Speaker 1: Also media Ah.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that lies
Speaker 2: about its guests and gets them made the suspects of
Speaker 2: ongoing murder investigations. Welcome to the program, Randy Millhall and Randy,
Speaker 2: have you ever been expected suspected of a series of
Speaker 2: violent crimes?
Speaker 3: Only a triple ridgis sign.
Speaker 2: Oh that's a good crime to be suspected for. Well, Randy,
Speaker 2: today we're going to come up with a crime and
Speaker 2: insinuate to our listeners that you committed it, although you know, honestly,
Speaker 2: before we started this podcast, you were talking about having
Speaker 2: just moved to la and people looking at you suspiciously
Speaker 2: because you are, like me, a hulking man with a beard.
Speaker 2: I used to have a much longer beard too, and
Speaker 2: I know those looks. And honestly, when I started the
Speaker 2: rumors that Jamie Loftus had killed all those people in
Speaker 2: Grand Rabbits, I was just trying to make her more
Speaker 2: empathetic to the struggles of men like you and me,
Speaker 2: you know, so that she knows what it's like. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're the really the the largest discriminated against group in
Speaker 2: this country.
Speaker 1: I cannot, I cannot let you continue this bit.
Speaker 2: Why not who men who look like extras from one
Speaker 2: of the Dwarf heavy Lord of the Rings movies. Like,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with that?
Speaker 3: Are you saying that?
Speaker 1: Because like a lost shirt?
Speaker 2: I did not know that you were wearing a lego
Speaker 2: Lost T shirt. I am Randy, Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure. Thank you.
Speaker 2: You're the artist and writer behind the Something Positive webcomic.
Speaker 2: You are also the legal guardian of Popeye the Sailor Man.
Speaker 3: Yes, that is actually accurate.
Speaker 2: And you came on the show for the first time.
Speaker 2: I think it was last year to talk about Scott
Speaker 2: Adams because I've been a fan of your your work
Speaker 2: for a while and I was I found out that
Speaker 2: you were a fan of the pod and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: this will be I like to do that. You know,
Speaker 2: this will be great. We'll have Randy on for the
Speaker 2: one episode about an artist that we ever do. Surely
Speaker 2: there aren't that many like world class historical monsters who
Speaker 2: are also working illustrators, right, how many could there be? Anyway,
Speaker 2: this is your third time back on the show, you.
Speaker 3: Know it is amazing. Yeah, a lot of artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I get when you think about all
Speaker 2: of the other kinds of art that produces monsters. I
Speaker 2: guess it's not surprising. Just don't trust people who are creative.
Speaker 2: You know, if anybody has a creative thought around you,
Speaker 2: just start hitting.
Speaker 1: Them what by job by job titles ahead of creative?
Speaker 3: I feel at.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well you're about to be attacked if our
Speaker 2: listeners do the job anyway, Randy, what do you know?
Speaker 2: What have you heard about Thomas Kincaid?
Speaker 3: I know he's dead, yes, and yes, despite being dead,
Speaker 3: that's gonna be a real highlight of I know that
Speaker 3: being dead, his signature still appears on brand new art,
Speaker 3: which leads me to think there's some type of assembly
Speaker 3: line going on. Uh, that's really it. Like I think
Speaker 3: my grandmother had one of his prints, and that's about it. Like,
Speaker 3: I know love artists? Are people in art loved to
Speaker 3: dunk on him?
Speaker 2: Yes he does. He gets his art gets attacked, and honestly,
Speaker 2: some of the dunks you strike me as people being
Speaker 2: like a little bit up their own assholes. But I
Speaker 2: don't like his art particularly either. But no, he's not
Speaker 2: a bad We're not. We're not just going to be
Speaker 2: doing an episode where we make fun of this guy's
Speaker 2: art because it's bad art. He both occupies a place
Speaker 2: in culture where he contributed to the kind of right
Speaker 2: wing derangement of our society. And more to the point,
Speaker 2: he just like I am, a deeply unethical man who
Speaker 2: took advantage of his customers.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And he also is kind of the kind of the
Speaker 2: Ford of of paintings. Like when you said about there
Speaker 2: being a h An industrial factory aspect to what he
Speaker 2: did is very much accurate, although maybe not entirely in
Speaker 2: the way that you had predicted. But Randy, you want
Speaker 2: to learn about Thomas motherfucking Kincaid.
Speaker 3: I know. I was excited to and then I saw
Speaker 3: that this meeting is schedule for three hours and I'm
Speaker 3: a little more nervous about it now.
Speaker 2: And how long straight to We'll see how long.
Speaker 3: Bring those like Ford and all the anti semitisms. I'm like,
Speaker 3: you can't wait to see what pamphlets t well not
Speaker 3: that bad?
Speaker 1: Well, well, Randy, I will say the working title for
Speaker 1: this episode is the Panther of Light was Worse than Hitler.
Speaker 2: That was for your eyes only, Sony. That's not an
Speaker 2: accurate title. Sometimes sometimes you just you know, hyperbole is
Speaker 2: a necessary coping mechanism. When you have to write eight
Speaker 2: and a half thousand words about Thomas Kinkaid, the Painter
Speaker 2: of Light. Anyway, here it fucking goes eight and a
Speaker 2: half thousand something like that. Pretty normal script. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot to write about Thomas Kinkaid though. Anyway, cold open, closed,
Speaker 2: We're back. So I think probably more than half of
Speaker 2: the people listening have some awareness of who this is
Speaker 2: just after I mentioned his name. He is one of
Speaker 2: the best known, if not the best known artists in
Speaker 2: the United States. And like you said, Randy, you think
Speaker 2: you have a relative who might have had one of
Speaker 2: his prints. A lot of people do. Right, If you've
Speaker 2: ever been walking through like a relative's house or a
Speaker 2: particularly opulent Airbnb and seeing a garish painting or a
Speaker 2: series of garish paintings featuring idealized rule or small town
Speaker 2: life with kind of a distinctive fifties Americana feel and
Speaker 2: a use of color and light that feels simultaneously quaint
Speaker 2: yet sinister, you are familiar with the work of Thomas Kincaid,
Speaker 2: And if you aren't, Sophie's going to put up on
Speaker 2: the screen some examples for the listeners. I'm going to
Speaker 2: try and describe this. This is going to be one
Speaker 2: of the more visual episodes we've had, just because we're
Speaker 2: talking about a painter. That's part of why we're we're
Speaker 2: doing adding video now, although I promise most of our
Speaker 2: episodes won't be about painters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, check out the YouTube. Yeah YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: at behind the Bastards.
Speaker 2: If not, let me describe the first one we've got
Speaker 2: here is the perspective in this painting is really fucked.
Speaker 2: But it looks like almost.
Speaker 3: It might be me because I'm like, yeah, tractor, Yeah
Speaker 3: is tiny.
Speaker 2: That truck also even with the distance, looks tiny like that.
Speaker 2: You've got a soldier walking towards like a cottage farm house,
Speaker 2: but there's some bus that's clearly dropped him off on
Speaker 2: a dirt road. He's walking home. Looks like about World
Speaker 2: War two. Maybe it could be Vietnam era, probably more
Speaker 2: closer to Vietnam around the tree so you know, yes, yep,
Speaker 2: waiting for him. Yeah, so they've been waiting for him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a soldier returning home. The cabin. Part of where
Speaker 2: I say sinister is like it's a daytime picture, Like
Speaker 2: it's clearly the middle of the day, Like you can
Speaker 2: see blue sky and a lot of you know, bright clouds.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of light on the ground. But also
Speaker 2: the cabin is glowing from the inside in a way
Speaker 2: that I think it's supposed to seem warm and homie.
