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Speaker 1: Also Media.

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Speaker 2: Oh Man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. You know,

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Speaker 2: this is part two of our episodes on Thomas Kincaid

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Speaker 2: with Randy Millholland of Something Positive and in between recording episodes.

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Speaker 2: We usually do both parts on the same day, and

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Speaker 2: we'll always have a break in between so we can

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Speaker 2: grab a little bit of lunch, you know, just have

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Speaker 2: some minutes without the headset on, you know, recharge. This time,

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Speaker 2: I sat down and I wrote an eighty six hundred

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Speaker 2: words short story where Hitler and John Wayne Gacy saw

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Speaker 2: a series of murders in nineteen eighties New Orleans. And

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Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna be honest, I'm having some mixed

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Speaker 2: feelings about it turned out more erotic than I had

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Speaker 2: initially intended, and I think largely honestly, Randy, I think

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Speaker 2: I mostly used it as a vehicle to express a

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Speaker 2: lot of my anger at the Federal Reserve.

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Speaker 3: I think that was all expected from Ember one. Like,

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Speaker 3: I'm surprised it's not more erotic. Yeah. Yeah. There would

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Speaker 3: have been like a heaving scene where they talked about manhood, and.

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Speaker 2: I had to cut that because the Hitler gives a

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Speaker 2: speech about the gold standard at the sight of the

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Speaker 2: second murder that I really felt gone across something important.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna put it up on my substack, Sophie. Well,

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Speaker 2: we'll get it out there for all the listeners.

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Speaker 1: He's the audience that you've written a thing and then

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Speaker 1: not read it.

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Speaker 2: Sophie, you're not allowed to podcast the opinions I have

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Speaker 2: about the Federal Reserve. They'll come for me, They'll come

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Speaker 2: for all of us.

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Speaker 3: Oh can I design the cover for this book at least?

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Speaker 2: Please? Please?

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Speaker 1: I'm enjoying our role over here. You're trying, you're trying

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Speaker 1: to save our jobs, and I'm trying to provoke you.

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Speaker 2: Sophie. I know you feel the same. That's the why

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Speaker 2: we're business partners. You're just as angry at the Fed

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Speaker 2: as I have. You know, you've been voting for Ron

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Speaker 2: Paul for years before he was even in office, you know, uh,

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Speaker 2: and we still write him in every year, for every

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Speaker 2: for every position. You know, every county commissioner, Ron Ball,

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Speaker 2: but for me, Rochel, Doccatcher, Ron Paul.

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Speaker 1: But for me, Ron Paul isn't a man. He's really

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Speaker 1: just a friendly cat.

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Speaker 2: Well, Ron Paul kind of I think exists above and

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Speaker 2: beyond the concept of sexuality, which is why he's so erotic. Anyway, Randy,

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Speaker 2: are you ready to learn more about Thomas Kinkaid?

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Speaker 3: Okay, I'm terrified to learn more about Thomas Kinkaid. I'll

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Speaker 3: be honest with you. You should be. He's gonna go downhill

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Speaker 3: real fucking best.

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Speaker 2: It definitely will. We're back. Thomas started becoming a household

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Speaker 2: name in the early to mid nineteen nineties, a time

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Speaker 2: when collectibles were taking off in a big way. As

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Speaker 2: we talked about last episode, this is the decade again,

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Speaker 2: Pokemon match with Gathering. There's this whole new subculture, and

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Speaker 2: Thomas is aware of all this, and he's aware that

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Speaker 2: I think I think part of what he's aware of

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Speaker 2: is if you're a zoomer, you won't remember this, but

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Speaker 2: millennials in the audience will recall every time you had

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Speaker 2: Magic or Pokemon or you know, and Masters the Universe toys,

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Speaker 2: some new collectible craze take off. There'd be a chunk

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Speaker 2: of the Christian right telling everyone that this was the devil,

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Speaker 2: that like, this was Satan trying to get his hands

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Speaker 2: on our children. And I kind of think the fear

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Speaker 2: at Ferby's too right, and I d and d you know,

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Speaker 2: which is less of a collectibles thing, but it still

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Speaker 2: kind of speaks to the mood at the time. And

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Speaker 2: this is not something I've heard anyone else. Right, Maybe

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Speaker 2: I'm wrong about this, but I kind of suspect part

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Speaker 2: of what Thomas is consciously doing here is recognizing, well,

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Speaker 2: for a wide variety of reasons, evangelical Christians cannot or

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Speaker 2: don't feel comfortable buying into these other sort of collectible things.

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Speaker 2: But they're they're people like anyone else. Whatever thing in

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Speaker 2: the human brain gets ticked by collecting a bunch of shit.

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Speaker 2: They have that too. I just have to provide them

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Speaker 2: with something that's safe, right, And I do kind of

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Speaker 2: suspect that that's what he's doing, especially when yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: because it's such the same thing, the artificially restricting the selection, right,

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Speaker 2: the trying to get people to hoard stuff, convincing them

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Speaker 2: these are investment vehicles. And he would also this is

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Speaker 2: kind of where things get fun. He started spreading insane

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Speaker 2: rumors about the links that he would go to to

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Speaker 2: make sure that his highlighted art pieces were like worth collecting,

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Speaker 2: that nobody was getting a fake, right, then you were

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Speaker 2: getting an original. Thomas Kincaid print, if you bought a

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Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid print that a real person had like slapped

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Speaker 2: a little bit of paint on a tree. For most

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Speaker 2: additions were supposedly signed with ink that contained Thomas's DNA

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Speaker 2: from either his hair or his blood to quote to

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Speaker 2: prevent fakes, which I love because the insinuation here is

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Speaker 2: that some of the thirty thousand dollars millionaires buying his

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Speaker 2: art could afford to have the signature DNA tested somehow

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Speaker 2: if they needed to prove that their Thomas Kincaid was

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Speaker 2: an original, Like, where are people going to get that

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Speaker 2: test done? Thomas? How are they you doing this?

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Speaker 3: Oh my god, does Thomas Kinkaid have something in common kiss?

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Speaker 3: Because it was a whole story about them mixing their

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Speaker 3: blood the ink for their Marvel comic.

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Speaker 2: Yes, And I honestly I think that more artists should

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Speaker 2: do this, right, Like, when you get it, you should

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Speaker 2: be able to listen to not just the normal edition

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Speaker 2: of this podcast, right, that's for poor people. If you're

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Speaker 2: if you're a man of means, you should be able

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Speaker 2: to buy the exclusive edition of this podcast, which comes

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Speaker 2: with a vial of either my blood or my hair.

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Speaker 2: You know, you never know what you're gonna get, but

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Speaker 2: something that was once a part of me, you know,

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Speaker 2: and all you have to pay. It's Sophie, it's just

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Speaker 2: twenty two thousand dollars an episode. That's a bargain anyway.

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Speaker 2: It's a collectionatile everybody guaranteed to appreciate.

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Speaker 3: You're going to get them off anyway.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right.

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Speaker 3: Toenails ever wax.

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Speaker 2: You know a special benefit for our online listeners who

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Speaker 2: are crazy rich people with money. Every time you buying

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Speaker 2: an exclusive Behind the Bastard's premier Collector's edition episode, you

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Speaker 2: get three minutes of Hitler and John Wayne Gacy solving

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Speaker 2: crimes in nineteen eighties New Orleans. Collect them all to

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Speaker 2: get the whole story.

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Speaker 1: You sickos that heard Robert say things about hair and

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Speaker 1: toenails and thought, ooh, I would want that to yourself.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to stay off the subreddit this week.

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Speaker 1: Don't post anything we did, stay.

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Speaker 2: Off the internet.

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Speaker 1: My mom always just keep that on the inside like

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Speaker 1: a winner.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so critics.

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Speaker 3: Honest, any rich person who's listening to your podcast is

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Speaker 3: probably just getting ideas on what they're going to do

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Speaker 3: with their wealth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I don't know how many of these twenty

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Speaker 2: two thousand dollars collectors Edition episodes we're going to sell.

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Speaker 2: Critics continue to dog his work, continue to dog his

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Speaker 2: work somehow the whole I put my own blood and

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Speaker 2: my signature on these prints didn't win them back. But

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Speaker 2: as he grew older and richer, he got better at

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Speaker 2: striking back at them, as this segment from an article

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Speaker 2: in Salon makes clear. And in nearly every encounter with

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Speaker 2: the press, Kincaid delivered a diatribe against the art world

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Speaker 2: establishment that had shut him out. They were elites touting

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Speaker 2: unfathomable down or junk to hard working people who needed uplift. Instead,

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Speaker 2: art snobs were the esthetic counterparts of the so called

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Speaker 2: liberal elites. So he's doing culture war stuff with his

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Speaker 2: two like your which is again he's he's not unique

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Speaker 2: in this. That's really starting on the right in the nineties.

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Speaker 2: To a significant degree, people are finding out how to

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Speaker 2: monetize the culture war. But he's kind of the first

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Speaker 2: guy to mix that with like the collectibles industry, which

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Speaker 2: I find interesting. Right, you are participating in a culture

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Speaker 2: war against leftist intellectuals by buying my prints.

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Speaker 3: Its back to the whole vandals, they how many evangelis Like,

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Speaker 3: you know the world is against you, but like here

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Speaker 3: I'm with you. Now buy this prayer Vile of.

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Speaker 2: Water, right, yeah, exactly. Now. I should note here that

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Speaker 2: one time Thomas said of Pablo Picasso he had talent

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Speaker 2: but didn't use it in a significant way.

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Speaker 4: I'm sorry, what what a wild man to say that about? Yeah, Manna,

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Speaker 4: not really much not not a lot of talent being

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Speaker 4: used there, right, he kind of half passed his way

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Speaker 4: through that that piece of.

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Speaker 2: Art, that's century defining.

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Speaker 3: Piece of art.

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Speaker 4: That's stunning, That is amazing, amazing, am that's like.

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Speaker 3: Bob Denver knocking down sl oh my god, like some

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Speaker 3: major actor.

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Speaker 2: Oh god, It's like it's like he's talking about like

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Speaker 2: some jazz musician who put out like one really great

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Speaker 2: album and then like overdose or something where it's like, oh,

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Speaker 2: it's a tragedy that he didn't, like, you know, master

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Speaker 2: his demons and make more art. But like Pablo Picasso

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Speaker 2: made a lot of very influential art. What are you talking.

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Speaker 3: About across mediums?

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Speaker 2: Yes, Jesus, what a what a wild thing to say.

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Speaker 2: I had a great experience like ten fifteen years back

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Speaker 2: at a Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Intel and Nokia

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Speaker 2: bought out the Picasso Museum for like a party, and

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Speaker 2: so it was just like you're just kind of like

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Speaker 2: walking through and on the walls are just like these

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Speaker 2: these like draw like sketches that he had done too,

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Speaker 2: including a bunch of him like having sex with his girlfriend,

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Speaker 2: which I felt like, oh, I don't know, should they

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Speaker 2: should this be up on the should this be up

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Speaker 2: on the wall of a well? Like, I don't know,

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Speaker 2: that's not it's that creepy for you to draw depict

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Speaker 2: your own relationship with somebody. It's kind of weird as

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Speaker 2: the people running the museum to be like, well, yeah,

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Speaker 2: we should stick this up on the wall. Like, I

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Speaker 2: don't know, man, that's a little private to me.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think I need to see that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, he does a good job of depicting what the

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Speaker 2: beard looks like in that situation. If you're really curious that,

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Speaker 2: you can learn a lot about good pretty good. These

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Speaker 2: were These were all not thrusting pictures, I'll say that

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Speaker 2: much about them. Anyway, It was a it was a

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Speaker 2: fun time, Yeah, you could say that. So in nineteen

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Speaker 2: ninety four, kay kN Kay took light. How I wonder

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Speaker 2: what can kate? No, I don't. In nineteen No, he's

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Speaker 2: about to He's going to sexually harass people later in

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Speaker 2: this episode.

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Speaker 3: Oh god, damn.

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Speaker 2: I was gonna say Picasso would never, but Picasso probably did.

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Speaker 3: I'm actually rather sure that he There's some some things

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Speaker 3: about him.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, almost certainly. In nineteen ninety four, Kincaid took Lighthouse

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Speaker 2: Publishing public. It was initially very successful, raking in millions

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Speaker 2: of dollars and shooting up the value of the stock

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Speaker 2: to something like twenty or twenty five dollars a share.

