing. Yeah, it
feels like some morested development level.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Since their dad was pretty useless, care and feeding of
the family fell upon their single mother. She got by
as best she could, working as a notary public and
surviving with the help of government welfare. Unfortunately, Like, there's
no shame in having to get by on welfare. As
the problem is, she hid this dependency from her kids, which,

(18:50):
as a result, they grew up not kind of and
I think this plays into how Tom is as an adult.
They grew up not really aware of how much of
their survival had hinged on the existence of a social
safety net. For an example of kind of how she
hid this, Tom and his brother as kids thought that
the jars of peanut butter stamped property of El Dorado
County were gifts from friends like she. She didn't want

(19:13):
to admit to them how bad their financial situation was,
and as a result, as kids, they weren't really aware
of like how much they like their family was being
supported by this by society, right, which is I think
not bad, especially if you're a kid who grows up
to be crazy rich. Maybe the feeling that, like, oh,
when I was a kid and needed it, I was
able to benefit from the support of my society. Perhaps

(19:36):
I have a moral obligation now that I'm rich to
help out other people. Thomas is not going to grow
up feeling that way, right, Yeah, I mean maybe he
wouldn't have either wayis right.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
I mean, I feel sympathy and empathy for her.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Because yeah, it's tough.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
You don't it's got to be a bruise to the ego.
And also you don't want your kid be made fun
of because.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
Right the kids they go schooled pretty brutal. Yeah, yeah,
and I get why you would hide that. I understand
like the shame of it, you know, I am. I'm
thinking back to my own child, and I'm kind of
glad that my dad let me know about, like when
he was on unemployment, like what that is and how
it works, and like growing up with even that kind
of understanding to yeah, yeah, if.

Speaker 3 (20:22):
You need help, you need help, then right, you should
be able to get it.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
And that's that's not how he's going to Patrick is
going to grow up thinking about this sort of stuff.
Or that's not how Thomas and Patrick are going to
grow up thinking about this sort of stuff.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
Their mother, they remember as a very cheery person who
used good humor to hide their desperate financial straits. At
one point, all of the family furniture was repossessed. When
the boys came home to an empty house, their mother
told them she'd chosen to get rid of the furniture
so they could have a fun time camping out in
their house. So we get not shitting on this lady.
She's doing the best with what she's got. That's that's true.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
I mean, yeah, I get the desire to shield your
children from stuff like that because that's going to that's
a trauma. You're trying to make sure. She sounds like
a great mom.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
To be honest, she sounds like she did her very best.
You know, you can't guarantee kids are going to come
out not be an assholes.

Speaker 3 (21:15):
No.

Speaker 2 (21:16):
Yeah. And that said, I'm also not one hundred percent
sure how much of this to believe because that does
sound like a Hallmark original movie. And Thomas is like
he always has Hallmark brain. He's constantly spinning his own
life story. And I wouldn't be entirely surprised if aspects
of this whole broken home, you know, plucky but but

(21:37):
beleaguered single mom story were kind of played up because
he knows how they play as like a narrative, right.
I don't know though, But his version of the story
is that at a very young age, his mother told
him that he had to be the man of his
house now because his dad had left. Now, that same
version of the story, the one that Thomas liked to share,

(21:58):
claims that in school he was a child prodigy, good
at math cifix every class, but especially drawn to art.
His first major artistic venture was commercial. At age fourteen,
he set up a stand selling his drawings for two
dollars each. In an article for The New Yorker, Sue
or Lean writes, every time he sold one, he would
marvel at how he could make money on something that

(22:18):
had taken him only fifteen minutes to do. And that
does that his early attitude about art as well, I
can with very little work make money off of this,
Like kind of he's already thinking, how can I maximize
spending as little time as possible to get as much
return on the time I put into art? Like he's
financialized those Yeah, I do if he is. I mean

(22:43):
it sounds like he was actually very poor. I get
that right, because it's this thing that like people who
grow more comfortable, it's hard to understand, but like you
kind of have to think of everything in financial terms
when you're that amazing kid. So I'm not surprised.

Speaker 3 (22:59):
That's fair and honestly, like, on one level, it's nice
to know that someone with archistic skill early realized that
they could make money because I've do so Many artists
don't understand the value of the work and over really
hard for it. So on one hand, it's nice to

(23:19):
know the young age he understood his value. I just
also know where this is going. Yeah, well, yes, I'm
not happy about it.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yeah yeah. Now, Thomas was so was promising enough as
an artist that he started attracting mentors as a teenager.
One of them was a prominent artist named Glenn Wessels,
who was a professor at the California College of Arts
and You See Berkeley. Wessels eventually convinced Kincaid to pursue
art as a career and go to UC Berkeley. Now,

(23:48):
the story of Glenn and Thomas is a load bearing
piece of the Thomas Kincaid story, so much so that
in two thousand and eight it became the subject of
a Christmas biopic titled Thomas Kincaid's Christmas Cottage. Peter O'Toole
plays Glenn, and in a shocking twist, Thomas Kincaid is
played by Jared Padilechi aka the less Interesting brother from Supernatural.