Speaker 2: That makes it feel like like a cabin from a
Speaker 2: fucking Sam Raimi movie. Like it feels like there's a
Speaker 2: devil inside there, and the soldiers come back home having
Speaker 2: just survived the war, to confront the evil that's devoured
Speaker 2: his family.
Speaker 3: He does have an ecronomic on in that backpack.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's why it's so bulgye Yes, yeah, that he
Speaker 2: just this is an alternate history where we won Vietnam
Speaker 2: by bringing the dead Eites down upon them. Honestly, pretty
Speaker 2: good movie in that premise, or bad movie in that premise.
Speaker 3: There's a role playing game in that I think, actually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: The second picture we've got here is kind of a
Speaker 2: very classic Kincaid. This is a cabin in the woods again.
Speaker 2: You've got like the whole cabin lit from the inside
Speaker 2: in a way that is supposed to be homie but
Speaker 2: also seems kind of vaguely sinister. Everything sparkles a lot,
Speaker 2: there's almost a glossy feel like. It feels like if
Speaker 2: you've ever put you've been like painting miniatures and like
Speaker 2: done like a glaze or something over them. It feels
Speaker 2: like the whole picture has been kind of glazed in
Speaker 2: that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then the third one we've.
Speaker 3: Built, it looks like a Christmas village building.
Speaker 2: Yes, it does look like it is that. That's the
Speaker 2: best way to describe it. Randy's if you've ever if
Speaker 2: you ever had a relative who like what every year
Speaker 2: on the holidays would put up one of those Christmas
Speaker 2: model villages. All of his paintings of cabins look like that.
Speaker 2: And it's a lot of small town paintings too, very
Speaker 2: much like kind of the best touchstone for that if
Speaker 2: you haven't seen a Kincaid somehow. And then this last one, surprise, surprise,
Speaker 2: he's super Christian and not the good kind. And we've
Speaker 2: got this painting of a cross on top of a
Speaker 2: mountain and like the clouds are kind of like retreating
Speaker 2: from the path of the that of the cross like
Speaker 2: that that gives it a line straight to the sun
Speaker 2: which is setting. It's this I don't know very again,
Speaker 2: it almost looks AI generated, right, I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people's first reaction to seeing these in the year
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, if they weren't familiar with Kincaid, would go, oh,
Speaker 2: are these like some AI art? Right? It almost that
Speaker 2: like hyper real, like shiny look that all of the
Speaker 2: AI shit has his work kind of has.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's very unpleasant. Yeah, so much.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I find it off putting too, And I
Speaker 2: think there's a good reason why my head immediately goes
Speaker 2: to and I look at it now, Oh, this kind
Speaker 2: of looks like a lot of AI art, because every
Speaker 2: AI image generator has scraped a shitload of Kincaid's work.
Speaker 2: He was incredibly prolific and incredibly popular, and I do
Speaker 2: think he actually has probably wound up having an influence
Speaker 2: on because of how well his stuff like It doesn't
Speaker 2: just sell, people will post kincaid paintings to like Facebook
Speaker 2: to get engagement, and I think that that has to
Speaker 2: a significant extent influenced how a lot of these image
Speaker 2: generators work and a lot of the crap that they
Speaker 2: put out. And we'll be talking about that more later.
Speaker 2: But for those of you who haven't been able to
Speaker 2: see the art, or those of you who just want
Speaker 2: to hear someone smarter than me describe it. I want
Speaker 2: to quote Joan Didion's description of Thomas Kincaid's style. A
Speaker 2: Kincaid painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It
Speaker 2: typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent
Speaker 2: coziness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap
Speaker 2: designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit
Speaker 2: to really effect as if the interior of the structure
Speaker 2: might be on fire. The cottages had faxed rooms and
Speaker 2: resembled a gingerbread house. The houses were Victorian and resembled
Speaker 2: idealized bed and breakfast, at least two of which in Placerville,
Speaker 2: the Chinchester McKey House and the Comelback Blair House, claim
Speaker 2: to have been the models for kincaid Christmas paintings. So
Speaker 2: it's very much a lot of it's kind of this
Speaker 2: idolized rural California chic and it's yeah, I think I
Speaker 2: think Joan kind of gets it right there. It does
Speaker 2: there's something vaguely evil about his paintings.
Speaker 3: But suddenly I want to thinkcaid painting of the gas
Speaker 3: station from Texas chains on.
Speaker 2: Mass that's actually there's kind of a whole style of
Speaker 2: like meme art, that is, people taking Kincaid paintings and
Speaker 2: like turning them into pea pieces of horror. We'll talk
Speaker 2: about that in a little bit, but it's remarkably easy
Speaker 2: to do. Now. Kinkaid is the kind of guy who
Speaker 2: is mostly remembered as making like wal art for hotel
Speaker 2: grade kind of shit. But he's probably the best selling
Speaker 2: American painter of the last generation. And he is, by
Speaker 2: any of any account, one of the wealthy, wealthiest artists
Speaker 2: of any medium ever to live. He died worth somewhere
Speaker 2: between fifty and seventy million dollars. So you were talking
Speaker 2: about like basically no one in the arts ever makes
Speaker 2: that kind of money, right, Like he is the yeah.
Speaker 3: The only person I can think of who probably can't
Speaker 3: close and many have the pass was like Charles Schultz
Speaker 3: in his lifetime.
Speaker 2: Schultz das maybe yeah, yeah, you know, yes, yeah, I
Speaker 2: think you're probably right that, Like you have to go
Speaker 2: to some of the most to the most successful commercial
Speaker 2: cartoonists of and again you're still going back like a
Speaker 2: generation to talk about anyone getting that kind of money
Speaker 2: for this sort of work, And you know, part of
Speaker 2: what makes him different is that those guys like Schultz
Speaker 2: is making art that is consumed by tens of millions
Speaker 2: of people. Right, That's why there's so much money, and
Speaker 2: it was so much money in it for him. Painting
Speaker 2: is a bit different, right, most paintings, you know, most painters,
Speaker 2: if they get rich, do it because they make something
Speaker 2: that gets you know, develops a value because of its
Speaker 2: kind of cultural weight, and it gets sold to someone
Speaker 2: very wealthy who's willing to pay for it, and then
Speaker 2: it kind of gets deranged from any sort of real
Speaker 2: value that can go back to the artist. Because what
Speaker 2: happens with great paintings and valuable works of art when
Speaker 2: they get bought by rich people usually is those rich
Speaker 2: people put them in storage containers and trade them back
Speaker 2: and forth with each other as a way of kind
Speaker 2: of laundering money. That is most of the art market,
Speaker 2: like the big art market. Kincaid made all of this money.
Speaker 2: He didn't make this money selling originals to very rich people.
Speaker 2: He made all of his money selling prints to middle
Speaker 2: class people.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Uh. And that's that's completely unique. No one else really
Speaker 2: has done it to the extent that he was able
Speaker 2: to do it. And you know, it's counting stuff like
Speaker 2: this is always kind of a crap shoot, but one
Speaker 2: credible estimate says that sort of at the height of
Speaker 2: his popularity, something like one in ten American homes had
Speaker 2: a Thomas Kincaid print on at least one wall, which
Speaker 2: is nuts. Like, that's a crazy level of penetration.
Speaker 3: I guarantee more now because I know his label has
Speaker 3: licensing agreements with Harry Potter, Disney and the Disney brands,
Speaker 3: Like there are yeah, looking marveled.
Speaker 2: There's Star Wars shit, yeah.