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Speaker 2: At its height, Kinkaid became the only working artist to,

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Speaker 2: in Sue Orleans words, be a small cap equid issue. Right,

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Speaker 2: he is this is unique, Like it's not unique for

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Speaker 2: artists to like commercialize, but the way that he does it,

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Speaker 2: he's the only guy doing it this way. Ye. Late

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Speaker 2: later in nineteen ninety four, he is named Artist of

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Speaker 2: the Year by the National Association of Limited Edition Dealers,

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Speaker 2: evidence that he had been spotted and appreciated by the

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Speaker 2: sort of people who are making a fortune on the

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Speaker 2: burgeoning collectible culture. Business Week named Lighthouse a hot growth

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Speaker 2: company in nineteen ninety five, and from nineteen ninety seven

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Speaker 2: to mid two thousand and five, Kincaid earned an eyewatering

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Speaker 2: total of fifty three million dollars for his work. This

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Speaker 2: included almost twelve million dollars for these studio proofs that

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Speaker 2: he retouched with highlights. Nice work if you can make.

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Speaker 3: It, if you if you find the suckers with the money.

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Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know what to say. Like, I

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Speaker 3: see nothing wrong with becoming rich off your work. I

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Speaker 3: see everyone's cap selling your stuff out there, But I

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Speaker 3: do hate the whole like grift part of it.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there's definitely a degree of evil here. At the

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Speaker 2: same time, if you have a chance to make fifty

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Speaker 2: three million dollars painting trees on a canvas, who's not

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Speaker 2: going to do that?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Right?

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Speaker 3: Like who would?

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Speaker 2: Yeah?

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Speaker 3: Yeah? I could make a bunch of prints of Popeye

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Speaker 3: and make extra money by just painting the pipe on

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Speaker 3: him afterwards.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, exactly, doing a little dash of brown first media.

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Speaker 3: I promise I will not be doing that, Please don't.

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Speaker 3: I might.

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Speaker 2: I might, though, if you want to see me paint

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Speaker 2: some pipes, you know, or paint once we get that

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Speaker 2: Hitler Gayy art, you know, I could do a little

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Speaker 2: I could do a little dollop a dollar a color

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Speaker 2: on there, twelve million dollars.

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Speaker 1: Stop printing it.

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Speaker 2: It'll appreciate, Sophie. It's going to make the money. This

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Speaker 2: is a great investment vehicle. You know, cash out your

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Speaker 2: four one. We always go, you know, we always go

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Speaker 2: fifty to fifty. Listen and I'm very pro cash out

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Speaker 2: your four oh one ks and pick up some of

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Speaker 2: our erotic hitler gayy art. You know, it's the it's

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Speaker 2: the Bitcoin of the twenty twenties.

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Speaker 3: God, I feel like he bought these prints with paint

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Speaker 3: on them. Are the same people who probably as ex

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Speaker 3: silently by the Trump dollars yes yeah, or the Trump

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Speaker 3: teddy bears.

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Speaker 2: These one hundred percent of his customers have since gotten

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Speaker 2: caught up in a scam where they bought five hundred

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Speaker 2: dollars Trump bills, and or or they are collecting Iraqi

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Speaker 2: dinars waiting for Trump to get back in and revalue

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Speaker 2: them like they are all born marks. That is that

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Speaker 2: is who he profits off of. That's why there's one

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Speaker 2: of these in every ten houses.

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Speaker 3: Just really love the Gold advertiser.

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Speaker 2: Oh God, we all love Gold. I mean it's again

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Speaker 2: a great investment. Vehicle only goes up. Don't look at

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Speaker 2: don't don't look into that. So as the business went on,

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Speaker 2: Kincaid proved himself a savvy innovator. The people he brought

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Speaker 2: on to advise his company once it started making millions

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Speaker 2: of dollars seemed to have felt he was walking a tightrope,

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Speaker 2: providing art that looked original and unique, but wasn't original

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Speaker 2: and unique in any sense. That mattered when Thomas told

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Speaker 2: them he wanted to start offering different sizes of print

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Speaker 2: and versions of his prints in limited products like mugs

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Speaker 2: and lazy boy lounge chairs. Seriously, they hit lazy boy chairs. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: yeah them. Yeah, I think like a or like a

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Speaker 2: a what you'm gonna call it a landscape? Yeah, that

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Speaker 2: sounds like a nightmare. I don't want to wake up

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Speaker 2: surrounded by Thomas Kincaid art.

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Speaker 3: This is reminded me of kiss again, Like, don't forget

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Speaker 3: to get your Thomas Kinkaid coffin.

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Speaker 2: These are not They're not very different people in a

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Speaker 2: lot of ways. I think Jeene Simmons is a lot

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Speaker 2: more honest because I'll say this, Thomas always pretends to

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Speaker 2: not be the kind of guy he is Gene Simmons

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Speaker 2: is pretty much the kind of guy he is. Right,

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Speaker 2: One thing you can't say when you hear ugly stuff

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Speaker 2: about Gene Simmons, you can't pretend he misled me. Right,

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Speaker 2: It's like I kind always knew you were a piece

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Speaker 2: of shit.

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Speaker 3: Ge. You feel like it's likely to be around you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I would have to take a shower shaking

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Speaker 2: your hand. I just know that about you. So anyway,

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Speaker 2: his investors, Kincaid's investors, when he starts putting out lazy

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Speaker 2: boy chairs, are like, well, this, what if this devalues

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Speaker 2: all the prints you're putting out. He's supposed to be

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Speaker 2: investment vehicles. People are supposed to supposed to be serious art.

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Speaker 2: This might make it look cheap. Uh and Kencaid replied,

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Speaker 2: fuck you, motherfuckers and whipped out his dick. I mean,

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Speaker 2: not like literally with respect that, but also he kind

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Speaker 2: of did literally because Thomas Kinkaid was the kind of

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Speaker 2: guy who liked to assert his dominance in social situations,

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Speaker 2: particularly business settings, by pissing on stuff. This is a

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Speaker 2: regular thing in his career, so he didn't kind of

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Speaker 2: whip his dick out on them, right, Yeah, I used

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Speaker 2: to know.

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Speaker 3: He reenacted the bathroom scene from Wolf.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I used to know kind

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Speaker 2: of like mid level drug lord, lower mid level drug

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Speaker 2: lord who would do that whenever he showed up at

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Speaker 2: a site. Is just like whip his dick out and

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Speaker 2: start pissing all over the ground in front of the

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Speaker 2: farm or something. You know. It's just that there's some

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Speaker 2: guys who just have that in them that need to

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Speaker 2: like this will this will somehow gain me a benefit

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Speaker 2: in the situation. I prefer the uh I got this

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Speaker 2: from the old upright Citizens Brigade, but the ass Pennies idea,

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Speaker 2: that one works a lot better. You know, look that

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Speaker 2: one up kids, Look up the ass Penny sketch. If

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Speaker 2: you ain't seen it.

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Speaker 3: When my Chather was tuned, if I wasn't giving her

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Speaker 3: enough attention, she would just you know, pull her trainers

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Speaker 3: off and peel on the floor. Made sure I saw it.

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Speaker 3: And that's what makes me think of like, did no

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Speaker 3: one put kinkaid in a corner or time out?

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Speaker 2: And don't maybe it because you're right, having spent time

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Speaker 2: around a little kid, now it is one of the

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Speaker 2: like one of the first levers that you learn as

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Speaker 2: a little person. You can play. Is like, well, if

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Speaker 2: I am not getting the attention I need, they have

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Speaker 2: to pay attention if I start pissing on some Yeah,

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Speaker 2: Thomas Kinkaid is just kind of stuck in that two

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Speaker 2: year old stage. So for an example of how this

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Speaker 2: kind of went, in the late nineteen nineties, he held

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Speaker 2: a company gathering at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim. According

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Speaker 2: to the Huffington Post quote, this one's for you, Walt

337
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Speaker 2: the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on

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Speaker 2: a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Shephard, a former

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Speaker 2: vice president for Kincaid's company, in an interview.

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Speaker 1: Cross, sir, gross, all the.

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Speaker 2: Things to piss on Winnie the Pooh.

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Speaker 3: And again, I would like to reiterate Kincaid's company currently

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Speaker 3: has a license with Disney and does Disney Prince, Marvel Prince,

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Speaker 3: and Star Wars Prince.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: Also he's called the Pooh and the pet it, right, Thomas, you.

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Speaker 2: Do have to pay an extra fifty percent for one

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Speaker 2: of the Winnie the Pooh prints that he pissed on.

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Speaker 2: Those are a dwindling commodity. Now tragedy since signature now

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Speaker 2: this incident him pissing on the pooh came up in

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Speaker 2: a court case. That's why we know it. So this

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Speaker 2: vice president had to tell this story under oath, and

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Speaker 2: when Thomas was questioned about it, he told the truth

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Speaker 2: and described that he was. He said that basically, this

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Speaker 2: isn't a thing I did just once I am drawn

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Speaker 2: to quote ritual territory marking. Wow, very funny.

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Speaker 3: So does he own the one hundred day for when now?

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Speaker 3: Because he wayne the poo to serve as dominance, I don't.

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Speaker 3: That's how it works.

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Speaker 2: That how works, that's how that's how he got ownership

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Speaker 2: of it from AA NILM. That old fucker just couldn't

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Speaker 2: fight back, didn't have a strong his prostates been swollen

363
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Speaker 2: up since World War One, so he can't even he

364
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Speaker 2: can't even get a good stream. It's hard to fight

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Speaker 2: when you were well, yeah that too.

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Speaker 1: So that's girls.

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Speaker 3: Yeah we are.

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Speaker 2: Don't don't be judgmental. Don't be judgmental. You know, the

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Speaker 2: world needs all kinds. Without people peeing on plants, how

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Speaker 2: will they get enough nitrogen? I think it's nitrogen anyway.

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Speaker 3: I don't think that that's good for plants.

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Speaker 2: It's good for some stuff, you know. Anyway, here's ads

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Speaker 2: ah we're back. We're thinking about peeing on things.

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Speaker 1: No, always time you are, that's you, that's your.

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00:19:18,240 --> 00:19:19,800
Speaker 2: I'm going to go I'm going to go out of

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Speaker 2: the woods today and pee on some stuff, Sophie. So

377
00:19:22,600 --> 00:19:25,040
Speaker 2: for a while the times were good, at least for

378
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Speaker 2: Kincaid and his close and his closest allies. But their

379
00:19:28,200 --> 00:19:31,119
Speaker 2: fortune was entirely reliant upon having a healthy garden of

380
00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:34,159
Speaker 2: marks to keep funneling the money up. Because again, this

381
00:19:34,359 --> 00:19:37,360
Speaker 2: is basically an MLM or a pyramid scheme. Now, I'm

382
00:19:37,359 --> 00:19:39,840
Speaker 2: not talking about most of his customers here. Most of

383
00:19:39,880 --> 00:19:42,720
Speaker 2: them are misled by the sales pitch, as is the

384
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Speaker 2: case with multi level marketing. Though the big money for

385
00:19:45,520 --> 00:19:50,000
Speaker 2: Kincaid isn't in individual sales. It's in convincing people who

386
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Speaker 2: have startup capital to go in and invest in starting

387
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Speaker 2: a gallery to sell your shit.

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Speaker 3: Right.

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Speaker 2: That's the part of this that really does look most

390
00:19:58,640 --> 00:20:01,679
Speaker 2: like a pyramid scheme, right, because while Lighthouse is a

391
00:20:01,680 --> 00:20:05,120
Speaker 2: public company, each Kincaid's signature gallery is a business owned

392
00:20:05,119 --> 00:20:08,320
Speaker 2: by private operators, much like a McDonald's. Much of Thomas's

393
00:20:08,359 --> 00:20:10,800
Speaker 2: work outside of painting was selling himself to the people

394
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Speaker 2: who wanted to own Galleries. One of these people, last

395
00:20:13,640 --> 00:20:16,960
Speaker 2: name Spinello, later claimed in court that Kincaid's personal life

396
00:20:17,080 --> 00:20:19,360
Speaker 2: story was a big part of the sales pitch. Quote.

397
00:20:19,440 --> 00:20:21,919
Speaker 2: We were told success story after success story, and of

398
00:20:21,920 --> 00:20:24,320
Speaker 2: course the Tom story and his Christian views and the

399
00:20:24,359 --> 00:20:27,119
Speaker 2: way he runs his life. So these are like old

400
00:20:27,200 --> 00:20:30,000
Speaker 2: retirees who have banked a few million and are being

401
00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,280
Speaker 2: told like, oh, this nice Christian man is giving us

402
00:20:32,280 --> 00:20:35,080
Speaker 2: a chance to really increase our wealth. He wouldn't lie

403
00:20:35,119 --> 00:20:38,159
Speaker 2: to us. Look at what a good Christian he is now.