(24:10):
Really really, I was shocked as hell to see.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
That that's some that's not where I thought that was
gonna go.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Neither did I. It's like right at the start of
the series. Jared Padialachi too, So I am.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
So sorry, but I am absolute Looking up screenshots of
that movie.

Speaker 2 (24:33):
People say it's okay. The audience store is sixty two percent.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
I can't believe they had Rory Gilmore as a worst boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Wow. Wow, he's clearly the worst Winchester brother, Sophie gezor
boyfriend between us.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah, look at that movie.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Also like it's it's by any count, Like it's what's
the word I'm looking for. It's a compliment to have
Jared Padileki in two thousand and six cast as you
in the movie about your your adolescent or your young adulthood.
But also like, I'm sorry, Thomas Kincaid, you don't look
like Jared Padillachi.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
What are we talking about here, Thomas No, absolutely, Sophie
pulled that up because the people need to see, like
the toe with a beard, he does.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Not look like two thousand and six Jared Batileki.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
No, No, he doesn't.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Two thousand and six Future Walker Texas Ranger disastrous idea
for a reboot. Jared Padileki, Oh my god, there's so fun.
Oh there's a picture of a mullet.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
Yeah yeah, yeah, that man knows the street value of Merbie.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Rory Gilmore is the worst boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
He could be Rory Gilmore's worst boyfriend, but Rory Gilmore
would have had to have several hard years first.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
He looks like a pretending to be straight and trailer
park version of Glenn Shandox, who was Otho and Beatlejuice.

Speaker 2 (26:22):
What a very specific comparison. You know, thank you.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
Who should have played him because he was an amazing actor.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah and so damn anyway, real quick, Yeah, speaking of
Jared Padaluchi. This podcast is sponsored by Devan Dart.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
I thought you're gonna say your worst boyfriend.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
I was making I was making a supernatural fandom joke.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Yeah, I just think of the worst, most upset adding
furry fetish stuff that someone can inflict on it.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Oh, you can find some great furry fetish supernatural cross
art good stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, fine, fight.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
For super natural supernatural.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yeah h yeah, super fur natural damn. Yeah, there's probably
a whole convention based around that. Anyway, if you're if
you're a member of the supernatural furry Pornography fandom. This
has been your lucky day on Behind the Bastards. Here's
some ads. We're back anyway. Uh so, yeah, I don't

(27:39):
know about this movie, but what one reviewer calls it
overly sentimental and overly acted, yet surprisingly enjoyable, which corresponds
to how a lot of people feel about Thomas's artwork.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (27:49):
You could say that about every Kincaid painting. It's cloingly
sweet and it drips with enough nostalgia to clog your arteries,
but there is something compelling about it. This may be
it's like that. That is kind of the thing about
it is, like, it's not it's wal art. It's the
kind of shit you'd see in a hotel, except most
of the kind of shit you'd see in a hotel
you would never look at or think about again, Thomas Kinkaid,

(28:11):
there is something about them, right, There is something interesting
going on here. I'm not saying that like it's good
or artistically, you know, brilliant, but there's there's a reason
different groups of people obsessively edit and modify kincad art.
Like there's a couple of different subcultures based around that.

(28:32):
You can find a lot of his work with like
eldritch horrors and elder gods added in as in, So
he's going to show you this Thomas Kincaid lighthouse paired
with Cthulhu.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Oh my god, that's gorgeous.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
It works pretty well. Yeah, Like it's a much better
painting when you throw Cthulhu in there.

Speaker 1 (28:47):
Not matters.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
Yeah. And while Thomas Kinkaid's stuff, they do a Star
Wars imprint. There's been like a fan thing where people
will take his borderline surreal landscapes and cabin paintings and
turn them into this sits of colorful Star Wars battles,
as you can see here in this painting of a
Thomas Kincaid cottage with a pair of Ataight's not bad.
Not bad.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
I've seen that one before.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeahh surprisingly they kind of fit in, like it is.
That doesn't work. It doesn't look jarring, right.

Speaker 3 (29:18):
The worst part is that looks better than all the
official Thomas can Cad Star.

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Wars so much battling, so much better.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
God, like that is depressing.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Yeah. Anyway, Thomas moves on to another art school after
two years at Berkeley, and it's somewhere in this period
like when he kind of leaves Berkeley to go to
this outher art school. That there's a major shift in
his personality right around the same time he leaves, because
the next art school he goes to is in Pasadena.
At age twenty, he undergoes what Sue or Lean described

(29:48):
as a Christian awakening. Quote. It changed his art. It
stopped being about his fears and anxieties and became optimistic
and inspirational with themes like hometowns and perfect days and
natural beauty. And millions of people responded. Now, this is
what Sue writes to The New Yorker, this is what
Thomas claims. I don't know that I think this is true.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not right, because this

(30:11):
is a very If you've spent a lot of time
at like revivals, if you've seen a lot of like
Christian evangelical speeches, this is how they all go.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Usually sometime when I'm in college, I was surrounded by
this degeneracy. But then like I had this and it
changed everything. Once I, you know, once I you know,
saw the truth and accepted Jesus, Like my whole life
was different. Right. That's how these stories go. That's not
really how real life usually works, right, and it's not
how art usually works. But we'll start. I'm going to
tell you the real story, which is much more interesting

(30:42):
and involves Ralph Bakshi. Uh so, oh god, damn it. Yeah,
you goddamn right. But first, I'm going to tell the
version of the story that Thomas Kinkaid, once he becomes
a business empire, wants everyone to believe.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Now, I really want one of his pains that Frits
the cat put in it, so that.