Speaker 3: The Star Wars ones I've seen, and there that's some
Speaker 3: ugly composition. I feel kind of that's saying I don't
Speaker 3: like busting of art, but it's just.
Speaker 2: It's it's he's turned into this is not really as
Speaker 2: much of what it was for the most top part
Speaker 2: when he was alive, but it's just kind of turned into, well,
Speaker 2: people know this name, and they know that they can
Speaker 2: get art from here, so let's make as many deals
Speaker 2: as we can. But during his lifetime, it was really
Speaker 2: just selling his work, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: like how he actually made that profitable because it was
Speaker 2: by taking the logic that we see use in multi
Speaker 2: level marketing like pyramid schemes and by right wing populist
Speaker 2: politicians and applying it to art sales. Right, that's how
Speaker 2: he got this successful. And the fact that this worked
Speaker 2: says a lot about our country, which is kind of
Speaker 2: why we're telling this story in the Year of Our
Speaker 2: Lord twenty twenty four. Is this as we watch an
Speaker 2: election where one side is largely propped up by an
Speaker 2: alliance of used car dealers, cryptos, scammers and fucking multi
Speaker 2: level marketing con men.
Speaker 3: So yeah, you might be being generous on that one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. William Thomas Kinkaid the Third was born January nineteenth,
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty eight, in Sacramento, California, better known as the
Speaker 2: very crack of Hell itself. Have you been to Sacramento much?
Speaker 2: I've not been to City of Trees? They call it
Speaker 2: City a Tree.
Speaker 1: And yes, yes, Robert, yes.
Speaker 2: Uh it's okay. I had to live in reading Sacramento,
Speaker 2: I know, I know, suffering too. Uh So he grew
Speaker 2: up in Placerville. He grew up in Placerville. Sacramento's fine.
Speaker 2: He grew up in Placerville, which was a quiet mountain
Speaker 2: town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. His childhood is always
Speaker 2: a sore spot for him. He does not, he does
Speaker 2: not recall it as a nice one. But he's also
Speaker 2: a professional fabulous, so he's going to lie about it constantly.
Speaker 2: But one thing that is more or less accurate is
Speaker 2: that he came from a broken home. His father abandoned
Speaker 2: the family when Thomas was five. He was a painter,
Speaker 2: although he never sold anything and mostly was an alcoholic
Speaker 2: who survived off of part time janitorial work. Thomas is prob.
Speaker 3: That's most painters.
Speaker 2: That's most painters. Yes, drunken and doing janitorial work to
Speaker 2: get by because painting is just not a great way
Speaker 2: to get money. Nope, h Thomas. His brother Patrick recalls
Speaker 2: him as a lovable, sad sack who was more of
Speaker 2: a bit player in their childhoods than a father. Right,
Speaker 2: this is not a situation where like he's gone entirely,
Speaker 2: but I know it's a real bleak. Like he's like
Speaker 2: a guest star in like a TV sitcom like Onis
Speaker 2: once a season, he'll come in for an episode.
Speaker 3: Charles Nelson Riley.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Weirdly, one of the quotes from Patrick about their
Speaker 2: dad sounds very similar to Doctor Evil's speech about his
Speaker 2: father and Austin powers and I just have to I'm
Speaker 2: not going to try to do the voice. But Tom
Speaker 2: and I both certainly felt that we were more sophisticated
Speaker 2: than he was. He'd go off on these tangents, these
Speaker 2: flights of fancy about what he was going to do
Speaker 2: with his life, these bouts of expertise that he really
Speaker 2: had no expertise about. He'd be so into it, and
Speaker 2: Tom and I would just sit there and smile and nod,
Speaker 2: knowing that this was all nonsense. And then my father
Speaker 2: didn't really have the capacity to carry out that plan.
Speaker 2: He wanted to sail around the Sea of Cortes. He
Speaker 2: had this weird little boat that in no way was ready,
Speaker 2: nor was he a sailor. He had a hat and
Speaker 2: a map. Wow, I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at your
Speaker 2: sad childhood, but that's pretty funny.
Speaker 3: No, that's that's kind of like, that's amazing. Yeah, it
Speaker 3: feels like some morested development level.
Speaker 2: Since their dad was pretty useless, care and feeding of
Speaker 2: the family fell upon their single mother. She got by
Speaker 2: as best she could, working as a notary public and
Speaker 2: surviving with the help of government welfare. Unfortunately, Like, there's
Speaker 2: no shame in having to get by on welfare. As
Speaker 2: the problem is, she hid this dependency from her kids, which,
Speaker 2: as a result, they grew up not kind of and
Speaker 2: I think this plays into how Tom is as an adult.
Speaker 2: They grew up not really aware of how much of
Speaker 2: their survival had hinged on the existence of a social
Speaker 2: safety net. For an example of kind of how she
Speaker 2: hid this, Tom and his brother as kids thought that
Speaker 2: the jars of peanut butter stamped property of El Dorado
Speaker 2: County were gifts from friends like she. She didn't want
Speaker 2: to admit to them how bad their financial situation was,
Speaker 2: and as a result, as kids, they weren't really aware
Speaker 2: of like how much they like their family was being
Speaker 2: supported by this by society, right, which is I think
Speaker 2: not bad, especially if you're a kid who grows up
Speaker 2: to be crazy rich. Maybe the feeling that, like, oh,
Speaker 2: when I was a kid and needed it, I was
Speaker 2: able to benefit from the support of my society. Perhaps
Speaker 2: I have a moral obligation now that I'm rich to
Speaker 2: help out other people. Thomas is not going to grow
Speaker 2: up feeling that way, right, Yeah, I mean maybe he
Speaker 2: wouldn't have either wayis right.
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel sympathy and empathy for her.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 3: You don't it's got to be a bruise to the ego.
Speaker 3: And also you don't want your kid be made fun
Speaker 3: of because.
Speaker 2: Right the kids they go schooled pretty brutal. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and I get why you would hide that. I understand
Speaker 2: like the shame of it, you know, I am. I'm
Speaker 2: thinking back to my own child, and I'm kind of
Speaker 2: glad that my dad let me know about, like when
Speaker 2: he was on unemployment, like what that is and how
Speaker 2: it works, and like growing up with even that kind
Speaker 2: of understanding to yeah, yeah, if.
Speaker 3: You need help, you need help, then right, you should
Speaker 3: be able to get it.
Speaker 2: And that's that's not how he's going to Patrick is
Speaker 2: going to grow up thinking about this sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: Or that's not how Thomas and Patrick are going to
Speaker 2: grow up thinking about this sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Their mother, they remember as a very cheery person who
Speaker 2: used good humor to hide their desperate financial straits. At
Speaker 2: one point, all of the family furniture was repossessed. When
Speaker 2: the boys came home to an empty house, their mother
Speaker 2: told them she'd chosen to get rid of the furniture
Speaker 2: so they could have a fun time camping out in
Speaker 2: their house. So we get not shitting on this lady.
Speaker 2: She's doing the best with what she's got. That's that's true.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, I get the desire to shield your
Speaker 3: children from stuff like that because that's going to that's
Speaker 3: a trauma. You're trying to make sure. She sounds like
Speaker 3: a great mom.
Speaker 2: To be honest, she sounds like she did her very best.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't guarantee kids are going to come
Speaker 2: out not be an assholes.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And that said, I'm also not one hundred percent
Speaker 2: sure how much of this to believe because that does
Speaker 2: sound like a Hallmark original movie. And Thomas is like
Speaker 2: he always has Hallmark brain. He's constantly spinning his own
Speaker 2: life story. And I wouldn't be entirely surprised if aspects
Speaker 2: of this whole broken home, you know, plucky but but
Speaker 2: beleaguered single mom story were kind of played up because
Speaker 2: he knows how they play as like a narrative, right.