404
00:20:38,320 --> 00:20:41,000
Speaker 2: Of course, like any man with this much money, Thomas

405
00:20:41,080 --> 00:20:43,119
Speaker 2: was not living the chast and sober life of a

406
00:20:43,160 --> 00:20:45,959
Speaker 2: monk from an article in the La Times quote. In

407
00:20:46,000 --> 00:20:48,680
Speaker 2: testimony and interviews with The Times, Shepherd and other former

408
00:20:48,720 --> 00:20:51,359
Speaker 2: employees said they often went with Kincaid to strip clubs

409
00:20:51,359 --> 00:20:55,320
Speaker 2: and bars, where he frequently became intoxicated and out of control.

410
00:20:55,800 --> 00:20:59,640
Speaker 2: John Dandoy Media Arts Groups, senior director of retail operations

411
00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:02,399
Speaker 2: from nighteen ninety five to nineteen ninety nine, testified in

412
00:21:02,440 --> 00:21:04,160
Speaker 2: a hearing that the artist was a sort of Jekyl

413
00:21:04,200 --> 00:21:06,959
Speaker 2: and Hyde character whose behavior worsened as the alcohol flowed.

414
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:09,159
Speaker 2: Tom would be fine, He would be drinking, and then

415
00:21:09,160 --> 00:21:11,320
Speaker 2: all of a sudden you couldn't tell where the boundary was.

416
00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:13,760
Speaker 2: And then he became very incoherent, and he would start

417
00:21:13,760 --> 00:21:16,840
Speaker 2: cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff. Dan doy,

418
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:19,359
Speaker 2: who left the company to become chief executive of a

419
00:21:19,359 --> 00:21:23,359
Speaker 2: group of galleries owned by Kincaid's brother, recounted that about

420
00:21:23,400 --> 00:21:26,159
Speaker 2: six years ago, the artist was so intoxicated during a

421
00:21:26,200 --> 00:21:29,320
Speaker 2: performance by Siegfried and Roy and Las Vegas that people

422
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:31,920
Speaker 2: seated nearby moved away from him. I think it was

423
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,040
Speaker 2: roy Er, Siegfried or whatever had a cod piece on

424
00:21:34,080 --> 00:21:37,399
Speaker 2: his leotards. Dan Deys testified, and so when the show started,

425
00:21:37,440 --> 00:21:41,000
Speaker 2: Tom just started yelling cod peace, God, Peace, and had

426
00:21:41,000 --> 00:21:42,920
Speaker 2: to be quieted by his mother and wife.

427
00:21:43,880 --> 00:21:44,240
Speaker 1: Wow.

428
00:21:45,119 --> 00:21:49,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like that uncle everyone has.

429
00:21:49,880 --> 00:21:52,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's your drunkll he's heckling Sigfried and Roy.

430
00:21:53,200 --> 00:21:53,520
Speaker 3: You know.

431
00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:58,120
Speaker 2: That one's more or less. Look, I have I heckled

432
00:21:58,359 --> 00:22:02,160
Speaker 2: floor shows in Las Vegas while too drunk to be controlled. Yes,

433
00:22:02,760 --> 00:22:08,360
Speaker 2: do I do it every time? Absolutely? You know? Would

434
00:22:08,400 --> 00:22:11,280
Speaker 2: I have done that to Sigfried and Roy? Possibly? You know,

435
00:22:11,440 --> 00:22:13,440
Speaker 2: That's not why we're angry. I just thought it was

436
00:22:13,440 --> 00:22:14,280
Speaker 2: a funny story.

437
00:22:15,760 --> 00:22:18,239
Speaker 3: So I'm amazed. Also, there are women out there who

438
00:22:18,280 --> 00:22:21,320
Speaker 3: can say they gave lap dances.

439
00:22:21,560 --> 00:22:26,320
Speaker 2: To Thomas kinkad to the painter of light, which is

440
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:28,800
Speaker 2: a trademark. By the way, you can't call yourself the

441
00:22:28,800 --> 00:22:30,240
Speaker 2: painter of light, only him.

442
00:22:31,640 --> 00:22:35,119
Speaker 3: I want to see a Thomas Kinka painting which a

443
00:22:35,160 --> 00:22:38,520
Speaker 3: beautiful country lan that nice missed in the morning and

444
00:22:39,000 --> 00:22:42,800
Speaker 3: the sun breaking through like the orange and red clouds

445
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:48,080
Speaker 3: on a strip club, just a side of.

446
00:22:48,040 --> 00:22:51,840
Speaker 2: The road, yeahing from the inside nowhere strip club with

447
00:22:51,920 --> 00:22:54,560
Speaker 2: like a little Thomas Kinkaid out front, smoking a cigarette

448
00:22:54,600 --> 00:22:57,720
Speaker 2: and thinking about how his life went so wrong. Yeah,

449
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:00,639
Speaker 2: why his wife won't return his phone calls. That's the

450
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:05,040
Speaker 2: art we need. So for a while his wife Nannette,

451
00:23:05,080 --> 00:23:07,520
Speaker 2: was able to exercise partial control over Tom when they

452
00:23:07,520 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 2: were together, but as the years went on, Thomas traveled

453
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:14,200
Speaker 2: constantly for business. His gaalerries sold unevenly most of the year,

454
00:23:14,240 --> 00:23:17,359
Speaker 2: but they always received huge bursts of sales, sometimes hundreds

455
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:19,480
Speaker 2: in a day, with lines out the block when he

456
00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:22,200
Speaker 2: showed up to give a talk and personally highlight pieces.

457
00:23:22,400 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 2: So he would have to travel around to galleries in

458
00:23:24,960 --> 00:23:28,520
Speaker 2: order to keep sales going, and this leads to him

459
00:23:28,560 --> 00:23:30,600
Speaker 2: being away from his wife and being away from any

460
00:23:30,640 --> 00:23:34,359
Speaker 2: kind of like moderating aspects on his behavior, which leads

461
00:23:34,400 --> 00:23:37,320
Speaker 2: to him partying constantly. And this company culture where the

462
00:23:37,359 --> 00:23:41,400
Speaker 2: employees who work for Thomas directly, like the Master Highlighters

463
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:44,440
Speaker 2: and his business managers and marketing people, come to view

464
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:47,560
Speaker 2: Thomas as something of a god, and his backstory is

465
00:23:47,640 --> 00:23:51,280
Speaker 2: like this sacred text because he's he's worshiped. Whenever he

466
00:23:51,359 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 2: shows up at one of these places, he has fans

467
00:23:53,800 --> 00:23:56,720
Speaker 2: lining up out the door, so you can't really think

468
00:23:56,720 --> 00:23:59,000
Speaker 2: of him as this normal person. There's almost this like

469
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:02,919
Speaker 2: derangement that goes on for the people working beneath him.

470
00:24:03,320 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 2: And there's this this kind of cultic belief system that

471
00:24:06,119 --> 00:24:09,920
Speaker 2: springs up within the Kincaid company itself, which is embodied

472
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,440
Speaker 2: by one of his business managers talking to the Guardian

473
00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,159
Speaker 2: here and saying, quote, there's over forty walls in the

474
00:24:15,200 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 2: average American home, and Tom says, our job is to

475
00:24:17,720 --> 00:24:20,240
Speaker 2: figure out how to populate every single wall in every

476
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,200
Speaker 2: single home and every business throughout the world with his paintings,

477
00:24:24,560 --> 00:24:27,119
Speaker 2: which is a deranged thing to say and want, but

478
00:24:27,200 --> 00:24:31,679
Speaker 2: it does. It does. Thomas Kincaid walked so that AI

479
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:33,880
Speaker 2: fucking image generators could run.

480
00:24:34,200 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 3: Right. Also, this is something el Ron Hubbard shit.

481
00:24:37,520 --> 00:24:41,040
Speaker 2: It is right that like there's something This is a

482
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,399
Speaker 2: big part of the narrative too, that like there's something

483
00:24:43,520 --> 00:24:47,480
Speaker 2: healing about our paintings. People need them. And so you

484
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:51,280
Speaker 2: know the fact that Thomas himself is this messy drunk

485
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:54,480
Speaker 2: who does not live the actual life he pretends to live.

486
00:24:54,480 --> 00:24:56,080
Speaker 2: The fact that we're charging an arm and a leg

487
00:24:56,119 --> 00:24:59,399
Speaker 2: for these is justified because these are making the world better.

488
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 1: Companies that you dribbled one dot of paint.

489
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:06,600
Speaker 2: On, Yes, yes, yes, these are part of healing the

490
00:25:06,640 --> 00:25:10,040
Speaker 2: planet and bringing it back to God, as one line

491
00:25:10,080 --> 00:25:13,600
Speaker 2: from a company Brocher noted. And the often hurried, unsympathetic

492
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:16,439
Speaker 2: and complex world we live in, the images Thomas Kinkaid

493
00:25:16,520 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 2: paints offer a place of refuge, a place where the

494
00:25:19,080 --> 00:25:21,280
Speaker 2: transient things of life give away to the things that

495
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:24,280
Speaker 2: matter most, faith and family, a loving home, and the

496
00:25:24,320 --> 00:25:28,600
Speaker 2: people who know and love us. Now this all sounds

497
00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:33,080
Speaker 2: patently silly, just an obvious, soulless grift, but Kincaid's work

498
00:25:33,240 --> 00:25:36,800
Speaker 2: really touched a huge number of people. The fact that

499
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:39,280
Speaker 2: I think they were wrong to be touched by what

500
00:25:39,440 --> 00:25:42,640
Speaker 2: was a patent soulless grift by a man who did

501
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:45,160
Speaker 2: not believe the things he pretended to say to them

502
00:25:46,000 --> 00:25:50,280
Speaker 2: didn't matter, right. And I gotta say one of the

503
00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:52,399
Speaker 2: few people who try to grapple with this and do

504
00:25:52,440 --> 00:25:54,560
Speaker 2: a really good job of it was was Joan Didion

505
00:25:54,600 --> 00:25:59,600
Speaker 2: who wrote this about Thomas Kinkaid. The passion with which

506
00:25:59,640 --> 00:26:03,159
Speaker 2: buyer approached these Kincaid images was hard to define. The

507
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:05,879
Speaker 2: manager of one California gallery that handled them told me

508
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:07,800
Speaker 2: that it was not unusual to sell six or seven

509
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:10,560
Speaker 2: at a clip to buyers who already owned ten or twenty,

510
00:26:10,800 --> 00:26:12,639
Speaker 2: and that the buyers with whom he dealt brought the

511
00:26:12,720 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 2: viewing of the images a sizeable emotional weight. Right. These

512
00:26:17,320 --> 00:26:21,200
Speaker 2: are these are early super fans, and there's a there's

513
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 2: a degree of what you're going to see in trump

514
00:26:22,720 --> 00:26:25,160
Speaker 2: Ism where once it comes out the kind of lifestyle

515
00:26:25,200 --> 00:26:29,840
Speaker 2: he really lives, it doesn't affect his fan base at all.

516
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 2: They don't care because what they need is not the

517
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:36,080
Speaker 2: reality of Thomas Kincaid. They need this like fantasy of

518
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:38,600
Speaker 2: who and what he is and what his art represents,

519
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:41,159
Speaker 2: and he's not a necessary part of that past. A

520
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:41,800
Speaker 2: certain point.

521
00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:46,400
Speaker 3: Well, it's like that with most like conservative Christian troops,

522
00:26:46,400 --> 00:26:49,679
Speaker 3: Like look Jerry fallwell you know what happened, and he

523
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:54,080
Speaker 3: still had people. Fuck yeah, Jim Baker still has a career.

524
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:55,440
Speaker 3: He would write prison.

525
00:26:55,920 --> 00:27:01,679
Speaker 2: He literally went to prison. And it's I like Didion's

526
00:27:01,760 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 2: criticism because she actually she actually looks into what's going on,

527
00:27:07,359 --> 00:27:10,920
Speaker 2: like what is the actual meaning being transmitted beyond kind

528
00:27:10,960 --> 00:27:14,080
Speaker 2: of the surface with his paintings in a way that

529
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:17,160
Speaker 2: is not like the snooty high art criticisms of his work.

530
00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:19,880
Speaker 2: Didion drills down into some of the reasons his art

531
00:27:19,960 --> 00:27:22,639
Speaker 2: is upsetting better than anyone else I can really think of.