Speaker 2 (31:01):
If only fire and ice put a pin in that one.
By the way, so Sue describes, first, let's go with
Thomas's story, because this is what he wants people to believe.
So Sue Orlean, in her profile for The New Yorker,
describes how the company he created to tell his art
tended to tell the story of Thomas's development. From this point,

(31:22):
it's as good as story as you could hope for.
If you want to make a point about perseverance and
pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and appreciating life's bounty.
Even the bad parts of the story are good because
it's easier not to begrudge Kincaid his fortune when you
were reminded that he was a poor kid who had
to struggle, who rejected the smarty pants liberal establishment to
follow his heart, and he was proud of having earned
his way into the ultimate American aristocracy of successful entrepreneurs.

(31:46):
So basically, he's saying, like, yeah, I had this Christian awakening.
They wanted me to do all these sad paintings about
my fears and nightmares and insecurities. But I knew that
real art, you know, it should uplift people. It should
be about values, the real classic American values, And I
broke with the art establishment then at age twenty. That
is not at all what happens, demonstrably not the actual story.

(32:10):
So here's the actual story. In the summer of nineteen eighty,
Thomas Kincaid goes on a road trip with a friend,
his buddy and fellow artist, James Gurney, and they wind
up in New York City, where Thomas talks his way
into getting a book deal with James. They publish a
Guide to Sketching, which sold very well and is apparently

(32:31):
a pretty good guide to sketch art. Does the name
James Gurney mean anything to you?

Speaker 3 (32:36):
Not? Really? No?

Speaker 2 (32:38):
Okay, good, I think you'll recognize his work when we
get to that point. So this book that he and
James writes is enough of a hit that it gets
the attention of one of the country's most talented and
insane artists, a man named Ralph Bakshi. Now, if you
have not seen his movies like Fritz the Cat and
American Pop, Bakshi was a devotee of a type of
animation called rodoscoping, but he also wrote asks uping involves

(33:01):
these kind of like weird it's a weird method of
like filming actual people, but it also measures in with
traditional animation, which you use for the backgrounds for like
monsters and stuff. Great great ship.

Speaker 3 (33:14):
You did the first to animate Lord of the Rings movies.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yes, yes, that's that's kind of probably his most well
known stuff, and it's often like Bakshi style, it's often garish,
it's often grotesque. There's these distorted people in animals, but
there's this kind of magnetism to his work. Nonetheless that
I you know, a lot of people including me, have
always found like very intriguing. Bakshi saw talent.

Speaker 3 (33:36):
It's a very weird guy.

Speaker 2 (33:37):
He's a very weird guy, but especially Consered.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
His career started in terry tunes like Heckel and Jackyal
and all that shit, and the nineteen sixties Spider Man
cartoon no shit, And it went from that to doing
Fritz Yeah, the Spider Man pointing each other meme. That's
I believe that's.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
The boxhi, okay, okay. Interesting.

Speaker 3 (33:59):
Then he started doing all his adult cartoons in the seventies,
in the early eighties.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, and then we.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Got the You Will Never See Again nineteen eighty nine's
Mighty Mouse cartoon. Yeah, with the cocaine reference.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Yeah, I mean, Bakshi's blood was about sixty percent cocaine.
Through the entirety of the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
John Chris Belushi was working on that.

Speaker 2 (34:22):
One's for you, Yes, yeah, yeah, that'll be our probably
maybe our next episode the rin and Stimpy Guy Jesus
but bok. She sees talent in Thomas and he hires
him and Gurney to work on his new film nineteen
eighty threes, Fire and Ice, which you.

Speaker 3 (34:38):
Had just brought up, guess.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Thomas Kinkaid does a lot of the background art in
Fire and Ice. A lot of the environment is drawn
by Kincaid, Yeah, and by Gurney.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Gurney does a good amount of that too. And if
you haven't seen Fire and Ice, folks, I recommend you do.
It's a great movie. Maybe take some substances first, if
you're a substance taking kind of person. It's Bruce Flanne
Oh right, it's Vallejo, Bruce Valleeho, who did like a
lot of the most iconic Conan art. Sorry, Frank Frizzetta,

(35:08):
not Bruce Falleo. Yeah, it's Frank Frizetta who did who
did take a lot of Conan. And it's written by
a couple of guys who had done Conan, the Barbarian comics. Right,
So that this movie Fire and Ice is really it's
one of those, like one of these films that's kind
of a prism because a lot of different careers break
out after it. Right, There's a lot of people who

(35:28):
are going to go on to do very different but
influential things, who get, you know, part of their start
from Fire and Ice. So, Bakshi and Frizetta handle the
live action shots for the action sequences, well, Gurney and
Kinkaid do a lot of the background paintings, and the
project gives Thomas a lot of heat credits. In his
official story, Oh, I had this Christian awakening and it

(35:49):
convinced me. You know, I'm this painter of light and whatnot.
But you see in Fire and Ice a lot of
him playing with fog in the way light affects landscapes.
But you know, I've got a couple of clip in
here for you in a way that it is kind
of like you see a lot of fog in Kincaid's
later paintings. You see a lot of the same kind
of use of light. Like it's not really surprising when

(36:11):
you know this case.