Speaker 2: I don't know though, But his version of the story
Speaker 2: is that at a very young age, his mother told
Speaker 2: him that he had to be the man of his
Speaker 2: house now because his dad had left. Now, that same
Speaker 2: version of the story, the one that Thomas liked to share,
Speaker 2: claims that in school he was a child prodigy, good
Speaker 2: at math cifix every class, but especially drawn to art.
Speaker 2: His first major artistic venture was commercial. At age fourteen,
Speaker 2: he set up a stand selling his drawings for two
Speaker 2: dollars each. In an article for The New Yorker, Sue
Speaker 2: or Lean writes, every time he sold one, he would
Speaker 2: marvel at how he could make money on something that
Speaker 2: had taken him only fifteen minutes to do. And that
Speaker 2: does that his early attitude about art as well, I
Speaker 2: can with very little work make money off of this,
Speaker 2: Like kind of he's already thinking, how can I maximize
Speaker 2: spending as little time as possible to get as much
Speaker 2: return on the time I put into art? Like he's
Speaker 2: financialized those Yeah, I do if he is. I mean
Speaker 2: it sounds like he was actually very poor. I get
Speaker 2: that right, because it's this thing that like people who
Speaker 2: grow more comfortable, it's hard to understand, but like you
Speaker 2: kind of have to think of everything in financial terms
Speaker 2: when you're that amazing kid. So I'm not surprised.
Speaker 3: That's fair and honestly, like, on one level, it's nice
Speaker 3: to know that someone with archistic skill early realized that
Speaker 3: they could make money because I've do so Many artists
Speaker 3: don't understand the value of the work and over really
Speaker 3: hard for it. So on one hand, it's nice to
Speaker 3: know the young age he understood his value. I just
Speaker 3: also know where this is going. Yeah, well, yes, I'm
Speaker 3: not happy about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah. Now, Thomas was so was promising enough as
Speaker 2: an artist that he started attracting mentors as a teenager.
Speaker 2: One of them was a prominent artist named Glenn Wessels,
Speaker 2: who was a professor at the California College of Arts
Speaker 2: and You See Berkeley. Wessels eventually convinced Kincaid to pursue
Speaker 2: art as a career and go to UC Berkeley. Now,
Speaker 2: the story of Glenn and Thomas is a load bearing
Speaker 2: piece of the Thomas Kincaid story, so much so that
Speaker 2: in two thousand and eight it became the subject of
Speaker 2: a Christmas biopic titled Thomas Kincaid's Christmas Cottage. Peter O'Toole
Speaker 2: plays Glenn, and in a shocking twist, Thomas Kincaid is
Speaker 2: played by Jared Padilechi aka the less Interesting brother from Supernatural.
Speaker 2: Really really, I was shocked as hell to see.
Speaker 3: That that's some that's not where I thought that was
Speaker 3: gonna go.
Speaker 2: Neither did I. It's like right at the start of
Speaker 2: the series. Jared Padialachi too, So I am.
Speaker 3: So sorry, but I am absolute Looking up screenshots of
Speaker 3: that movie.
Speaker 2: People say it's okay. The audience store is sixty two percent.
Speaker 1: I can't believe they had Rory Gilmore as a worst boyfriend.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow, he's clearly the worst Winchester brother, Sophie gezor
Speaker 2: boyfriend between us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look at that movie.
Speaker 2: Also like it's it's by any count, Like it's what's
Speaker 2: the word I'm looking for. It's a compliment to have
Speaker 2: Jared Padileki in two thousand and six cast as you
Speaker 2: in the movie about your your adolescent or your young adulthood.
Speaker 2: But also like, I'm sorry, Thomas Kincaid, you don't look
Speaker 2: like Jared Padillachi.
Speaker 3: What are we talking about here, Thomas No, absolutely, Sophie
Speaker 3: pulled that up because the people need to see, like
Speaker 3: the toe with a beard, he does.
Speaker 2: Not look like two thousand and six Jared Batileki.
Speaker 3: No, No, he doesn't.
Speaker 2: Two thousand and six Future Walker Texas Ranger disastrous idea
Speaker 2: for a reboot. Jared Padileki, Oh my god, there's so fun.
Speaker 2: Oh there's a picture of a mullet.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, that man knows the street value of Merbie.
Speaker 1: Rory Gilmore is the worst boyfriend.
Speaker 2: He could be Rory Gilmore's worst boyfriend, but Rory Gilmore
Speaker 2: would have had to have several hard years first.
Speaker 3: He looks like a pretending to be straight and trailer
Speaker 3: park version of Glenn Shandox, who was Otho and Beatlejuice.
Speaker 2: What a very specific comparison. You know, thank you.
Speaker 3: Who should have played him because he was an amazing actor.
Speaker 2: Yeah and so damn anyway, real quick, Yeah, speaking of
Speaker 2: Jared Padaluchi. This podcast is sponsored by Devan Dart.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say your worst boyfriend.
Speaker 2: I was making I was making a supernatural fandom joke.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just think of the worst, most upset adding
Speaker 3: furry fetish stuff that someone can inflict on it.
Speaker 2: Oh, you can find some great furry fetish supernatural cross
Speaker 2: art good stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, fine, fight.
Speaker 3: For super natural supernatural.
Speaker 2: Yeah h yeah, super fur natural damn. Yeah, there's probably
Speaker 2: a whole convention based around that. Anyway, if you're if
Speaker 2: you're a member of the supernatural furry Pornography fandom. This
Speaker 2: has been your lucky day on Behind the Bastards. Here's
Speaker 2: some ads. We're back anyway. Uh so, yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: know about this movie, but what one reviewer calls it
Speaker 2: overly sentimental and overly acted, yet surprisingly enjoyable, which corresponds
Speaker 2: to how a lot of people feel about Thomas's artwork.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You could say that about every Kincaid painting. It's cloingly
Speaker 2: sweet and it drips with enough nostalgia to clog your arteries,
Speaker 2: but there is something compelling about it. This may be
Speaker 2: it's like that. That is kind of the thing about
Speaker 2: it is, like, it's not it's wal art. It's the
Speaker 2: kind of shit you'd see in a hotel, except most
Speaker 2: of the kind of shit you'd see in a hotel
Speaker 2: you would never look at or think about again, Thomas Kinkaid,
Speaker 2: there is something about them, right, There is something interesting
Speaker 2: going on here. I'm not saying that like it's good
Speaker 2: or artistically, you know, brilliant, but there's there's a reason
Speaker 2: different groups of people obsessively edit and modify kincad art.
Speaker 2: Like there's a couple of different subcultures based around that.
Speaker 2: You can find a lot of his work with like
Speaker 2: eldritch horrors and elder gods added in as in, So
Speaker 2: he's going to show you this Thomas Kincaid lighthouse paired
Speaker 2: with Cthulhu.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: It works pretty well. Yeah, Like it's a much better
Speaker 2: painting when you throw Cthulhu in there.
Speaker 1: Not matters.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And while Thomas Kinkaid's stuff, they do a Star
Speaker 2: Wars imprint. There's been like a fan thing where people
Speaker 2: will take his borderline surreal landscapes and cabin paintings and
Speaker 2: turn them into this sits of colorful Star Wars battles,
Speaker 2: as you can see here in this painting of a
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid cottage with a pair of Ataight's not bad.
Speaker 2: Not bad.
Speaker 3: I've seen that one before.