532
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:26,359
Speaker 2: And when she's doing this, she kind of One of

533
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:28,760
Speaker 2: the things she brings up is this year two thousand

534
00:27:28,840 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 2: post on Concaid's website where he writes about a trip

535
00:27:31,840 --> 00:27:35,240
Speaker 2: to the Yosemite Valley quote, when my family wandered through

536
00:27:35,280 --> 00:27:37,920
Speaker 2: the National Park Center, I discovered a key to my fantasy,

537
00:27:37,960 --> 00:27:41,119
Speaker 2: a recreation of a Millwok Indian village. When I returned

538
00:27:41,160 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 2: to my studio began to work on the mountains. Declare

539
00:27:43,840 --> 00:27:46,199
Speaker 2: his glory a poetic expression of what I felt at

540
00:27:46,200 --> 00:27:50,320
Speaker 2: that transforming moment of inspiration. As a final touch, I

541
00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:53,159
Speaker 2: even added a Millwok Indian camp across the river as

542
00:27:53,200 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 2: an affirmation that man has its place, has his place

543
00:27:56,520 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 2: even in a setting touched by God's glory. Now, before

544
00:28:00,320 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 2: we get into yeah in this Thamaskin Gade painting, before

545
00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,920
Speaker 2: we get into Jones breakdown of why this is fucked up. First,

546
00:28:08,960 --> 00:28:12,960
Speaker 2: here's the painting itself, right, you see, you get the mountains, sunset,

547
00:28:13,000 --> 00:28:14,840
Speaker 2: lot of light playing through them. It looks like maybe

548
00:28:14,880 --> 00:28:17,360
Speaker 2: an early fall image. You've got a couple of very

549
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 2: stereotypical looking teepees there. Oh god, yeah, Now it's a

550
00:28:22,480 --> 00:28:25,600
Speaker 2: I gotta say, I did look into this. It's a

551
00:28:25,680 --> 00:28:29,400
Speaker 2: you know, it's an idyllic image right inoffensive on its face.

552
00:28:29,440 --> 00:28:33,199
Speaker 2: But I will say the structures that he puts, you know,

553
00:28:33,480 --> 00:28:35,760
Speaker 2: in the hands of the Milwak is not entirely wrong.

554
00:28:35,800 --> 00:28:38,080
Speaker 2: He seems to have based this on an actual display

555
00:28:38,160 --> 00:28:41,640
Speaker 2: at Yosemite, so he doesn't get this totally you know, incorrect.

556
00:28:42,040 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 2: It is true, it is. It is worth pointing out

557
00:28:44,080 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 2: the more common shelters used by the Midwak. We're what

558
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:50,720
Speaker 2: they called umotka, which is a conical barkhouse lined with

559
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:54,200
Speaker 2: pine needles. And layered outside with earth. Uh, and the

560
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:57,200
Speaker 2: Kocha which is a semi subterranean dwelling, and a lot

561
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,840
Speaker 2: of their the sun shelters that were kind of more temporary,

562
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:02,920
Speaker 2: rectangular and flat topped. But they did have shelters that

563
00:29:02,960 --> 00:29:05,400
Speaker 2: looked kind of like this. So I will say his

564
00:29:05,480 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 2: depiction is not like like, it's not super He didn't

565
00:29:08,760 --> 00:29:12,360
Speaker 2: just like draw a random TP, you know, and this

566
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,320
Speaker 2: is not a tribe that used anything like that. I

567
00:29:14,320 --> 00:29:17,200
Speaker 2: think he based it off of a dediction of a

568
00:29:17,240 --> 00:29:20,320
Speaker 2: million research at least. So yeah, I think he was

569
00:29:20,360 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 2: just inspired by a thing that had done some base

570
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 2: research and that probably explains it. But I did look

571
00:29:25,240 --> 00:29:26,600
Speaker 2: into it because I wanted to know, like, did he

572
00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 2: just throw a TP on there because you know? Uh?

573
00:29:29,400 --> 00:29:32,320
Speaker 2: And no that that that apparently is not wrong. So good, good,

574
00:29:32,440 --> 00:29:35,040
Speaker 2: That's one mark. There's one mark there, right. But Joan

575
00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:37,360
Speaker 2: does a really good job of explaining what is messed

576
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 2: up here, affirming that man has his place in the

577
00:29:39,960 --> 00:29:43,600
Speaker 2: Sierra Nevada by reproducing the Yosemite National Park visitor centers

578
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 2: recreation of a Milwok Indian village is identifiable as a

579
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:49,760
Speaker 2: doubtful enterprise on many levels. Not the least of which

580
00:29:49,800 --> 00:29:52,320
Speaker 2: being that the Yosemite Millwalk were forcibly run onto a

581
00:29:52,320 --> 00:29:55,520
Speaker 2: reservation near Fresno during the Gold Rush and allowed to

582
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 2: return to Yosemite only in eighteen fifty five. In other words,

583
00:29:59,240 --> 00:30:02,400
Speaker 2: Kinkaid is commercviialized a moment from the past in the

584
00:30:02,440 --> 00:30:05,480
Speaker 2: same way that this land was commercialized at a different,

585
00:30:05,600 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 2: you know point with you know, in a much more

586
00:30:07,360 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: violent way, and is kind of only capable of commercializing

587
00:30:13,000 --> 00:30:17,360
Speaker 2: this moment that ignores the complexity and the pain in

588
00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 2: that history, right, because there's no room for complexity or

589
00:30:19,760 --> 00:30:22,200
Speaker 2: pain in his art, Right. We just have this kind

590
00:30:22,200 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 2: of idyllic portrayal of a village that he's stuck on

591
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:27,440
Speaker 2: something that's supposed to go on some boomer's wall in

592
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:30,440
Speaker 2: their like retirement home in Scottsdale.

593
00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:30,760
Speaker 3: Right.

594
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:34,360
Speaker 2: It's a further kind of commodification of that.

595
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:37,120
Speaker 3: That's like seeing a painting of a gorgeous field in

596
00:30:37,160 --> 00:30:39,200
Speaker 3: a path, like, oh, that's the trial tears.

597
00:30:40,880 --> 00:30:43,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're kind of you're it's just kind of

598
00:30:43,040 --> 00:30:46,400
Speaker 2: like ignoring what is more. I don't know, it's it's

599
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,000
Speaker 2: a very Kincaid thing to do. Uh. It is fair

600
00:30:49,040 --> 00:30:51,520
Speaker 2: to say Now, the best criticism I found of his

601
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,320
Speaker 2: work came from a blog. Here's what's left from two

602
00:30:54,360 --> 00:30:57,880
Speaker 2: thousand and five. The writer, identified as Michael is someone

603
00:30:57,920 --> 00:30:59,880
Speaker 2: with a passing interest in art history who I think

604
00:31:00,080 --> 00:31:02,920
Speaker 2: might have come from the evangelical background. And he he

605
00:31:03,040 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 2: compares this piece by concaid that we started the episode with. Right,

606
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,520
Speaker 2: you've got the cross up on the hill. You've got

607
00:31:08,520 --> 00:31:13,320
Speaker 2: that big bright sunlight, you know, illuminating it with the

608
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:17,280
Speaker 2: painting that lightly inspired it by nineteenth century German painter

609
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:20,640
Speaker 2: Caspar David Friedrich. It's called the Cross on the Mountain.

610
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 2: Now you can just see right there. Yes, these are

611
00:31:24,240 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 2: very different artworks and they're quality. There's even as someone there.

612
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,800
Speaker 3: Like some anguish to it, like the crowds. You can

613
00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:34,480
Speaker 3: make gard that that's the blood of Christ, right, going

614
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:38,040
Speaker 3: back to my evangelical childhood. Yeah, you actually have Jesus

615
00:31:38,080 --> 00:31:41,040
Speaker 3: on the cross, right, like the silhouette of the suffering

616
00:31:41,760 --> 00:31:43,040
Speaker 3: and cross.

617
00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, yeah, I think those are all really

618
00:31:46,640 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 2: good notes and it's worth anything that, like actually putting

619
00:31:49,480 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 2: Christ on the cross is a thing that Caspar does

620
00:31:52,120 --> 00:31:54,760
Speaker 2: in another similar work of art, the Cross and the

621
00:31:54,800 --> 00:31:57,320
Speaker 2: Cathedral in the Mountains, and I think Cancaid's work is

622
00:31:57,400 --> 00:31:59,600
Speaker 2: kind of a hybrid of these two. Right. But you

623
00:31:59,640 --> 00:32:01,600
Speaker 2: can see down there the cross in the cathedral in

624
00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,400
Speaker 2: the mountains where you've got kind of these, You've got

625
00:32:05,400 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: like basically this forest and there's a you can see

626
00:32:08,240 --> 00:32:10,440
Speaker 2: a cathedral kind of coming up out of the forest

627
00:32:10,480 --> 00:32:12,040
Speaker 2: in a way that almost makes it look like it's

628
00:32:12,120 --> 00:32:15,880
Speaker 2: grown out of the forest. And again, you could look

629
00:32:15,880 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 2: at this as another artist who, like Kincaid, painted the

630
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:20,080
Speaker 2: same shit over and over again, while he does a

631
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 2: lot of crosses in the woods, right, But I don't

632
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 2: really think that's what's happening here. Caspar has something to say.

633
00:32:26,520 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 2: He is showing Christianity, and this is something that was

634
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:32,200
Speaker 2: relevant to the kind of politics within Christianity at the

635
00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:34,920
Speaker 2: time as an outgrowth of the natural world.

636
00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:35,360
Speaker 3: Right.

637
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:38,320
Speaker 2: Michael in his write up quotes an art expert named

638
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 2: Christina van Puyen, who says, of the first painting by Caspar,

639
00:32:42,520 --> 00:32:44,920
Speaker 2: the cross stands at the brink of the evening horizon,

640
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 2: which signifies the disappearance of God from the lives of

641
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:50,120
Speaker 2: the modern world during the Enlightenment. Yet the burgeoning of

642
00:32:50,120 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 2: evergreens near the cross also indicates that a new religion

643
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 2: is emerging. Colin Eisler has more to say about the

644
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,720
Speaker 2: second painting. Protestantism, conveyed by the vehicle of the visual arts,

645
00:33:00,040 --> 00:33:02,840
Speaker 2: tended to see Nature more as pagan mother than God's work,

646
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,600
Speaker 2: too close to pantheism for comfort. Friedrich presents an exception

647
00:33:06,760 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 2: his anti classical emphasis upon experience, its reception and communication

648
00:33:10,880 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 2: stress the personal. And I'm not quoting that because I

649
00:33:16,440 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 2: am as I like, I'm not religious, I don't believe

650
00:33:19,200 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 2: in any of this stuff. But I'm quoting it because

651
00:33:22,000 --> 00:33:25,040
Speaker 2: it's worth noting that with these pictures that clearly inspired

652
00:33:25,280 --> 00:33:29,480
Speaker 2: Thomas's by Caspar, there's a lot to say, There's a

653
00:33:29,520 --> 00:33:33,680
Speaker 2: lot to analyze. There's history wrapped up in that. You

654
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:36,480
Speaker 2: can you can see pieces of the history of movements

655
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:40,200
Speaker 2: of huge numbers of people and what they believe represented

656
00:33:40,240 --> 00:33:42,640
Speaker 2: in his art, and there is none of that.

657
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 3: Right.

658
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:45,080
Speaker 2: The point Michael makes in his criticism is no one

659
00:33:45,080 --> 00:33:47,440
Speaker 2: will ever have this much to say about the meaning

660
00:33:47,480 --> 00:33:50,240
Speaker 2: held within a Kincaid work, right, Yeah.

661
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,840
Speaker 3: No, you're right. It's weird because like you look, thinking

662
00:33:52,880 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 3: cad painting next to those, like you know, the paintings,

663
00:33:56,400 --> 00:33:59,640
Speaker 3: there's just again a lot of emotion, use of color

664
00:33:59,720 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 3: to to conbay how you're supposed to feel how he

665
00:34:03,480 --> 00:34:08,040
Speaker 3: feels about what's going on, and it's not necessarily bright

666
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,759
Speaker 3: and cheery. But he also let's talk about what's you know,

667
00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:15,280
Speaker 3: this feeling of Christianity, the suffering of Christ et cetera,

668
00:34:15,440 --> 00:34:18,920
Speaker 3: or even like you said, the church growing out of nature.

669
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:22,520
Speaker 3: And Thenkincaid's like, wow, he painted a lens flare.