Speaker 3 (36:12):
It's the backgrounds are stunning. I remember that the movie.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
He's very beautiful film. Yeah, and again, Fire and Ice
is one of these quietly influential films where a lot
of people who made shit you love got their start.
Thomas's friend, James Gurney, his co author, goes on from
this project to create, write, and illustrate the Dinotopia series.
That's who Gurny is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's James Garny, right,

(36:35):
who I was a big fan of that as a kid. Right.
The layout artist for Fire and Light Ice was Peter Chung,
who later created a on Flux. Okay, yeah, yeah, Roy Thomas,
one of the writers created the character vision for Marvel
as well as ghost Writer and fucking Morbius.

Speaker 3 (36:54):
Oh my god, Like, that's a lot of talent in
one film.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
It really is.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Is.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, we were this close to getting u Oh, what's that?
What's that creepy sex criminal who's in the Morbius movie?
I'm spacing on his name?

Speaker 3 (37:08):
Oh, Letto Jared Leto.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, we were this close to getting Jared Leto played
Thomas Kincaid in a movie. You know, there's still time.
There's still time Letto to.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Be doing that weird cold thing that he does.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
Also, the other co writer of Fire and Ice, Jerry Conway,
co created Killer Crock. So you know, again, a lot
of influential people in this movie. Yes, a lot of
load bearing parts of the culture come out of Fire
and Ice.

Speaker 3 (37:34):
Plains it's a good movie, I guess.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, it's great, fucking awesome movie. Yes. So, on one hand,
Fire and iceed artists gave us a whole host of
Marvel characters, several of whom have movies Dinotopia and aon Flux.
And on the other hand, we have Thomas Kincaid, a
man who twenty years later would be declared by a
Salon writer, the George W. Bush of art. This is
before George W. Bush became the George W. Bush of art.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
That's kind of hurt a little bit too.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Yeah, poor George W. Bush the most the greatest suffering
artist today.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
Truly, yea, truly, no one has ever suffered more.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
It would be really funny if he had, like a
if he'd gone like all full Warhol on it, Like
if George W. Bush were throwing these big warehouse parties
in New York and like like like literally just like
shooting up ketamine into his veins. That's the George Bush
we all deserve to get and steadies just rich and
lives in Dallas. So this version of the story, the

(38:39):
one where you know, Thomas Kincaid gets his big break
on a massive animated production and he comes right away
from it changed. I think that's more the real story
than the sudden Christian awakening thing. After Fire and Ice,
he starts working a lot more with light and landscapes
and fog and mist, and he warps his style from
a sort of restrained realism to this more fantastic and

(39:00):
surreal look. Now, Thomas likes the art he's making, but
it isn't really selling because people don't really buy a
lot of art, you know, like not enough that he
can live the kind of life that he wants to live. Right,
he probably, of.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
All the paintings I have sold, I've sold more prints
than I've ever sold a paintings. Yes, well, it's definitely
made more money off Prince than Nasal originals, you know.

Speaker 2 (39:23):
To be honest, Kincaid may be part of why the
business does work that way, or at least, you know,
maybe he's just it's probably more accurate to say he
realized that and figured out how to do it at
scale very quickly. So Thomas he might have been able
to make a place in the art world for himself
or in Hollywood for himself given enough time. But he
understood number one that like that kind of work was

(39:43):
never going to be regular enough or profitable enough for
him to get the kind of rich that he wanted
to be as a former poor kid. And he also
is aware as he starts trying to sell and display
his art that like critics don't like it. They think
that it looks either like chloyingly or on the more
fantastic side, like something you'd see in a conan comic, right,

(40:04):
and that's not something like art critics are going to
be bullish A No, they do.

Speaker 3 (40:09):
Not like that. It's yeah, definitely the least favorite thing
to come across.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Yeah, and you know they're co bad guys in this.
I I try to there's criticism. I will try to
repeat the criticism of Kincaid that I think is good
and not just the stuff that's like clearly some guy
who wishes that like he were still huffing Andy Warhol's
fucking few.

Speaker 3 (40:30):
Yes, there are definitely a lot of art critics who
if you mentioned landscape, it's just immediately those two hatred.
Like it's like a switch.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, it's them. Yeah, same with same.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
With certain mediums. Like if you tell certain like oh
I do water cooler, they're like, oh, okay, see paint flowers.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Yeah no. Well, and you know, I wonder if, because
we just talked about how there is some interesting stuff
being done by people who modify Concaid paintings, I wonder
if part of like the message there and the message
with Fire and Ice, is that this was never a
man whose work should have existed on it right, like
he could he could be part of good things when
he was a part of it, right when people were

(41:06):
like using his backgrounds and adding and putting things on them.
There was like a way in wait, like he was
actually part of some interesting art. But on his own,
you know, that's just not not a lot there anyway.
He gets kind of enraged at an early age that
his art is dismissed by these critics, and Kincaid himself
would always insist that, like because a big one of

(41:29):
the big criticisms he'll get is that his stuff is
just too pleasant, right, there's no no emotion behind it,
there's nothing complex behind it. And can Kaid's develops this
attitude that, well, art shouldn't be about complex emotions or pain.
Art exists to make people feel good, and if it
doesn't make people feel good, then it's not good art.