Speaker 2: Yeahh surprisingly they kind of fit in, like it is.
Speaker 2: That doesn't work. It doesn't look jarring, right.
Speaker 3: The worst part is that looks better than all the
Speaker 3: official Thomas can Cad Star.
Speaker 2: Wars so much battling, so much better.
Speaker 3: God, like that is depressing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, Thomas moves on to another art school after
Speaker 2: two years at Berkeley, and it's somewhere in this period
Speaker 2: like when he kind of leaves Berkeley to go to
Speaker 2: this outher art school. That there's a major shift in
Speaker 2: his personality right around the same time he leaves, because
Speaker 2: the next art school he goes to is in Pasadena.
Speaker 2: At age twenty, he undergoes what Sue or Lean described
Speaker 2: as a Christian awakening. Quote. It changed his art. It
Speaker 2: stopped being about his fears and anxieties and became optimistic
Speaker 2: and inspirational with themes like hometowns and perfect days and
Speaker 2: natural beauty. And millions of people responded. Now, this is
Speaker 2: what Sue writes to The New Yorker, this is what
Speaker 2: Thomas claims. I don't know that I think this is true.
Speaker 2: In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not right, because this
Speaker 2: is a very If you've spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: at like revivals, if you've seen a lot of like
Speaker 2: Christian evangelical speeches, this is how they all go.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Usually sometime when I'm in college, I was surrounded by
Speaker 2: this degeneracy. But then like I had this and it
Speaker 2: changed everything. Once I, you know, once I you know,
Speaker 2: saw the truth and accepted Jesus, Like my whole life
Speaker 2: was different. Right. That's how these stories go. That's not
Speaker 2: really how real life usually works, right, and it's not
Speaker 2: how art usually works. But we'll start. I'm going to
Speaker 2: tell you the real story, which is much more interesting
Speaker 2: and involves Ralph Bakshi. Uh so, oh god, damn it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you goddamn right. But first, I'm going to tell the
Speaker 2: version of the story that Thomas Kinkaid, once he becomes
Speaker 2: a business empire, wants everyone to believe.
Speaker 3: Now, I really want one of his pains that Frits
Speaker 3: the cat put in it, so that.
Speaker 2: If only fire and ice put a pin in that one.
Speaker 2: By the way, so Sue describes, first, let's go with
Speaker 2: Thomas's story, because this is what he wants people to believe.
Speaker 2: So Sue Orlean, in her profile for The New Yorker,
Speaker 2: describes how the company he created to tell his art
Speaker 2: tended to tell the story of Thomas's development. From this point,
Speaker 2: it's as good as story as you could hope for.
Speaker 2: If you want to make a point about perseverance and
Speaker 2: pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and appreciating life's bounty.
Speaker 2: Even the bad parts of the story are good because
Speaker 2: it's easier not to begrudge Kincaid his fortune when you
Speaker 2: were reminded that he was a poor kid who had
Speaker 2: to struggle, who rejected the smarty pants liberal establishment to
Speaker 2: follow his heart, and he was proud of having earned
Speaker 2: his way into the ultimate American aristocracy of successful entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: So basically, he's saying, like, yeah, I had this Christian awakening.
Speaker 2: They wanted me to do all these sad paintings about
Speaker 2: my fears and nightmares and insecurities. But I knew that
Speaker 2: real art, you know, it should uplift people. It should
Speaker 2: be about values, the real classic American values, And I
Speaker 2: broke with the art establishment then at age twenty. That
Speaker 2: is not at all what happens, demonstrably not the actual story.
Speaker 2: So here's the actual story. In the summer of nineteen eighty,
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid goes on a road trip with a friend,
Speaker 2: his buddy and fellow artist, James Gurney, and they wind
Speaker 2: up in New York City, where Thomas talks his way
Speaker 2: into getting a book deal with James. They publish a
Speaker 2: Guide to Sketching, which sold very well and is apparently
Speaker 2: a pretty good guide to sketch art. Does the name
Speaker 2: James Gurney mean anything to you?
Speaker 3: Not? Really? No?
Speaker 2: Okay, good, I think you'll recognize his work when we
Speaker 2: get to that point. So this book that he and
Speaker 2: James writes is enough of a hit that it gets
Speaker 2: the attention of one of the country's most talented and
Speaker 2: insane artists, a man named Ralph Bakshi. Now, if you
Speaker 2: have not seen his movies like Fritz the Cat and
Speaker 2: American Pop, Bakshi was a devotee of a type of
Speaker 2: animation called rodoscoping, but he also wrote asks uping involves
Speaker 2: these kind of like weird it's a weird method of
Speaker 2: like filming actual people, but it also measures in with
Speaker 2: traditional animation, which you use for the backgrounds for like
Speaker 2: monsters and stuff. Great great ship.
Speaker 3: You did the first to animate Lord of the Rings movies.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's that's kind of probably his most well
Speaker 2: known stuff, and it's often like Bakshi style, it's often garish,
Speaker 2: it's often grotesque. There's these distorted people in animals, but
Speaker 2: there's this kind of magnetism to his work. Nonetheless that
Speaker 2: I you know, a lot of people including me, have
Speaker 2: always found like very intriguing. Bakshi saw talent.
Speaker 3: It's a very weird guy.
Speaker 2: He's a very weird guy, but especially Consered.
Speaker 3: His career started in terry tunes like Heckel and Jackyal
Speaker 3: and all that shit, and the nineteen sixties Spider Man
Speaker 3: cartoon no shit, And it went from that to doing
Speaker 3: Fritz Yeah, the Spider Man pointing each other meme. That's
Speaker 3: I believe that's.
Speaker 2: The boxhi, okay, okay. Interesting.
Speaker 3: Then he started doing all his adult cartoons in the seventies,
Speaker 3: in the early eighties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then we.
Speaker 3: Got the You Will Never See Again nineteen eighty nine's
Speaker 3: Mighty Mouse cartoon. Yeah, with the cocaine reference.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Bakshi's blood was about sixty percent cocaine.
Speaker 2: Through the entirety of the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 3: John Chris Belushi was working on that.
Speaker 2: One's for you, Yes, yeah, yeah, that'll be our probably
Speaker 2: maybe our next episode the rin and Stimpy Guy Jesus
Speaker 2: but bok. She sees talent in Thomas and he hires
Speaker 2: him and Gurney to work on his new film nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty threes, Fire and Ice, which you.
Speaker 3: Had just brought up, guess.
Speaker 2: Thomas Kinkaid does a lot of the background art in
Speaker 2: Fire and Ice. A lot of the environment is drawn
Speaker 2: by Kincaid, Yeah, and by Gurney.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Gurney does a good amount of that too. And if
Speaker 2: you haven't seen Fire and Ice, folks, I recommend you do.
Speaker 2: It's a great movie. Maybe take some substances first, if
Speaker 2: you're a substance taking kind of person. It's Bruce Flanne
Speaker 2: Oh right, it's Vallejo, Bruce Valleeho, who did like a
Speaker 2: lot of the most iconic Conan art. Sorry, Frank Frizzetta,
Speaker 2: not Bruce Falleo. Yeah, it's Frank Frizetta who did who
Speaker 2: did take a lot of Conan. And it's written by
Speaker 2: a couple of guys who had done Conan, the Barbarian comics. Right,
Speaker 2: So that this movie Fire and Ice is really it's
Speaker 2: one of those, like one of these films that's kind
Speaker 2: of a prism because a lot of different careers break
Speaker 2: out after it. Right, There's a lot of people who
Speaker 2: are going to go on to do very different but
Speaker 2: influential things, who get, you know, part of their start
Speaker 2: from Fire and Ice. So, Bakshi and Frizetta handle the
Speaker 2: live action shots for the action sequences, well, Gurney and
Speaker 2: Kinkaid do a lot of the background paintings, and the
Speaker 2: project gives Thomas a lot of heat credits. In his
Speaker 2: official story, Oh, I had this Christian awakening and it
Speaker 2: convinced me. You know, I'm this painter of light and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But you see in Fire and Ice a lot of
Speaker 2: him playing with fog in the way light affects landscapes.