670
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:26,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, he put a lens flare on a cabin. And

671
00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:28,080
Speaker 2: there's also you can s in these two different works

672
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,520
Speaker 2: made at different times, they're clearly the same man, but

673
00:34:32,120 --> 00:34:36,279
Speaker 2: like who has grown and changed over time? Right Like,

674
00:34:36,320 --> 00:34:39,640
Speaker 2: they look different as opposed to every Kincaid painting could

675
00:34:39,640 --> 00:34:42,000
Speaker 2: have been made at the same time, Right Like, it's

676
00:34:42,080 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 2: kind of impossible to even even mark out is it

677
00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:49,239
Speaker 2: an early period or a late period. I'm sure there's

678
00:34:49,239 --> 00:34:51,680
Speaker 2: some weird Kincaid historians, but the rest of us aren't

679
00:34:51,680 --> 00:34:56,480
Speaker 2: going to do that, right Yeah, And I guess the

680
00:34:56,480 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 2: point I'm making here, and I think the point that

681
00:34:58,600 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 2: these critics are making that Jill makes is that kin

682
00:35:01,920 --> 00:35:04,239
Speaker 2: kid all, it's not that what he was doing in

683
00:35:04,280 --> 00:35:08,440
Speaker 2: his art is he's not like purposefully being like racist

684
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:12,440
Speaker 2: against Native Americans. But the inability of his work to

685
00:35:12,640 --> 00:35:16,920
Speaker 2: ever deal in anything that touches on sadness kind of

686
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:20,960
Speaker 2: means that he's always going there. There's a shallowness, a

687
00:35:21,040 --> 00:35:23,560
Speaker 2: one sidedness to it that is kind of gross and

688
00:35:23,880 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 2: gross and commercial when you are you're touching on something

689
00:35:26,640 --> 00:35:30,560
Speaker 2: where there's a darker history there. Right, But Kinkaid's whole life,

690
00:35:30,840 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 2: all he's doing is he's selling emotional morphine.

691
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:33,400
Speaker 3: Right.

692
00:35:34,320 --> 00:35:36,439
Speaker 2: There must have been some creative drive in this man

693
00:35:36,520 --> 00:35:38,239
Speaker 2: at some point. There's certainly pain in his.

694
00:35:38,239 --> 00:35:42,000
Speaker 3: True he's a more than confident artist and right do

695
00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:42,760
Speaker 3: what he was doing.

696
00:35:43,120 --> 00:35:43,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like, I.

697
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:45,880
Speaker 3: Don't think again, there's nothing wrong with like, I just

698
00:35:45,880 --> 00:35:48,120
Speaker 3: want to make art that makes people happy in it, Yeah,

699
00:35:48,160 --> 00:35:51,160
Speaker 3: But there's just some things that are kind of hard

700
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:51,480
Speaker 3: to like.

701
00:35:52,440 --> 00:35:55,279
Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's an it's not just that he wants

702
00:35:55,320 --> 00:35:58,440
Speaker 2: to make them happy, there's an ideology behind what he

703
00:35:58,520 --> 00:36:03,720
Speaker 2: believes will make people right, and that ideology is social conservatism.

704
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 2: Laura Miller makes this very clear in an article she

705
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 2: wrote for Salon. Thomas Kinkaid the George W. Bush of Art,

706
00:36:09,600 --> 00:36:12,040
Speaker 2: and that title isn't just her being kind of like

707
00:36:12,400 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 2: shitty quote. Hermann Brock maintained that someone who chooses to

708
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:19,960
Speaker 2: make kitsch is ethically depraved, a criminal, willing, radical evil.

709
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,120
Speaker 2: The novelist Milan Coundera believes kitsch to be the natural

710
00:36:23,160 --> 00:36:26,160
Speaker 2: expression of totalitarianism. That's a lot of moral weight to

711
00:36:26,200 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 2: place on a bunch of garish cottage paintings. But Kincaid

712
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:30,719
Speaker 2: was always the first to present his work as a

713
00:36:30,719 --> 00:36:35,360
Speaker 2: form of ideology. Candera defined kitsch as the absolute denial

714
00:36:35,440 --> 00:36:39,479
Speaker 2: of shit, meaning it offers an airbrushed, sterilized, sentimentalized view

715
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:42,360
Speaker 2: of the world. From that, it doesn't necessarily follow that

716
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 2: art wallows and shit, but art doesn't exist for the

717
00:36:45,040 --> 00:36:48,319
Speaker 2: primary purpose of denying it either. Kitsch is first and

718
00:36:48,320 --> 00:36:51,840
Speaker 2: foremost a lie. Its very existence is founded on bad faith.

719
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 2: And the best example of that is the fact that

720
00:36:54,440 --> 00:36:57,120
Speaker 2: Kincaid is an official member of the George W. Bush

721
00:36:57,160 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 2: Presidential Prayer Team, from whom he received an award right.

722
00:37:01,320 --> 00:37:03,400
Speaker 2: He is a friend of George W. Bush, He met

723
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:07,399
Speaker 2: him a number of times, and he's this it's this

724
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 2: flattening of American culture during this period where we are

725
00:37:12,960 --> 00:37:15,919
Speaker 2: taking a very dark turn, where we are invading two

726
00:37:15,960 --> 00:37:19,839
Speaker 2: countries where there are huge numbers of deaths overseas as

727
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 2: a result of American action, and ken Kaid sees his

728
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:25,880
Speaker 2: goal not just to pray for the guy behind a

729
00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:28,879
Speaker 2: lot of it, but to sell people during this time

730
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:31,880
Speaker 2: when they're scared and upset about the violence that they

731
00:37:31,920 --> 00:37:35,680
Speaker 2: are a part of, to calm them down with these

732
00:37:36,840 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 2: anesthetizing pieces of art. Right, he really does see his

733
00:37:40,400 --> 00:37:43,759
Speaker 2: goal as that, right, like, keep pulling the lever and

734
00:37:43,880 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 2: voting for Republicans. Here's a nice picture of a cabin.

735
00:37:47,200 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 2: Now you can feel comfortable as you like slide off

736
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 2: into sanylity. Right, that is what Thomas Kinkaid is doing.

737
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:56,640
Speaker 2: And while he's doing this and portraying himself as this

738
00:37:56,800 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 2: upright Christian pinnacle of like you know what the evangelical

739
00:38:01,920 --> 00:38:04,919
Speaker 2: spirit can achieve, he is spending all of his free

740
00:38:04,920 --> 00:38:08,320
Speaker 2: time at strip clubs, drinking and abusing prescription drug drugs.

741
00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:09,759
Speaker 2: He's pissing on shit to show down.

742
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:11,759
Speaker 3: Oh god, oh yeah. Yeah.

743
00:38:11,800 --> 00:38:15,160
Speaker 2: He's also doing he's fucking, he's mixing like hard liquor

744
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 2: and valium a lot. And he's also sexually harassing and

745
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:22,640
Speaker 2: assaulting his employees. In the court cases that we've been

746
00:38:22,640 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 2: building to and have quoted from earlier. In this witnesses

747
00:38:25,680 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 2: testified as seeing Thomas at one of the many signing

748
00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:31,080
Speaker 2: parties for his paintings. He got so drunk he fell

749
00:38:31,080 --> 00:38:34,160
Speaker 2: off a barstool and per the Huffington Post, palmed a

750
00:38:34,239 --> 00:38:37,200
Speaker 2: startled woman's breast. Then when the wife of a former

751
00:38:37,200 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 2: employee tried to help him out up, he cursed her out.

752
00:38:40,719 --> 00:38:43,239
Speaker 2: Now that's an ugly story, but much worse is the

753
00:38:43,280 --> 00:38:46,280
Speaker 2: tale of a company party at a motel in South Bend,

754
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,320
Speaker 2: where Thomas met with a group of signature gallery owners

755
00:38:49,320 --> 00:38:51,719
Speaker 2: to sign a bunch of their prints. This meeting came

756
00:38:51,760 --> 00:38:53,919
Speaker 2: about because Thomas had convinced all these men and women

757
00:38:53,920 --> 00:38:56,960
Speaker 2: to invest their savings into starting galleries for his art.

758
00:38:57,360 --> 00:39:00,880
Speaker 2: He promised themselves and ever escalating profits, and by August

759
00:39:00,960 --> 00:39:03,800
Speaker 2: of two thousand and two, those profits had started to stall.

760
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:06,600
Speaker 2: So the event was a good will gesture. But later

761
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:09,160
Speaker 2: in the night there was an open bar and Thomas

762
00:39:09,200 --> 00:39:13,000
Speaker 2: got very drunk, next per the Huffington Post. At one point,

763
00:39:13,040 --> 00:39:16,000
Speaker 2: according to testimony and interviews with three others who were there,

764
00:39:16,280 --> 00:39:18,640
Speaker 2: Kincaid pulled the men in the room about their preferences

765
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 2: in women's anatomies. He was having a conversation with the

766
00:39:21,640 --> 00:39:23,880
Speaker 2: men in the room about whether they liked breast or butts,

767
00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,520
Speaker 2: said Lori Kopek, Coat's director of gallery operations, who also

768
00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:30,000
Speaker 2: testified about the party. There were only two women in

769
00:39:30,040 --> 00:39:32,240
Speaker 2: the room, and I was very uncomfortable at that point.

770
00:39:32,719 --> 00:39:35,640
Speaker 2: It was during that bowdy discussion, according to arbitration records,

771
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:37,960
Speaker 2: that Kincaid turned his attention to the other woman. He

772
00:39:38,000 --> 00:39:40,480
Speaker 2: approached her and palmed her breasts, and he said, these

773
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,000
Speaker 2: are great tits. Ernie Dodson, another Coat employee, told The Times,

774
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:46,440
Speaker 2: adding that he drank no alcohol that night. I was

775
00:39:46,520 --> 00:39:48,400
Speaker 2: just standing there in the corner in amazement. It was

776
00:39:48,480 --> 00:39:51,440
Speaker 2: like holy cow, and man, Dodson, I'm not really impressed

777
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:53,200
Speaker 2: that you didn't drink. You didn't like stop him, You

778
00:39:53,200 --> 00:39:55,759
Speaker 2: didn't do anything. You didn't say like wow, boss, that's

779
00:39:55,800 --> 00:39:56,800
Speaker 2: like fucked like you.

780
00:39:58,840 --> 00:39:59,880
Speaker 3: There's a fucking limit.

781
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is really a step in moment. Brother. I'm

782
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 2: not impressed that you didn't drink. I'd be more impressed

783
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:08,520
Speaker 2: if you were drunk too, and you had the moral

784
00:40:08,600 --> 00:40:13,759
Speaker 2: presence to just hit the guy, right, don't do that.

785
00:40:14,320 --> 00:40:17,560
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a bare minimum. Hey stop.

786
00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:22,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's gross. Man. This is a fucking company gathering

787
00:40:22,200 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 2: and you are grabbing someone's tits. What the fuck? Anyway,

788
00:40:26,440 --> 00:40:29,560
Speaker 2: when this came out, Kinkaid denied the allegation. He said

789
00:40:29,560 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 2: this in a deposition. You've got to remember, I'm the

790
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 2: idol to these women who were there. They sell my

791
00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,240
Speaker 2: work every day. You know, they're enamored with any attention

792
00:40:38,360 --> 00:40:39,880
Speaker 2: I would give them. I don't know what kind of

793
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:42,200
Speaker 2: flirting they were trying to do with me. I don't

794
00:40:42,239 --> 00:40:45,600
Speaker 2: recall what was going on that night. Hey, buddy, quick

795
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,680
Speaker 2: tip here. I was too blacked out to know what

796
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,840
Speaker 2: kind of quote unquote flirting led to me groping someone.

797
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:53,840
Speaker 2: Not a defense anyway.

798
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:56,600
Speaker 1: You're disgusting. You're disgusting.

799
00:40:58,560 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 2: You know what's not discuss though, Sophie. You know what

800
00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:07,799
Speaker 2: makes me feel good? What makes everyone feel good? Yeah, well,

801
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:11,120
Speaker 2: we maybe don't say groping, but we do in it

802
00:41:11,239 --> 00:41:21,000
Speaker 2: emotionally in the same way that John Wayne get. We're back,

803
00:41:21,239 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 2: and I've just had a word with our own HR department.

804
00:41:26,040 --> 00:41:29,520
Speaker 2: I apologize. I have deleted roughly a third of my

805
00:41:29,640 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 2: short story it Yeah, yeah, I mean again, Sophie. It

806
00:41:34,680 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 2: is mostly about the Federal Reserve ute. It later, Yeah, okay,

807
00:41:40,080 --> 00:41:47,080
Speaker 2: thank you, thank you. Smut it up some sona b

808
00:41:48,280 --> 00:41:50,040
Speaker 2: oh oh God, it's got to be like a big

809
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:52,959
Speaker 2: Garfield style cat. I feel like see.