(41:49):
He later wrote, every element in my paintings, from the
patch of sun and the foreground to the mists on
a distant horizon, is an effort to summon back those
perfect moments that hang in our minds as pictures of harmony.
My deepest is that my work will help people despire
to the life those kinds of images evoke, And I
do think a valid criticism is that, like, Yeah, if
you're focused on your art only making people feel good, well,

(42:11):
that's not really very complicated or interesting art to a
lot of people.

Speaker 3 (42:16):
I know, I don't disagree with them. I think that
there's a validity to this is just starting to make
you happy. Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with that.
I do think I disagree with them that all art
has to make you feel good, because my brain went
to various Norman Rockwell paintings that were about integration. They're
very horrific images, or the one about them three pro

(42:41):
right civil rights activists who are murdered, painting about them,
and like, that didn't make me feel good, but damn
it was a hell of a painting and it really
did evoke his rage at what happened to these young men.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
And I think that's a great comparison to make, because
Norman Rockwell is a guy who gets compared to Kincaid
a lot, and there are some similarities in there's a
lot of kind of fifties small town vibe aesthetics to
both guys. But Rockwell was always very willing to make
art that made a political point and that had emotion

(43:17):
behind it, and that was trying to say something, And
the only thing Kincaid stuff has ever said is like,
isn't it nice to be at home in your small town?
Aren't cabins great? You know, here's a sunset.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
People tend to dismiss Rockwell's like, oh, like for cute
kitchen stuff and he did da but like he did
do angrier paintings and talked about like yeah, well, I
mean he did paintings for the Saturday ning posts, so
the love of them had to be about modern current events.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's kind of a good
way to sort of divide the two men for folks
who maybe aren't as familiar with their uvras. Is Kincaid
is kind of violently against the idea that his art
should mean anything but comfort, and Rockwell was somebody who
felt that art could make a point and could make
people think and feel critically about things. Yeah, So Thomas Kinkaid,

(44:07):
the kind of what we're building to here is with
this this he's kind of discreet. He has his brush
with Hollywood, but it doesn't really take He gets disgruntled,
critics don't like his work. It's not selling, And you know,
it's kind of interesting to me that from all of this,
he comes to a series of understandings and it kind
of he kind of becomes the first man to understand

(44:27):
and provide the underpinnings of what is now the most
viral kind of art in our culture, the stuff that
we now call Facebook AI boomer art. If you go
on Facebook today, you'll get pages and pages of obvious
AI art filled with comments from an even mix of
old people in bots saying how happy it made them.
Thomas Kinkaid is the first guy to realize that this

(44:49):
is going to be a thing and figure out how
to monetize on it before the internet's really a thing,
before AI certainly is a thing, Like you get. I'm
showing you a couple examples like this obviously fake baby
and little dog. This made me smile so sweet. You
know this soldier, no one is thanking me, is thinking,
no one thank is for service. Uh yeah, there's a

(45:12):
crying soldier saluted with his back turns to an American family.
There's a baby crying. It's like a little deranged baby.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
Is like, there's not a steering wheel.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
It's it's it's very it's a deranged piece of art.
And you know, kincaid stuff was always a lot simpler
than this. But it's the you know, you get this
sort of like here's a sad soldier saluting it a flag,
you know, walking home. It's always vaguely patriotic, but without
like yeah I scrolled, Yeah yeah, I'm building to like

(45:45):
kincaid stuff and all of this weird Ai boomera. It's
all stuff that's vaguely patriotic. It's usually paired with texts Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's got cat ears in the last but phoo, but
you almost you see. The kind of shine to them
reminds me a lot of Kincaid's stuff too, like, and

(46:06):
I wonder if that's just that there's so much of
his DNA and all of these models.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
I like the one with the baby, Yeah baby, they're
all the ones with the baby. Yes, but the one
with the baby with Jesus and the baby have one
hand and they're taking a selfie because babies can hold
things like that.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Yeah, Jesus has a Lenovo's smartphone from twenty sixteen.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Yes, I desperately want to photoshop and nail into that
Jesus wrist.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
I don't know why, where's the sting on fucking AI.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
The kiss is unsettling.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
It's all unsettling. Yeah, it all shares for the same
reason that Thomas's stuff was popular, which is that you
get these kind of when there is a message, it's
usually a very vague level of like conservative grievance, you know,
over the state of the world. But mostly it's either
stuff that makes you feel good or stuff that makes
you feel nostalgic and doesn't really have anything else going

(47:05):
for it. And he recognized that like this is something
just as like this stuff has absolutely dominated people's Facebook walls,
boomer Facebook walls, his art dominated the literal walls in
their house, right, Like there's a connection between these two things,
between the kind of AI slop that goes viral, and
between Thomas Kinkaid and the way he used light and