Speaker 2: But you know, I've got a couple of clip in
Speaker 2: here for you in a way that it is kind
Speaker 2: of like you see a lot of fog in Kincaid's
Speaker 2: later paintings. You see a lot of the same kind
Speaker 2: of use of light. Like it's not really surprising when
Speaker 2: you know this case.
Speaker 3: It's the backgrounds are stunning. I remember that the movie.
Speaker 2: He's very beautiful film. Yeah, and again, Fire and Ice
Speaker 2: is one of these quietly influential films where a lot
Speaker 2: of people who made shit you love got their start.
Speaker 2: Thomas's friend, James Gurney, his co author, goes on from
Speaker 2: this project to create, write, and illustrate the Dinotopia series.
Speaker 2: That's who Gurny is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's James Garny, right,
Speaker 2: who I was a big fan of that as a kid. Right.
Speaker 2: The layout artist for Fire and Light Ice was Peter Chung,
Speaker 2: who later created a on Flux. Okay, yeah, yeah, Roy Thomas,
Speaker 2: one of the writers created the character vision for Marvel
Speaker 2: as well as ghost Writer and fucking Morbius.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Like, that's a lot of talent in
Speaker 3: one film.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 1: Is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were this close to getting u Oh, what's that?
Speaker 2: What's that creepy sex criminal who's in the Morbius movie?
Speaker 2: I'm spacing on his name?
Speaker 3: Oh, Letto Jared Leto.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we were this close to getting Jared Leto played
Speaker 2: Thomas Kincaid in a movie. You know, there's still time.
Speaker 2: There's still time Letto to.
Speaker 1: Be doing that weird cold thing that he does.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Also, the other co writer of Fire and Ice, Jerry Conway,
Speaker 2: co created Killer Crock. So you know, again, a lot
Speaker 2: of influential people in this movie. Yes, a lot of
Speaker 2: load bearing parts of the culture come out of Fire
Speaker 2: and Ice.
Speaker 3: Plains it's a good movie, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great, fucking awesome movie. Yes. So, on one hand,
Speaker 2: Fire and iceed artists gave us a whole host of
Speaker 2: Marvel characters, several of whom have movies Dinotopia and aon Flux.
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, we have Thomas Kincaid, a
Speaker 2: man who twenty years later would be declared by a
Speaker 2: Salon writer, the George W. Bush of art. This is
Speaker 2: before George W. Bush became the George W. Bush of art.
Speaker 3: That's kind of hurt a little bit too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, poor George W. Bush the most the greatest suffering
Speaker 2: artist today.
Speaker 3: Truly, yea, truly, no one has ever suffered more.
Speaker 2: It would be really funny if he had, like a
Speaker 2: if he'd gone like all full Warhol on it, Like
Speaker 2: if George W. Bush were throwing these big warehouse parties
Speaker 2: in New York and like like like literally just like
Speaker 2: shooting up ketamine into his veins. That's the George Bush
Speaker 2: we all deserve to get and steadies just rich and
Speaker 2: lives in Dallas. So this version of the story, the
Speaker 2: one where you know, Thomas Kincaid gets his big break
Speaker 2: on a massive animated production and he comes right away
Speaker 2: from it changed. I think that's more the real story
Speaker 2: than the sudden Christian awakening thing. After Fire and Ice,
Speaker 2: he starts working a lot more with light and landscapes
Speaker 2: and fog and mist, and he warps his style from
Speaker 2: a sort of restrained realism to this more fantastic and
Speaker 2: surreal look. Now, Thomas likes the art he's making, but
Speaker 2: it isn't really selling because people don't really buy a
Speaker 2: lot of art, you know, like not enough that he
Speaker 2: can live the kind of life that he wants to live. Right,
Speaker 2: he probably, of.
Speaker 3: All the paintings I have sold, I've sold more prints
Speaker 3: than I've ever sold a paintings. Yes, well, it's definitely
Speaker 3: made more money off Prince than Nasal originals, you know.
Speaker 2: To be honest, Kincaid may be part of why the
Speaker 2: business does work that way, or at least, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe he's just it's probably more accurate to say he
Speaker 2: realized that and figured out how to do it at
Speaker 2: scale very quickly. So Thomas he might have been able
Speaker 2: to make a place in the art world for himself
Speaker 2: or in Hollywood for himself given enough time. But he
Speaker 2: understood number one that like that kind of work was
Speaker 2: never going to be regular enough or profitable enough for
Speaker 2: him to get the kind of rich that he wanted
Speaker 2: to be as a former poor kid. And he also
Speaker 2: is aware as he starts trying to sell and display
Speaker 2: his art that like critics don't like it. They think
Speaker 2: that it looks either like chloyingly or on the more
Speaker 2: fantastic side, like something you'd see in a conan comic, right,
Speaker 2: and that's not something like art critics are going to
Speaker 2: be bullish A No, they do.
Speaker 3: Not like that. It's yeah, definitely the least favorite thing
Speaker 3: to come across.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know they're co bad guys in this.
Speaker 2: I I try to there's criticism. I will try to
Speaker 2: repeat the criticism of Kincaid that I think is good
Speaker 2: and not just the stuff that's like clearly some guy
Speaker 2: who wishes that like he were still huffing Andy Warhol's
Speaker 2: fucking few.
Speaker 3: Yes, there are definitely a lot of art critics who
Speaker 3: if you mentioned landscape, it's just immediately those two hatred.
Speaker 3: Like it's like a switch.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's them. Yeah, same with same.
Speaker 3: With certain mediums. Like if you tell certain like oh
Speaker 3: I do water cooler, they're like, oh, okay, see paint flowers.
Speaker 2: Yeah no. Well, and you know, I wonder if, because
Speaker 2: we just talked about how there is some interesting stuff
Speaker 2: being done by people who modify Concaid paintings, I wonder
Speaker 2: if part of like the message there and the message
Speaker 2: with Fire and Ice, is that this was never a
Speaker 2: man whose work should have existed on it right, like
Speaker 2: he could he could be part of good things when
Speaker 2: he was a part of it, right when people were
Speaker 2: like using his backgrounds and adding and putting things on them.
Speaker 2: There was like a way in wait, like he was
Speaker 2: actually part of some interesting art. But on his own,
Speaker 2: you know, that's just not not a lot there anyway.
Speaker 2: He gets kind of enraged at an early age that
Speaker 2: his art is dismissed by these critics, and Kincaid himself
Speaker 2: would always insist that, like because a big one of
Speaker 2: the big criticisms he'll get is that his stuff is
Speaker 2: just too pleasant, right, there's no no emotion behind it,
Speaker 2: there's nothing complex behind it. And can Kaid's develops this
Speaker 2: attitude that, well, art shouldn't be about complex emotions or pain.
Speaker 2: Art exists to make people feel good, and if it
Speaker 2: doesn't make people feel good, then it's not good art.
Speaker 2: He later wrote, every element in my paintings, from the
Speaker 2: patch of sun and the foreground to the mists on
Speaker 2: a distant horizon, is an effort to summon back those
Speaker 2: perfect moments that hang in our minds as pictures of harmony.