810
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:54,560
Speaker 3: I was thinking of one of those monkeys that's kind

811
00:41:54,560 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 3: of colorful based with clown makeup.

812
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: Mm. Yeah, that's a good one because that'd be really

813
00:41:59,000 --> 00:42:02,120
Speaker 2: scary to get murdered by too. This is good, this

814
00:42:02,160 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 2: is useful stuff. So the company, messaging to prospective gallery owners,

815
00:42:08,120 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 2: painted a very different picture of Thomas. Lighthouse used terms

816
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:15,000
Speaker 2: like partner, trust, Christian, and God, arguing that not only

817
00:42:15,080 --> 00:42:17,480
Speaker 2: was a Kincaid gallery a good investment and help you

818
00:42:17,560 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 2: serve a higher calling, i e. God wants you to

819
00:42:20,120 --> 00:42:26,319
Speaker 2: get rich selling Thomas's paintings now, Yes, yes, very much so.

820
00:42:26,560 --> 00:42:28,359
Speaker 2: And Thomas would always deny to the press that he

821
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:31,799
Speaker 2: marketed specifically to Christians, but as limited edition prints each

822
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:35,040
Speaker 2: had Christian fish symbols printed on them along with Bible verses,

823
00:42:35,400 --> 00:42:38,880
Speaker 2: his favorite being Matthew five sixteen let your Light Shine

824
00:42:38,920 --> 00:42:42,319
Speaker 2: before Men. One of the people who fell for this

825
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:45,920
Speaker 2: was Jim Coate. Coate opened his first signature gallery in

826
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:48,840
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six and claims that at the start, sales

827
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,160
Speaker 2: were great because Tom at that point was very popular

828
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 2: and there were limited outlets to buy his art, but

829
00:42:53,520 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 2: as the years went on, the situation deteriorate.

830
00:42:55,840 --> 00:42:55,920
Speaker 3: It.

831
00:42:55,960 --> 00:42:59,560
Speaker 2: As the La Times reports, Coate alleges Media Arts Group,

832
00:42:59,560 --> 00:43:01,759
Speaker 2: which is what the company becomes known as, pushed him

833
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:04,040
Speaker 2: to open more galleries, threatening to set up its own

834
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:07,719
Speaker 2: outlets in his territory. Coate eventually had three stores, all

835
00:43:07,760 --> 00:43:10,359
Speaker 2: of which failed. This is not bread and milk, he said.

836
00:43:10,400 --> 00:43:13,120
Speaker 2: You can't have galleries on every corner. Cot said his

837
00:43:13,160 --> 00:43:15,399
Speaker 2: net worth was of more than three million dollars had

838
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:17,759
Speaker 2: been erased gone or his marriage, his house, in most

839
00:43:17,800 --> 00:43:20,520
Speaker 2: of his possessions. He doesn't blame his divorce entirely on

840
00:43:20,560 --> 00:43:23,600
Speaker 2: his galley's failure, but it certainly didn't help. He shut

841
00:43:23,640 --> 00:43:26,560
Speaker 2: his last door in December and has filed for bankruptcy protection.

842
00:43:26,840 --> 00:43:28,680
Speaker 2: At this point, I've got a dog in an apartment

843
00:43:28,719 --> 00:43:30,440
Speaker 2: and that's it. This is not where I thought i'd

844
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:31,480
Speaker 2: be at fifty six.

845
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:32,440
Speaker 1: Doesn't deserve a dog.

846
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:35,680
Speaker 2: No, I mean, I'm sure he sucks too, but it is.

847
00:43:35,880 --> 00:43:38,040
Speaker 2: It is interesting the way this con goes right where

848
00:43:38,040 --> 00:43:39,600
Speaker 2: he's like, okay, you've bought one with If you don't,

849
00:43:39,760 --> 00:43:42,480
Speaker 2: you got to set up another like a block away.

850
00:43:42,520 --> 00:43:44,279
Speaker 2: Otherwise we're going to set up one and run you

851
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,040
Speaker 2: out of business by undercuttry isn't.

852
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:48,480
Speaker 3: That use Subway does their franchises.

853
00:43:47,760 --> 00:43:50,799
Speaker 2: Though, Yeah, they just had a meeting about how they're

854
00:43:51,239 --> 00:43:55,080
Speaker 2: circling the drain too. But yes, I think you are correct.

855
00:43:54,920 --> 00:43:57,759
Speaker 3: And you have to like, there's no way that they

856
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:01,840
Speaker 3: didn't understand that this was going to destroy because they know.

857
00:44:02,160 --> 00:44:04,319
Speaker 2: They're just trying to suck money out of these people. Yeah.

858
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:07,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is like a no long term investment. This

859
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 3: is just get this guy's money. Our peat was sold

860
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:11,800
Speaker 3: yea whatever.

861
00:44:12,040 --> 00:44:14,400
Speaker 2: Well, it's even worse than that, because he's not just

862
00:44:14,600 --> 00:44:17,040
Speaker 2: screwing these people to suck money out of them, he's

863
00:44:17,040 --> 00:44:19,960
Speaker 2: screwing these people to crash the stock value of the

864
00:44:20,000 --> 00:44:23,400
Speaker 2: company because Kincaid makes a bunch of calls in the

865
00:44:23,440 --> 00:44:26,280
Speaker 2: early two thousands that a lot of people will argue

866
00:44:26,280 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 2: and has been argued successfully in court, were deliberately made

867
00:44:29,719 --> 00:44:31,880
Speaker 2: to tank the stock from a high of almost twenty

868
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 2: five dollars to a less than three dollars a share,

869
00:44:35,320 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 2: and then once the value of the stock had collapsed,

870
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,600
Speaker 2: he bought his company back and took it private. This

871
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 2: is what causes that court case, which concludes in two

872
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:47,120
Speaker 2: thousand and six, and found that Kincaid's company had deliberately

873
00:44:47,160 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 2: misrepresented itself to perspective gallery owners for the La Times.

874
00:44:51,880 --> 00:44:54,600
Speaker 2: The arbitration panel found that the company and Barnett, who

875
00:44:54,640 --> 00:44:57,400
Speaker 2: ran a training program for prospective gallery owners known as

876
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:01,360
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid University, painted an unreal, realistic, and misleading picture

877
00:45:01,360 --> 00:45:04,759
Speaker 2: of the prospects for success and never warned potential investors

878
00:45:04,760 --> 00:45:07,640
Speaker 2: of the inherent risks. We were told success story after

879
00:45:07,640 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 2: success story, and of course the Tom story and his

880
00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:12,759
Speaker 2: Christian views and the way he ran his life, one

881
00:45:12,840 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 2: of the gallery owners told the arbitration panel. Now, this

882
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:19,640
Speaker 2: panel ultimately rules in favor of two gallery owners from

883
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:22,640
Speaker 2: Virginia who had sued him, awarding them almost nine hundred

884
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,120
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in damages. These people, all of whom had

885
00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,000
Speaker 2: had money to burn when they started talking with Kincaid's people,

886
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:31,759
Speaker 2: are the least sympathetic of his victims because a lot

887
00:45:31,800 --> 00:45:35,360
Speaker 2: of regular, not rich people got scammed into buying crappy

888
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:39,200
Speaker 2: princess An investment too. In the early two thousands, Kincaid's

889
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:42,160
Speaker 2: company started publishing books. A write up I found in

890
00:45:42,200 --> 00:45:44,840
Speaker 2: Salon describes them all as being made by a semi

891
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:49,080
Speaker 2: industrial process, just like his highlighted paintings. In short, he

892
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:52,480
Speaker 2: would write an introduction and presumably approven outline, and then

893
00:45:52,520 --> 00:45:55,240
Speaker 2: someone else would write the novel. Now you can compare

894
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:58,320
Speaker 2: this to his old friend whose Dinotopia books were labors

895
00:45:58,320 --> 00:46:01,879
Speaker 2: of love. Whatever else you might say about them, it's

896
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,359
Speaker 2: it's clearly the Yeah, it's clearly the work of someone

897
00:46:05,360 --> 00:46:12,000
Speaker 2: who cares deeply about telling a dinosaur story. Time with it. Yeah, yeah,

898
00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 2: I remember them very fondly. I haven't picked them back

899
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,000
Speaker 2: up since I was like twelve, but I remember them fondly.

900
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,399
Speaker 3: Child that had puppets.

901
00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:23,400
Speaker 2: See now that I didn't play ship, that sounds awesome.

902
00:46:24,760 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 2: So all these books, as best as I can tell

903
00:46:26,680 --> 00:46:29,359
Speaker 2: her about quaint small towns. Generally, there will be a

904
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,160
Speaker 2: woman who comes from the big city with a big

905
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 2: job that's stressing her out, and she comes to a

906
00:46:35,080 --> 00:46:37,200
Speaker 2: small town and she gets swept off her feet by

907
00:46:37,200 --> 00:46:40,040
Speaker 2: some like farmer who convinces her the real joy in

908
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:42,520
Speaker 2: life is having a bunch of kids and no longer voting.

909
00:46:43,080 --> 00:46:43,200
Speaker 3: Uh.

910
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:47,360
Speaker 2: They're all harrormarked movies. A lot of them focus on

911
00:46:47,400 --> 00:46:50,480
Speaker 2: how sinful Boston is compared to the countryside, which I

912
00:46:50,520 --> 00:46:51,120
Speaker 2: do approve of.

913
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't disagree now, but I find everyone

914
00:46:57,800 --> 00:46:58,520
Speaker 3: and everything there.

915
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:01,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is the city of smells, like,

916
00:47:02,040 --> 00:47:07,839
Speaker 2: that's what we all about Boston. Yeah, the city of piss. Look,

917
00:47:08,480 --> 00:47:11,080
Speaker 2: Los Angeles a lot of good piss. New York great

918
00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:14,239
Speaker 2: piss town, you know. But but Boston, of all the

919
00:47:14,280 --> 00:47:17,800
Speaker 2: towns that smell like urine, definitely, well maybe Philadelphia anyway,

920
00:47:18,040 --> 00:47:20,040
Speaker 2: There's actually a lot of towns that smell like piss,

921
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:22,040
Speaker 2: but Boston's top of the pack. I'll give it that.

922
00:47:22,640 --> 00:47:25,080
Speaker 3: The day I moved to Boston, I was walking through

923
00:47:25,080 --> 00:47:28,000
Speaker 3: Cambri like Harvard Square, and I turned a corner and

924
00:47:28,040 --> 00:47:30,279
Speaker 3: a woman was holding her like five year old kid

925
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,920
Speaker 3: over like a potted plant on the street. It like

926
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:41,240
Speaker 3: it was from Texas, where it's like Boston over there.

927
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:47,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, public, it's the Boston city motto, Boston just go

928
00:47:47,520 --> 00:47:48,399
Speaker 2: ship over there.

929
00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:54,600
Speaker 3: All the comments you're gonna get from your Bostonian fans.

930
00:47:54,400 --> 00:47:57,920
Speaker 2: Yeah it's okay, it's okay. You know, I live in Portland,

931
00:47:58,120 --> 00:48:00,000
Speaker 2: the city of also shipping all over the place.

932
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 3: It's a.

933
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:05,120
Speaker 2: Look you want to talk about shit, go back to

934
00:48:05,120 --> 00:48:08,399
Speaker 2: the idealized like nineteen twenties. These people imagined back when

935
00:48:08,400 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 2: there were horses all over everything. O. God, that's a

936
00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:13,719
Speaker 2: lot of shit. You know, we barely shit in our

937
00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:15,319
Speaker 2: cities compared to how much shit do.

938
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:19,719
Speaker 3: You still Georgia in springtime? It just seems are everywhere.