(47:28):
color and the kinds of things he picks his subjects
for his art. This sort of like cozy scenes of
American and family life with incoherent patriotism and off putting
hyper commercialized Christianity. Right, all of that stuff together is
Thomas Kinkaid, and he is he sees how much potential
there is in this, right that the real way to

(47:50):
make a lot of money isn't in making art that
you're trying to impress critics with or sell to some
rich guy. It's making stuff like this that you can
tug at whatever it is in the brain of these
conservative boomers and make fucking all of the money on Earth.
And I can't stop myself because as soon as I
started really digging into more Kincaid's work, I started thinking

(48:11):
about all of this AI shit that every time I
hop onto Facebook to get in you know, get in
touch with a family member or something that i'ven't seen
in ten years, I see a bunch of this shit.
I see endless seas of this shit, and so I
am kind of I'm going to kind of repeatedly make
reference to it, and I think it's worth looking into
when we kind of compare to Thomas saying I think

(48:33):
that my art should be about making people feel good.
That that's all that you know, it really matters, right,
I don't want any more complex than that. That's exactly
what's going on with the actual human beings who are
generating this AI art right. Four oh four Media has
done some really good reporting on the origins of these
baffling viral images, and a huge number of them seem

(48:54):
to originate from India. They're spread via copy pasted prompts
and telegram groups and are often a little incoherent because
authors will run the prompts through text to speech in Hindi.
That's why a lot of like the language doesn't quite work.
And there are even influencers who will like teach people
how to put together viral prompts for money, and their

(49:14):
explanations of what images work and why are very kincadie. Right,
here's one quote from one of these guys. Photos of
poor people are good. Anything that touches the heart, Cute babies, children,
This is getting us a lot of good engagement people
in the US and in foreign countries. They love their
pets and other animals. There are many pet lovers who
live there. Right, It's just all of this stuff that

(49:35):
gives you these kind of vague good vibes feelings. Right.
Thomas Kinkaid is the proof of concept for how much
money there is in this sort of thing. That's why
all of the that's why there's this cottage industry and
generating shit like this.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah, cottage industry. Out's a good for His paintings is amazing. Yeah,
I mean also, I think part of it is, like
it doesn't just makes you feel good, it ma should
feel safe. He touched a hole. How many was have
like older relatives a post like pictures of remember back
when you knew things were okay and you can leave
your door unlocked yeh, Like hey, no I don't, and

(50:11):
like yes, experience about that, Like no, we always locked
our doors. Yeah, like my dad lived out in the
middle of nowhere, Arkansas, Like we still locked our doors,
didn't trust people.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Well, fucking blood came out when you know, Like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
It's definitely it. Hearkened to that whole, like the rose
tinted glass view that I'm beginning to seeing algen xers
start also throwing out there, like oh, back when we
drink out of the water hose and our parents lists
played the sunset, Like yeah, that wasn't great.

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Yeah you were just a child, but it wasn't like
a better time, but that that feeling that we didn't
used to have to lock our doors, Like Kincaid in
nineteen ninety bottles that feeling right and finds a way
to sell it back to people at scale, right, and
that is kind that is the source of his wealth.
Speaking of selling things. Robert, Yeah, speaking of the source

(51:03):
of our wealth. Here's some advertisers. Ah, and we're back
so highwave patrol. Obviously, Thomas Kinkaid did not foresee AI art.
He was not trying to lead us there, but his
instincts kind of made it very clear how much money

(51:26):
there is in pushing out this slop. So he is
I think he counts as a granddaddy to this. And
I want to read a quote from The Daily Beast
kind of talking about how he thought of his art.
Kincaid thought the art world had become detached from the public,
and he saw himself as the person to return it
to an artist's servant model, where painters affirmed rather than challenged,
social values. His hero was Andy Warhol, who he felt

(51:49):
had rescued art from insolarrity and and infused it with
iconography that meant something to ordinary people. What Warhol did
with soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, Kincaid thought he could
do with Eden inspired garden scenes and Cotswold cottages. And
that's wild to me that he's like listing Warhol as
an influence, because I think Andy Warhol would be deeply,

(52:09):
deeply disturbed by that fact, which I'm.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
Fine, Yeah, Liten, like I see Liechtenstein appreciating it because
he was all about the industrial system for art. But yeah, Warhol,
I don't know, like the guy who did the a
movie that got him shot.

Speaker 2 (52:32):
Oh yeah he did? Oh Andy?

Speaker 3 (52:37):
Yeah, good job Andy.

Speaker 2 (52:39):
Great guy. So by nineteen eighty nine, Thomas Kincaid is married,
he's starting a family, and he can't get by on
piece work and the very occasional sale of a painting.
So he reaches out. He has this idea, I want
to sell prints of my my, you know, cloying paintings
to a mass middle American audience. And he reaches out
to this guy kN Rash, a California entrepreneur, and he's like, hey,

(53:01):
I'm already selling five grand in prints every month, and
I think with some capital behind me, I could start
a real business. Now this is fraud. He's committing fraud
here because his actual sales are closer to zero dollars.
But Rash, I'm not sure if just gets lucky or
if he's got some sort of entrepreneur brain and he
sees the potential. But he gives Thomas thirty five thousand

(53:23):
dollars its startup capital.