Speaker 2: My deepest is that my work will help people despire
Speaker 2: to the life those kinds of images evoke, And I
Speaker 2: do think a valid criticism is that, like, Yeah, if
Speaker 2: you're focused on your art only making people feel good, well,
Speaker 2: that's not really very complicated or interesting art to a
Speaker 2: lot of people.
Speaker 3: I know, I don't disagree with them. I think that
Speaker 3: there's a validity to this is just starting to make
Speaker 3: you happy. Yeah, I think there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 3: I do think I disagree with them that all art
Speaker 3: has to make you feel good, because my brain went
Speaker 3: to various Norman Rockwell paintings that were about integration. They're
Speaker 3: very horrific images, or the one about them three pro
Speaker 3: right civil rights activists who are murdered, painting about them,
Speaker 3: and like, that didn't make me feel good, but damn
Speaker 3: it was a hell of a painting and it really
Speaker 3: did evoke his rage at what happened to these young men.
Speaker 2: And I think that's a great comparison to make, because
Speaker 2: Norman Rockwell is a guy who gets compared to Kincaid
Speaker 2: a lot, and there are some similarities in there's a
Speaker 2: lot of kind of fifties small town vibe aesthetics to
Speaker 2: both guys. But Rockwell was always very willing to make
Speaker 2: art that made a political point and that had emotion
Speaker 2: behind it, and that was trying to say something, And
Speaker 2: the only thing Kincaid stuff has ever said is like,
Speaker 2: isn't it nice to be at home in your small town?
Speaker 2: Aren't cabins great? You know, here's a sunset.
Speaker 3: People tend to dismiss Rockwell's like, oh, like for cute
Speaker 3: kitchen stuff and he did da but like he did
Speaker 3: do angrier paintings and talked about like yeah, well, I
Speaker 3: mean he did paintings for the Saturday ning posts, so
Speaker 3: the love of them had to be about modern current events.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's kind of a good
Speaker 2: way to sort of divide the two men for folks
Speaker 2: who maybe aren't as familiar with their uvras. Is Kincaid
Speaker 2: is kind of violently against the idea that his art
Speaker 2: should mean anything but comfort, and Rockwell was somebody who
Speaker 2: felt that art could make a point and could make
Speaker 2: people think and feel critically about things. Yeah, So Thomas Kinkaid,
Speaker 2: the kind of what we're building to here is with
Speaker 2: this this he's kind of discreet. He has his brush
Speaker 2: with Hollywood, but it doesn't really take He gets disgruntled,
Speaker 2: critics don't like his work. It's not selling, And you know,
Speaker 2: it's kind of interesting to me that from all of this,
Speaker 2: he comes to a series of understandings and it kind
Speaker 2: of he kind of becomes the first man to understand
Speaker 2: and provide the underpinnings of what is now the most
Speaker 2: viral kind of art in our culture, the stuff that
Speaker 2: we now call Facebook AI boomer art. If you go
Speaker 2: on Facebook today, you'll get pages and pages of obvious
Speaker 2: AI art filled with comments from an even mix of
Speaker 2: old people in bots saying how happy it made them.
Speaker 2: Thomas Kinkaid is the first guy to realize that this
Speaker 2: is going to be a thing and figure out how
Speaker 2: to monetize on it before the internet's really a thing,
Speaker 2: before AI certainly is a thing, Like you get. I'm
Speaker 2: showing you a couple examples like this obviously fake baby
Speaker 2: and little dog. This made me smile so sweet. You
Speaker 2: know this soldier, no one is thanking me, is thinking,
Speaker 2: no one thank is for service. Uh yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: crying soldier saluted with his back turns to an American family.
Speaker 2: There's a baby crying. It's like a little deranged baby.
Speaker 3: Is like, there's not a steering wheel.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's very it's a deranged piece of art.
Speaker 2: And you know, kincaid stuff was always a lot simpler
Speaker 2: than this. But it's the you know, you get this
Speaker 2: sort of like here's a sad soldier saluting it a flag,
Speaker 2: you know, walking home. It's always vaguely patriotic, but without
Speaker 2: like yeah I scrolled, Yeah yeah, I'm building to like
Speaker 2: kincaid stuff and all of this weird Ai boomera. It's
Speaker 2: all stuff that's vaguely patriotic. It's usually paired with texts Jesus. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's got cat ears in the last but phoo, but
Speaker 2: you almost you see. The kind of shine to them
Speaker 2: reminds me a lot of Kincaid's stuff too, like, and
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's just that there's so much of
Speaker 2: his DNA and all of these models.
Speaker 1: I like the one with the baby, Yeah baby, they're
Speaker 1: all the ones with the baby. Yes, but the one
Speaker 1: with the baby with Jesus and the baby have one
Speaker 1: hand and they're taking a selfie because babies can hold
Speaker 1: things like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jesus has a Lenovo's smartphone from twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Yes, I desperately want to photoshop and nail into that
Speaker 3: Jesus wrist.
Speaker 2: I don't know why, where's the sting on fucking AI.
Speaker 1: The kiss is unsettling.
Speaker 2: It's all unsettling. Yeah, it all shares for the same
Speaker 2: reason that Thomas's stuff was popular, which is that you
Speaker 2: get these kind of when there is a message, it's
Speaker 2: usually a very vague level of like conservative grievance, you know,
Speaker 2: over the state of the world. But mostly it's either
Speaker 2: stuff that makes you feel good or stuff that makes
Speaker 2: you feel nostalgic and doesn't really have anything else going
Speaker 2: for it. And he recognized that like this is something
Speaker 2: just as like this stuff has absolutely dominated people's Facebook walls,
Speaker 2: boomer Facebook walls, his art dominated the literal walls in
Speaker 2: their house, right, Like there's a connection between these two things,
Speaker 2: between the kind of AI slop that goes viral, and
Speaker 2: between Thomas Kinkaid and the way he used light and
Speaker 2: color and the kinds of things he picks his subjects
Speaker 2: for his art. This sort of like cozy scenes of
Speaker 2: American and family life with incoherent patriotism and off putting
Speaker 2: hyper commercialized Christianity. Right, all of that stuff together is
Speaker 2: Thomas Kinkaid, and he is he sees how much potential
Speaker 2: there is in this, right that the real way to
Speaker 2: make a lot of money isn't in making art that
Speaker 2: you're trying to impress critics with or sell to some
Speaker 2: rich guy. It's making stuff like this that you can
Speaker 2: tug at whatever it is in the brain of these
Speaker 2: conservative boomers and make fucking all of the money on Earth.
Speaker 2: And I can't stop myself because as soon as I
Speaker 2: started really digging into more Kincaid's work, I started thinking
Speaker 2: about all of this AI shit that every time I
Speaker 2: hop onto Facebook to get in you know, get in
Speaker 2: touch with a family member or something that i'ven't seen
Speaker 2: in ten years, I see a bunch of this shit.
Speaker 2: I see endless seas of this shit, and so I
Speaker 2: am kind of I'm going to kind of repeatedly make
Speaker 2: reference to it, and I think it's worth looking into
Speaker 2: when we kind of compare to Thomas saying I think
Speaker 2: that my art should be about making people feel good.
Speaker 2: That that's all that you know, it really matters, right,
Speaker 2: I don't want any more complex than that. That's exactly
Speaker 2: what's going on with the actual human beings who are
Speaker 2: generating this AI art right. Four oh four Media has
Speaker 2: done some really good reporting on the origins of these
Speaker 2: baffling viral images, and a huge number of them seem
Speaker 2: to originate from India. They're spread via copy pasted prompts
Speaker 2: and telegram groups and are often a little incoherent because
Speaker 2: authors will run the prompts through text to speech in Hindi.