939
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:24,440
Speaker 2: So what I find most interesting about this Salon article

940
00:48:24,480 --> 00:48:29,120
Speaker 2: about Thomas's shitty Kincaid novels is how the writer describes

941
00:48:29,160 --> 00:48:32,600
Speaker 2: the reaction of Kincaid's fans to a negative review of

942
00:48:32,640 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 2: the first book in the series, WHOA. Well, No, Actually

943
00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 2: this is a little different because this comes out after

944
00:48:38,480 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 2: he's kind of been started to be disgraced. I began

945
00:48:41,239 --> 00:48:43,759
Speaker 2: to receive emails from people who had sunk their life

946
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:48,000
Speaker 2: savings and Thomas Kincaid's signature galleries essentially mall and shopping

947
00:48:48,000 --> 00:48:50,919
Speaker 2: district outlets for his prints, and been fleeced. I didn't

948
00:48:50,920 --> 00:48:54,439
Speaker 2: really understand how the financial architecture of Kincaid's gallery empire worked,

949
00:48:54,480 --> 00:48:56,840
Speaker 2: and I shouldn't share their taste in wal art. But

950
00:48:56,920 --> 00:48:59,960
Speaker 2: these people struck me as decent and sincere They believed

951
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid not just in the man or the company,

952
00:49:02,719 --> 00:49:06,160
Speaker 2: but in the ethos supposedly represented by his art, one

953
00:49:06,160 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 2: in which, to quote Kincaid's introduction to Cape Light, people

954
00:49:09,600 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 2: have the time to save her life simple pleasures and

955
00:49:12,400 --> 00:49:16,719
Speaker 2: lead deep, satisfying lives. It's not hard to find accounts

956
00:49:16,800 --> 00:49:19,839
Speaker 2: like these of people who purchased Kincaid Prince's investments and

957
00:49:19,880 --> 00:49:22,600
Speaker 2: feel ripped off. I found one letter in a medium

958
00:49:22,640 --> 00:49:26,400
Speaker 2: post by Charles Bodelaire, who apparently takes art questions from fans.

959
00:49:26,960 --> 00:49:30,480
Speaker 2: Dear Charles, I have four original oil paintings by Thomas Kinkaid.

960
00:49:30,680 --> 00:49:32,759
Speaker 2: I bought them about twenty five years ago and paid

961
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 2: six thousand dollars for each of them. I love them

962
00:49:35,239 --> 00:49:37,000
Speaker 2: and it gives me great pleasure to look at them.

963
00:49:37,239 --> 00:49:39,840
Speaker 2: But because I am moving to an assisted living facility

964
00:49:39,880 --> 00:49:41,879
Speaker 2: and will have no room for these paintings, I need

965
00:49:41,880 --> 00:49:43,880
Speaker 2: to sell them. I thought i'd at least get my

966
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:45,960
Speaker 2: money back, and was shocked when the best offers I

967
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:48,840
Speaker 2: received were between three and four hundred dollars each. I

968
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:51,920
Speaker 2: cried for days. How could these beautiful works of art

969
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,800
Speaker 2: sell for such a pittance. It's because they just printed

970
00:49:54,800 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 2: them out.

971
00:49:55,239 --> 00:49:55,439
Speaker 4: Man.

972
00:49:56,120 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 2: Sorry, I don't want to make an old man feel

973
00:49:59,080 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 2: bad about painting that bring him happiness in his twilight years.

974
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:04,640
Speaker 2: But like that is what happened. You got ripped off.

975
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:06,680
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Like, I mean one thing.

976
00:50:06,719 --> 00:50:09,080
Speaker 3: They said, Hey, by these paintings, aren't they pretty? You'll

977
00:50:09,080 --> 00:50:11,800
Speaker 3: just enjoy looking every day? Cool? Great? Yeah, but he

978
00:50:12,040 --> 00:50:15,040
Speaker 3: was told it was investment, was going to appreciate.

979
00:50:15,760 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. If someone wants to pay thousands of dollars

980
00:50:18,880 --> 00:50:21,839
Speaker 2: for a painting that looks pretty like I do, that's

981
00:50:21,880 --> 00:50:24,920
Speaker 2: not a scam unless you're making them think that this

982
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:30,760
Speaker 2: is something that will make their money appreciate, you know that. Yeah,

983
00:50:30,840 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 2: that's a bummer.

984
00:50:31,760 --> 00:50:33,960
Speaker 3: He really is the Trump of the art world, isn't.

985
00:50:33,760 --> 00:50:36,359
Speaker 2: He's the Trump of the artworld? That's exactly. Yeah. When

986
00:50:36,440 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 2: I may steal that from you for the title, and

987
00:50:38,200 --> 00:50:39,960
Speaker 2: then you can take me to court. You know, we're

988
00:50:40,000 --> 00:50:41,600
Speaker 2: gonna we're going to spend the rest of the twenty

989
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:43,840
Speaker 2: twenties litigating and seeing I'm hearing about.

990
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:46,520
Speaker 3: It's people who believed him there was a.

991
00:50:46,480 --> 00:50:51,799
Speaker 2: Fucking university, Yes, yes, for teaching his gallery owners how

992
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 2: to get fleeced. As the early two thousands faded into

993
00:50:57,320 --> 00:50:59,640
Speaker 2: the aughts, Kincaid was still a big business, although the

994
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 2: number of galleries devoted to his work and plunged from

995
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,560
Speaker 2: a high of three hundred and fifty to something like

996
00:51:04,600 --> 00:51:10,080
Speaker 2: half that. So he's still a big business. Yes, that's

997
00:51:10,120 --> 00:51:12,319
Speaker 2: not a that's that's bigger. I mean there's no other

998
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 2: single artist you can say that about really anyway, there's

999
00:51:16,080 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 2: any artists on earth like that. Yeah, Now that just

1000
00:51:21,280 --> 00:51:24,600
Speaker 2: maybe Disney being actually caring about having a sustainable business

1001
00:51:24,680 --> 00:51:27,640
Speaker 2: right now. Somewhere around two thousand and eight or two

1002
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:29,920
Speaker 2: thousand and nine, his marriage fell apart and he and

1003
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,880
Speaker 2: Nannette separated. Kincaid does seem to have loved her despite

1004
00:51:33,880 --> 00:51:36,879
Speaker 2: his achieveding, and included constant references to her and their

1005
00:51:36,880 --> 00:51:38,880
Speaker 2: marriage in his work. He would like put their the

1006
00:51:38,960 --> 00:51:42,440
Speaker 2: date of their anniversary and paintings after they had split up,

1007
00:51:43,320 --> 00:51:46,320
Speaker 2: and he seems to have spiraled increasingly once she left.

1008
00:51:46,400 --> 00:51:49,520
Speaker 2: His drug use in drinking grew more severe. The Daily

1009
00:51:49,640 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 2: Beast describes one December twenty ten event that shows his

1010
00:51:52,600 --> 00:51:55,480
Speaker 2: mood well quote. Fans in Denver had been promised a

1011
00:51:55,520 --> 00:51:59,360
Speaker 2: thirty minute inspirational presentation. What they got was an ungroomed,

1012
00:51:59,400 --> 00:52:01,840
Speaker 2: under addressed speaker who was none too pleased with the

1013
00:52:01,880 --> 00:52:05,440
Speaker 2: media's coverage. Of his recent arrest for drunk driving, stays

1014
00:52:05,440 --> 00:52:08,279
Speaker 2: in public and I make a headline. He sneered. Then

1015
00:52:08,320 --> 00:52:10,640
Speaker 2: he complained about the media's lack of attention to his

1016
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 2: charitable works. America's most known, most beloved artist shows up

1017
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,400
Speaker 2: in an Orange County hospital. We threw in all day,

1018
00:52:16,480 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 2: kids of it. We hosted art contest. We gave art

1019
00:52:18,600 --> 00:52:20,919
Speaker 2: packages to all the kids. I talked to them about

1020
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:23,640
Speaker 2: journaling their life, about creating something every day that makes

1021
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:26,239
Speaker 2: a statement. And we sent word out to every newspaper.

1022
00:52:26,239 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 2: Come down, see this day of joy, this day of celebration.

1023
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:31,960
Speaker 2: No one showed, but make one wrong step in public

1024
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:34,600
Speaker 2: and they put it on the front page. Yeah, man,

1025
00:52:35,239 --> 00:52:39,719
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid gives kitchy fucking journals to sick kids. Is

1026
00:52:39,760 --> 00:52:42,040
Speaker 2: not an art story in the way that rich artists

1027
00:52:42,040 --> 00:52:45,920
Speaker 2: caught drunk driving is. Maybe that's wrong, but it's just obvious.

1028
00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:49,160
Speaker 3: You remember that since this episode Camp Krusty, where like

1029
00:52:49,239 --> 00:52:55,919
Speaker 3: Crusty shows up like.

1030
00:52:56,000 --> 00:52:59,239
Speaker 2: So when he finishes, Kincaid asks the organizers to make

1031
00:52:59,280 --> 00:53:02,040
Speaker 2: sure that his room is alcohol free, and then he

1032
00:53:02,160 --> 00:53:05,360
Speaker 2: keeps the owner of the Colorado Concaide Gallery up until

1033
00:53:05,400 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 2: like the early hours of the morning talking about his

1034
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:13,040
Speaker 2: ex wife. Just a perfect picture of a man's spiraling

1035
00:53:13,880 --> 00:53:19,280
Speaker 2: and Thomas, this is definitely the terminal part of the spiral.

1036
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:22,160
Speaker 2: A month after that event, he spends ten days in

1037
00:53:22,239 --> 00:53:25,600
Speaker 2: jail on his DUI charge. He tries to get sober

1038
00:53:25,640 --> 00:53:28,560
Speaker 2: after that, but he just keeps relapsing, falling back into

1039
00:53:28,600 --> 00:53:31,400
Speaker 2: drugs and alcohol. A little over a year later, he

1040
00:53:31,440 --> 00:53:34,960
Speaker 2: has found unconscious. He spends several days in a coma,

1041
00:53:35,280 --> 00:53:37,640
Speaker 2: and when he wakes up, the doctor say basically, hey man,

1042
00:53:37,960 --> 00:53:41,000
Speaker 2: you have to sober up now or die. You don't

1043
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:43,680
Speaker 2: get more chances, right. This isn't the kind of thing

1044
00:53:43,719 --> 00:53:46,239
Speaker 2: where like you can dry out for a while and

1045
00:53:46,239 --> 00:53:48,839
Speaker 2: then get back to the drinking and drugs. This is it.

1046
00:53:49,239 --> 00:53:53,160
Speaker 2: If you fuck around anymore, you're dead. And, as is

1047
00:53:53,160 --> 00:53:55,839
Speaker 2: often the case, he does not take this warning. Two

1048
00:53:55,880 --> 00:53:59,919
Speaker 2: months later, on April sixth, twenty twelve, he overdoses and died.

1049
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid was fifty four. Reporting after his death revealed

1050
00:54:04,960 --> 00:54:08,720
Speaker 2: that he was actively under federal investigation for securities fraud.

1051
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:11,719
Speaker 2: So there is some suspicion that maybe this was suicide.

1052
00:54:12,200 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 2: You know, it's possible, right. He apparently was again a

1053
00:54:18,200 --> 00:54:21,279
Speaker 2: lot of crimes associated with this, the Painter of Light,

1054
00:54:22,160 --> 00:54:25,120
Speaker 2: Trump of art World, the Trump of the art world.

1055
00:54:25,440 --> 00:54:29,320
Speaker 2: The immediate wake of his death saw a huge surgeon sales.

1056
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:32,319
Speaker 2: Fans gathered at fifty some galleries around the country in

1057
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:35,120
Speaker 2: a public wake, and then the autopsy report came out,

1058
00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:37,319
Speaker 2: which showed that he had died of acute alcohol and

1059
00:54:37,440 --> 00:54:42,200
Speaker 2: valium intoxication. I think most of his followers, some of

1060
00:54:42,280 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 2: them are surprised, but it doesn't really reduce the amount

1061
00:54:45,600 --> 00:54:48,000
Speaker 2: of love for his work. I actually find some of

1062
00:54:48,040 --> 00:54:50,640
Speaker 2: the writing on this gross where they're like, haha, this man,

1063
00:54:51,360 --> 00:54:54,440
Speaker 2: like like, look now everyone's going to stop liking him

1064
00:54:54,480 --> 00:54:56,799
Speaker 2: because he owed Dean, And it's like, I don't know, man,

1065
00:54:56,840 --> 00:54:59,800
Speaker 2: A lot of artists people love that kill themselves with

1066
00:55:00,640 --> 00:55:03,319
Speaker 2: That's kind of the norm for artists that people love.

1067
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 3: Yeah, that also pains additions of personal failing and addiction

1068
00:55:07,239 --> 00:55:10,080
Speaker 3: is a disease, Like I'm not coold with that, Like

1069
00:55:10,719 --> 00:55:13,279
Speaker 3: you can hate someone but also be sad that they

1070
00:55:13,360 --> 00:55:15,440
Speaker 3: fell down addition.