Speaker 3 (53:25):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
Now, this is a story that should end in a
series of lawsuits and Thomas fleeing the country. But to
everyone's surprise, but theirs, this works. This is a great investment.
The fact that Thomas hes does launch a con to
start it does not harm the business in any way.
It shoots off like a rocket. Some of this oh yeah, yeah,

(53:49):
I started a con and it worked is the origin
of almost every fortune. Oh of course, no, yes, absolutely, yes,
he's he's a he's a hardcore conservative. Yes. Now, some
of this business had to do with Kincaid's personal allure, right,
that's part of why this works. He is a charismatic guy.
He's good at.

Speaker 3 (54:09):
Such Again, I remember that picture of him with a
fucking mullet, I mean, not a lore.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Yeah, I would pull.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
My child away from this man on the street. I don't.

Speaker 2 (54:18):
Yeah, but you're not. It's that there's this weird revival
thing too, where like if you're doing Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
I grew up in southern Baptist I remember going to
a bunch of revivals at at football stadiums Okay.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
A lot of money.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
It's always that that slick suit and the slipped back
hair and folks well, folksy story to make all the
older people feel a bit better and like let's talk
about how we've lost our way.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
Or you can be I think what he does is
he's the guy who looks a little bit on the edge,
like he might have at one point been you know,
more of a kind of like a little dangerous, right,
but like now he's the spirit of the Lord, right, Yeah,
like I was. I was in the It's the Alex
Jones things, like I've been in the depths of Hollywood.
I know the real evils, you know, because he was

(55:04):
in a couple of leak letter movies. I think that's
probably part.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
All the times, like revivals. It was like Elvis's step
brother or half brother who showed up as a speaker. Yeah,
talking about like I know the evils of this, Like, dude,
who the fuck are you?

Speaker 2 (55:21):
You just know that that's the only only money for
Elvis's step brother in today. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (55:27):
So he and Rash name their company Lighthouse Publishing. Uh
and they list their they state their goal like the
company mission is to engulf as many hearts as possible
with art, which, in a very concaid fashion, is vaguely
similar or sinister. There's a problem, though, Thomas has realized
correctly that a lot of middle Americans want the kind
of things that signal wealth, like having original artwork hanging

(55:51):
in your home. But you can't really make actual paintings
that people want to buy at a rate fast enough
to make serious money, selling them to people who are
not insanely rich, and using that art as attack shelter. Right,
if you're selling your originals, you can only sell so
much art, and if you're selling your originals to people
who aren't rich, you're just not going to get rich.

(56:11):
But the value of art is in its exclusivity, and
Thomas realized that when you're dealing with people who aren't
in the out, who aren't in the art world, it's
easy to fake exclusivity because people are dumb. So he
starts utilizing a printing process that mimics the look of
a real painting. As sewer Lean describes, a digital image
could also be soaked in water, peeled off the paper,

(56:33):
and a fixed to a stretched canvas so that it
showed the texture of the canvas in a way in
the way a real painting would. Right, So that's step
one but a print that looks like it has the
texture of a painting is still just a print. So
if you're going to sell thousands of them, people aren't
going to pay a lot for them. So Thomas has
another idea. He has to make them unique, but in
a way that he can mass produce. So he hires

(56:56):
and trains up an entire factory full of what he
calls master highlighters to come in and add small bits
of paint, like they'll paint over a single tree on
the print, or a little patch of snow or a
rock or something, and now you technically have an original
piece of art. Now you've got something you can market
not just as decor for the home, but as an

(57:19):
investment vehicle to rooms. Right, And that's the key to
the Thomas Kincaid story. It's not just that his art
comforts people. It's that he convinces them that they will
make money if they buy it. Just like all of
the rich con artists they admire.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
A great This is an investment. It's an investment, but
like it's not one of those scary paintings that you
hear about it at least like, yeah, it's a paint
that you love that makes you feel safe, and you
can pass it on to your children. It'll be worth
so much money.

Speaker 2 (57:51):
It's going to keep appreciating value because look, somebody painted
that tree in the corner. So this is an original,
unique piece of work. There's not another one like it
any are in the world. This is a safe place
to park your children's inheritance. And you know he's not
just he's selling these through They launch a series of galleries, right,
which are art retail establishments. Right They only initially they

(58:15):
only sell Thomas's work, and they they are they are
operated individually, kind of like a McDonald's franchise, so like
independent people franchise kincaid galleries. So he gets them taking
on the financial risk he gets he's convincing other people
to take on the financial risk of building a brick
and mortar or of operating a brick and mortar to

(58:36):
sell his work. But he gets a cut of every
sale that they make. And he'll like he'll send his
Master highlighters out to individual stores to do live events.
He'll go do speaking engagements and sign prints there. All
of this creates a pretty viable business. And I really
need to lean into how much of a scam it is,
so I want to quote again from that New Yorker article, which.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
It reminds me of Liechtenstein, who has few whom create
art for him, but he got to put his name
on it.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
Yes, Yes, And there's other guys who have done parts
of it. I think the degree to which Kincaid turns
this into like an actual factory, mechanized business based entirely
around him, especially at the time he does it, is
fairly unique. Again, he is playing with things. He's not
the only guy doing style. He's not the only guy