1071
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:18,280
Speaker 2: And I would say the fact that he, after splitting

1072
00:55:18,320 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 2: up with his wife, fell to addiction is not contradictory

1073
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:23,600
Speaker 2: to the Christian values and the same way that the

1074
00:55:23,600 --> 00:55:28,080
Speaker 2: fact that he is sexually assaulting people and committing securities fraud.

1075
00:55:28,239 --> 00:55:31,080
Speaker 3: Is that right? Is all way more setting to him? Yeah,

1076
00:55:31,239 --> 00:55:34,760
Speaker 3: the death is a little sad. Oh yeah, no, everything

1077
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:35,880
Speaker 3: else is disgusting.

1078
00:55:36,360 --> 00:55:39,759
Speaker 2: Yeah right. Uh so what did more damage to his

1079
00:55:39,840 --> 00:55:42,839
Speaker 2: memory was the fact that there's this horrible legal fight

1080
00:55:42,880 --> 00:55:46,000
Speaker 2: afterwards between his ex wife and his new girlfriend, who

1081
00:55:46,000 --> 00:55:48,400
Speaker 2: claimed to have letters that he wrote her while drunk

1082
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 2: promising her a bunch of his assets. The matter is

1083
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:53,920
Speaker 2: offitually said, eventually settled out of court, but it made

1084
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:56,759
Speaker 2: it kind of impossible to hide the unsavory elements of

1085
00:55:56,840 --> 00:56:00,400
Speaker 2: Kincaid's legacy. Now, if you have paid a tension at

1086
00:56:00,440 --> 00:56:03,640
Speaker 2: all to how evangelical Christians responded to Trump's many foibles

1087
00:56:03,640 --> 00:56:06,440
Speaker 2: and amoral acts, you're not surprised that a lot of

1088
00:56:06,440 --> 00:56:09,839
Speaker 2: people continued to love Kincaid after all this came out.

1089
00:56:10,160 --> 00:56:12,319
Speaker 2: His company is still around. It's opened up to new

1090
00:56:12,400 --> 00:56:16,279
Speaker 2: artists and even branded content, so obviously they've seen need

1091
00:56:16,320 --> 00:56:18,640
Speaker 2: to expand since his death, But by all accounts, he

1092
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:22,560
Speaker 2: is still an exceedingly profitable artist. Thomas, though, now has

1093
00:56:22,600 --> 00:56:25,880
Speaker 2: to rest in the eternal hell that awaits all artists,

1094
00:56:26,280 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 2: because if your work is notable enough to be discussed

1095
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:33,799
Speaker 2: in any fashion, any fashion, some critic is always going

1096
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:36,360
Speaker 2: to get the last word, right, if your work is

1097
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:38,440
Speaker 2: worth talking about, it's always going to be a critic

1098
00:56:38,440 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 2: who gets the last word, because you're going to die someday.

1099
00:56:41,000 --> 00:56:44,120
Speaker 2: And in Thomas's case, some of those critics were scholars

1100
00:56:44,120 --> 00:56:47,960
Speaker 2: from the British Journal of Aesthetics who conducted a study

1101
00:56:48,200 --> 00:56:51,040
Speaker 2: to see if they could quantify how bad his art was.

1102
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:56,239
Speaker 2: This study, mere exposure to bad art, tested whether or

1103
00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:59,080
Speaker 2: not repeated exposure to Kincaid's work would cause someone to

1104
00:56:59,200 --> 00:57:01,840
Speaker 2: like it more or less, and they paired Kincaid the

1105
00:57:01,880 --> 00:57:05,080
Speaker 2: control group was a better artist, right, somebody who had

1106
00:57:05,080 --> 00:57:08,840
Speaker 2: had like a general level of critical you know, acclaim

1107
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:12,359
Speaker 2: And after repeated viewings, participants reported no change in their

1108
00:57:12,400 --> 00:57:16,720
Speaker 2: appreciation of the good art quote, but repeated viewings of

1109
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:20,760
Speaker 2: the Painter of Light prompted strong negative emotions, with participants

1110
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 2: saying they liked his stuff less each time it popped

1111
00:57:23,280 --> 00:57:25,600
Speaker 2: up in front of their eyes. Now Here are those

1112
00:57:25,960 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 2: result reactions in graph form taken from an earlier unpublished

1113
00:57:29,200 --> 00:57:32,560
Speaker 2: form of the research. And yeah, it's a you know,

1114
00:57:32,760 --> 00:57:35,840
Speaker 2: there's a theory that this may be because exposure to

1115
00:57:35,880 --> 00:57:39,600
Speaker 2: Kincaid over time makes the flaws and his work glaringly obvious,

1116
00:57:39,680 --> 00:57:41,520
Speaker 2: and so people come to hate it the more they

1117
00:57:41,560 --> 00:57:44,440
Speaker 2: look at it. This is clearly not true to as

1118
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:47,160
Speaker 2: many fans, but it does lead lend some comfort to

1119
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 2: the rest of us. Right if you are like I

1120
00:57:49,320 --> 00:57:52,720
Speaker 2: find this this guy like more upsetting every piece of

1121
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,320
Speaker 2: art that you've shown of his their scientific backing for that,

1122
00:57:56,480 --> 00:57:59,400
Speaker 2: you are in the norm, So good news there, and.

1123
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:01,880
Speaker 3: At bit ship it is.

1124
00:58:02,080 --> 00:58:05,120
Speaker 4: Really it's incredibly petty for a dead man who like

1125
00:58:05,720 --> 00:58:08,840
Speaker 4: died in a very sad fashion alone of an overdose,

1126
00:58:08,880 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 4: to be like, let's see if we can scientifically prove

1127
00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:11,920
Speaker 4: he sucked.

1128
00:58:13,840 --> 00:58:18,440
Speaker 3: It's some of my disdain for for critics in general,

1129
00:58:18,520 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 3: because there is such a I need to prove why.

1130
00:58:21,800 --> 00:58:26,200
Speaker 3: It's not opinion, it's fat proving. No, Oh my.

1131
00:58:26,120 --> 00:58:31,080
Speaker 2: God, it's the pettiest thing I've ever heard of, And

1132
00:58:31,160 --> 00:58:33,600
Speaker 2: I respect. There's a degree to which you have to

1133
00:58:33,640 --> 00:58:34,760
Speaker 2: respect that level of petty.

1134
00:58:34,800 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 3: Oh no, that's impressive. Spent some time on that.

1135
00:58:37,200 --> 00:58:41,840
Speaker 2: You really put in the effort to hate this guy's paintings,

1136
00:58:42,840 --> 00:58:44,959
Speaker 2: And I guess I just wrote eighty five hundred words

1137
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:47,320
Speaker 2: about why I don't like his art. So I'm not

1138
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 2: that petty, but I'm certainly in the upper level of why.

1139
00:58:50,720 --> 00:58:53,439
Speaker 3: You don't like him. I think that's a different.

1140
00:58:53,160 --> 00:58:57,640
Speaker 2: I do not that is that is fair. I believe

1141
00:58:57,680 --> 00:59:00,120
Speaker 2: I felt this for a long time. The only the

1142
00:59:00,240 --> 00:59:04,760
Speaker 2: real valid artistic expression in our society is reprinted T

1143
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,520
Speaker 2: shirts of Bart Simpson during the Gulf War. You know,

1144
00:59:08,640 --> 00:59:12,440
Speaker 2: that's that's all. Great art is just some kind of

1145
00:59:12,480 --> 00:59:16,680
Speaker 2: reprinted Bart Simpson T shirt made in order that the

1146
00:59:17,000 --> 00:59:20,640
Speaker 2: generated so they did. Yes, of course, of course, yes,

1147
00:59:21,440 --> 00:59:26,320
Speaker 2: any any early nineties illegal Bart Simpson merchandise is art

1148
00:59:26,400 --> 00:59:32,960
Speaker 2: and nothing else is anyway, plug your art.

1149
00:59:36,440 --> 00:59:42,680
Speaker 3: Wow. So uh you can see my my mean spirited

1150
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:47,400
Speaker 3: comic at somebody positive dot net or at mousetrapped dot blog.

1151
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 3: Is another thing I do. I also draw the Sunday

1152
00:59:50,560 --> 00:59:54,800
Speaker 3: Popeyes at comics Kingdom dot com slash Popeye, and if

1153
00:59:54,800 --> 00:59:57,720
Speaker 3: you go to Comics Kingdom at com slash, I believe

1154
00:59:57,720 --> 01:00:01,560
Speaker 3: it's hold on. I not prepared, That's why would I be.

1155
01:00:01,920 --> 01:00:05,560
Speaker 3: I'm still winded by I did not expect this to

1156
01:00:05,600 --> 01:00:10,920
Speaker 3: have sexual assault. Yeah dot com slash all of hyphen

1157
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:14,480
Speaker 3: Popeye Tuesdays and Thursdays is new strips. There, I knew

1158
01:00:14,480 --> 01:00:18,840
Speaker 3: the Thursday strips. Yeah wow, I that did not go

1159
01:00:18,960 --> 01:00:20,160
Speaker 3: where I thought it was gonna go.

1160
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:25,720
Speaker 2: No, no, well, you know, I'm always happy to hear that, Randy.

1161
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:26,680
Speaker 3: Uh.

1162
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:27,680
Speaker 2: And all I can say is, I.

1163
01:00:27,680 --> 01:00:30,520
Speaker 3: Don't feel like I have gone off compared to most

1164
01:00:30,520 --> 01:00:31,160
Speaker 3: of your guests.

1165
01:00:31,480 --> 01:00:34,360
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, fairly low that. This is one of our

1166
01:00:34,480 --> 01:00:36,720
Speaker 2: more low stakes bastards. For sure.

1167
01:00:36,760 --> 01:00:39,560
Speaker 3: There's no dead children in this episode that I'm aware of.

1168
01:00:39,920 --> 01:00:42,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, no dead kids. You know, some old people lose

1169
01:00:42,920 --> 01:00:48,440
Speaker 2: their savings. Definitely a sexual assault or too. Yeah, but

1170
01:00:49,640 --> 01:00:51,880
Speaker 2: not not our worst, not our worst. But you know,

1171
01:00:52,400 --> 01:00:56,360
Speaker 2: next time we have Randy on and I finally reveal

1172
01:00:56,480 --> 01:01:01,040
Speaker 2: the dark truth behind the person who does high and Lois, I'm.

1173
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 3: Just gonna say, uh huh.

1174
01:01:05,200 --> 01:01:06,680
Speaker 2: Look, there's literally.

1175
01:01:06,320 --> 01:01:08,960
Speaker 3: A national Cartoon to Society meeting next week. I'm supposed

1176
01:01:09,000 --> 01:01:09,200
Speaker 3: to go.

1177
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:12,760
Speaker 2: The word war crimes gets thrown a lot around a

1178
01:01:12,760 --> 01:01:17,400
Speaker 2: lot these days, but it should be around here. Yeah.

1179
01:01:17,840 --> 01:01:20,400
Speaker 3: That's gonna make a real awkward meeting next week.

1180
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,880
Speaker 2: When I will wait until I publish my investigation and

1181
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:25,880
Speaker 2: we get the high end Lois person up in front

1182
01:01:25,920 --> 01:01:29,640
Speaker 2: of the Hague. Uh, which one is there is there

1183
01:01:29,680 --> 01:01:31,320
Speaker 2: a couple I don't know much about. Hyan Lowis I'm

1184
01:01:31,320 --> 01:01:31,600
Speaker 2: gonna be.

1185
01:01:32,240 --> 01:01:35,720
Speaker 3: Hi and Lois is technically a spin off of Beatle Bailey.

1186
01:01:35,800 --> 01:01:40,480
Speaker 3: I believe more Walker and I believe it's the it's

1187
01:01:40,520 --> 01:01:44,320
Speaker 3: his kids, and I believe that the kids behind the

1188
01:01:44,360 --> 01:01:46,040
Speaker 3: creator of Hanger the Horrible.

1189
01:01:47,400 --> 01:01:51,880
Speaker 2: Well, uh, you know, Hagi the Horrible. We'll see how

1190
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:55,640
Speaker 2: horrible he was next time. Randy, thank you.

1191
01:01:56,360 --> 01:01:58,480
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.

1192
01:01:59,200 --> 01:02:02,640
Speaker 2: Yes, thanks for being around. All right, everybody. That's the

1193
01:02:02,720 --> 01:02:06,200
Speaker 2: episode go to Hell. I Love you.

1194
01:02:06,240 --> 01:02:13,600
Speaker 1: Pleae. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.

1195
01:02:13,960 --> 01:02:17,240
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia

1196
01:02:17,400 --> 01:02:20,600
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

1197
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:23,560
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.