(59:24):
who ever does this highlighting thing, but he is the
first to do it at scale and make tens of
millions of dollars off of it. Right, this becomes more
standard as a result of him, and to highlight kind
of the degree to which these people are being scammed
into thinking they're buying an investment. I want to in
that New Yorker article, it quotes the manager of one
of Thomas's galleries talking a customer through a purchase. You're

(59:46):
building a great portfolio. They're nice investments, and this one's
almost sold out, and they do have a history of appreciation.
We have some secondary market pieces here, this one Julianne's
Cottage was released for a few hundred dollars in nineteen
ninety two, and now it's thirty seven hundred and thirty dollars.
So that's a big part of the promise, this will

(01:00:08):
appreciate you're really making money, you know. And I think
that that is a key aspect of it. It's not
just that these people like comforting art. It's that they're
being convinced that their greed is being played with two
right babies. Yes, it's exactly Beanie but and it happens.
The fact that this all happens in the nineties, this

(01:00:29):
is happening. Kin Kate is really hitting his stride at
the same point that Beanie babies become a thing. Pokemon too.

Speaker 3 (01:00:36):
The question like, you know, that's when market exactly because
everything's baseball cards are really big earties.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
And he is he is influenced by that. He is
paying attention to how collectibles are going, and he is
applying that to his own art. Highlighted paintings are being
sold as studio proofs. Kin Kate himself would even do
a small number of highlighted copies where he's painting over
prints of his own paintings. The normal highlights could start
as low as fifteen hundred dollars, while as can Kit

(01:01:06):
Kincaid's highlights. And again he's just like painting a tree
or something on a painting he already made would go
for thirty or forty thousand dollars. But he kept a
hold of most of his originals, which helped add to
the perception of value for his prints, right. And he
would cut off artificially. He would stop selling individual prints
at varying times. He would make sure there were limited runs,

(01:01:28):
which again it's the city he's learning from beanie babies,
from you know, collectible cards. That's what adds to the
value in this secondary market that gets people buying in
because they think, well, I can get rich off of
this painting. You know, maybe people will want it a
lot in thirty years for some reason, and then it'll
really prove to have been a good investment.

Speaker 3 (01:01:46):
It's all speculation and there's no proof that it will
have any value.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
No, no, and in fact it doesn't. These are terrible investments.
And this is by the way, he when I call
him a con artist, he is going to be found
in court to have or his company to have people. Yes, yes,
Thomas himself has dropped from the case. The company he
starts UH is found to have misrepresented the business opportunity

(01:02:15):
that k Kate sell Ka Prince represented Trump's cabinets. Oh yeah, yeah,
I know he would have been like the Minister of
the Interior or some ship. Speaking of cabinet positions, Randy,
when I'm elected president, Now, let's see what am I
What am I going to make you? What am I
going to make you? Sectaf You're in charge of the army, Randy, Yeah, yeah,

(01:02:39):
you got to figure out a war and start it.

Speaker 3 (01:02:44):
I mean, it's America. We can figure out. God.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Yeah, we need we need like a like a like
smaller than Afghanistan, but bigger than Grenada. You know, really
find us one of those sweet spots, and let's just
let's start sending in Marines.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
You know, Greenland's head fucking good.

Speaker 2 (01:03:00):
I think we can. I think we could take Greenland. Yeah,
I think we could take Greenland. You know a lot
of minerals. Yeah, they probably have some president dictator. Yeah,
let's do it, all right, everybody, Evans, I don't know.
Let's say twenty thirty two, Uh, it's time for Greenland
to pay Wow, Randy. Do you have any any place

(01:03:23):
on the Internet that you exist?

Speaker 3 (01:03:26):
Yes, unfortunately quite a few places. My main comics Something
Positive is that Something Positive dot Net. I also have
mouse Trapped, mouse Trapped comic dot blog, also comics Kingdom
dot com, slash Popeye. Every Sunday is a new Popeye strip.
Come see why so many of your seventy and sixty

(01:03:49):
year old uncles and aunts fucking hate me because I
ruined Popeye by including people of color.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
Hell yeah, well check out Randy. Check out us on
youtubeube or not. If you want to continue listening to it,
you can just listen to it. I promise most of
the episodes we do will not be about painters, but
when we do episodes about artists, it helps to have
a video.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
So any episode about Hitler is about a painter.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
It is it is. You know what we are. We're
going to launch our pure art criticism episode of Hitler.

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
Hitler and John Wayne Gacy's and how would they match up?

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
I think they would have been friends, actually they'd gotten
the opportunity. I think Hitler would have really liked him
if you'd gotten to know him. One of history's great tragedies,
the friendships that never were. There's a good there's a
good study history there.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:42):
Yeah, Hitler and John Wayne. Yeah. I want Hitler and
John Wayne Gacy as like detectives in New Orleans solving crimes.
The short story that will finally get me canceled The
Hitler Gaysey Files.

Speaker 1 (01:04:59):
On the podcast Some Word for You Okay Bye. Behind
the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
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