Speaker 2: That's why a lot of like the language doesn't quite work.
Speaker 2: And there are even influencers who will like teach people
Speaker 2: how to put together viral prompts for money, and their
Speaker 2: explanations of what images work and why are very kincadie. Right,
Speaker 2: here's one quote from one of these guys. Photos of
Speaker 2: poor people are good. Anything that touches the heart, Cute babies, children,
Speaker 2: This is getting us a lot of good engagement people
Speaker 2: in the US and in foreign countries. They love their
Speaker 2: pets and other animals. There are many pet lovers who
Speaker 2: live there. Right, It's just all of this stuff that
Speaker 2: gives you these kind of vague good vibes feelings. Right.
Speaker 2: Thomas Kinkaid is the proof of concept for how much
Speaker 2: money there is in this sort of thing. That's why
Speaker 2: all of the that's why there's this cottage industry and
Speaker 2: generating shit like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cottage industry. Out's a good for His paintings is amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean also, I think part of it is, like
Speaker 3: it doesn't just makes you feel good, it ma should
Speaker 3: feel safe. He touched a hole. How many was have
Speaker 3: like older relatives a post like pictures of remember back
Speaker 3: when you knew things were okay and you can leave
Speaker 3: your door unlocked yeh, Like hey, no I don't, and
Speaker 3: like yes, experience about that, Like no, we always locked
Speaker 3: our doors. Yeah, like my dad lived out in the
Speaker 3: middle of nowhere, Arkansas, Like we still locked our doors,
Speaker 3: didn't trust people.
Speaker 2: Well, fucking blood came out when you know, Like, yeah.
Speaker 3: It's definitely it. Hearkened to that whole, like the rose
Speaker 3: tinted glass view that I'm beginning to seeing algen xers
Speaker 3: start also throwing out there, like oh, back when we
Speaker 3: drink out of the water hose and our parents lists
Speaker 3: played the sunset, Like yeah, that wasn't great.
Speaker 2: Yeah you were just a child, but it wasn't like
Speaker 2: a better time, but that that feeling that we didn't
Speaker 2: used to have to lock our doors, Like Kincaid in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety bottles that feeling right and finds a way
Speaker 2: to sell it back to people at scale, right, and
Speaker 2: that is kind that is the source of his wealth.
Speaker 2: Speaking of selling things. Robert, Yeah, speaking of the source
Speaker 2: of our wealth. Here's some advertisers. Ah, and we're back
Speaker 2: so highwave patrol. Obviously, Thomas Kinkaid did not foresee AI art.
Speaker 2: He was not trying to lead us there, but his
Speaker 2: instincts kind of made it very clear how much money
Speaker 2: there is in pushing out this slop. So he is
Speaker 2: I think he counts as a granddaddy to this. And
Speaker 2: I want to read a quote from The Daily Beast
Speaker 2: kind of talking about how he thought of his art.
Speaker 2: Kincaid thought the art world had become detached from the public,
Speaker 2: and he saw himself as the person to return it
Speaker 2: to an artist's servant model, where painters affirmed rather than challenged,
Speaker 2: social values. His hero was Andy Warhol, who he felt
Speaker 2: had rescued art from insolarrity and and infused it with
Speaker 2: iconography that meant something to ordinary people. What Warhol did
Speaker 2: with soup cans and Marilyn Monroe, Kincaid thought he could
Speaker 2: do with Eden inspired garden scenes and Cotswold cottages. And
Speaker 2: that's wild to me that he's like listing Warhol as
Speaker 2: an influence, because I think Andy Warhol would be deeply,
Speaker 2: deeply disturbed by that fact, which I'm.
Speaker 3: Fine, Yeah, Liten, like I see Liechtenstein appreciating it because
Speaker 3: he was all about the industrial system for art. But yeah, Warhol,
Speaker 3: I don't know, like the guy who did the a
Speaker 3: movie that got him shot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah he did? Oh Andy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, good job Andy.
Speaker 2: Great guy. So by nineteen eighty nine, Thomas Kincaid is married,
Speaker 2: he's starting a family, and he can't get by on
Speaker 2: piece work and the very occasional sale of a painting.
Speaker 2: So he reaches out. He has this idea, I want
Speaker 2: to sell prints of my my, you know, cloying paintings
Speaker 2: to a mass middle American audience. And he reaches out
Speaker 2: to this guy kN Rash, a California entrepreneur, and he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: I'm already selling five grand in prints every month, and
Speaker 2: I think with some capital behind me, I could start
Speaker 2: a real business. Now this is fraud. He's committing fraud
Speaker 2: here because his actual sales are closer to zero dollars.
Speaker 2: But Rash, I'm not sure if just gets lucky or
Speaker 2: if he's got some sort of entrepreneur brain and he
Speaker 2: sees the potential. But he gives Thomas thirty five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars its startup capital.
Speaker 3: Jesus.
Speaker 2: Now, this is a story that should end in a
Speaker 2: series of lawsuits and Thomas fleeing the country. But to
Speaker 2: everyone's surprise, but theirs, this works. This is a great investment.
Speaker 2: The fact that Thomas hes does launch a con to
Speaker 2: start it does not harm the business in any way.
Speaker 2: It shoots off like a rocket. Some of this oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I started a con and it worked is the origin
Speaker 2: of almost every fortune. Oh of course, no, yes, absolutely, yes,
Speaker 2: he's he's a he's a hardcore conservative. Yes. Now, some
Speaker 2: of this business had to do with Kincaid's personal allure, right,
Speaker 2: that's part of why this works. He is a charismatic guy.
Speaker 2: He's good at.
Speaker 3: Such Again, I remember that picture of him with a
Speaker 3: fucking mullet, I mean, not a lore.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would pull.
Speaker 3: My child away from this man on the street. I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're not. It's that there's this weird revival
Speaker 2: thing too, where like if you're doing Yeah.
Speaker 3: I grew up in southern Baptist I remember going to
Speaker 3: a bunch of revivals at at football stadiums Okay.
Speaker 2: A lot of money.
Speaker 3: It's always that that slick suit and the slipped back
Speaker 3: hair and folks well, folksy story to make all the
Speaker 3: older people feel a bit better and like let's talk
Speaker 3: about how we've lost our way.
Speaker 2: Or you can be I think what he does is
Speaker 2: he's the guy who looks a little bit on the edge,
Speaker 2: like he might have at one point been you know,
Speaker 2: more of a kind of like a little dangerous, right,
Speaker 2: but like now he's the spirit of the Lord, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like I was. I was in the It's the Alex
Speaker 2: Jones things, like I've been in the depths of Hollywood.
Speaker 2: I know the real evils, you know, because he was
Speaker 2: in a couple of leak letter movies. I think that's
Speaker 2: probably part.
Speaker 3: All the times, like revivals. It was like Elvis's step
Speaker 3: brother or half brother who showed up as a speaker. Yeah,
Speaker 3: talking about like I know the evils of this, Like, dude,
Speaker 3: who the fuck are you?
Speaker 2: You just know that that's the only only money for
Speaker 2: Elvis's step brother in today. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: So he and Rash name their company Lighthouse Publishing. Uh
Speaker 2: and they list their they state their goal like the
Speaker 2: company mission is to engulf as many hearts as possible
Speaker 2: with art, which, in a very concaid fashion, is vaguely
Speaker 2: similar or sinister. There's a problem, though, Thomas has realized
Speaker 2: correctly that a lot of middle Americans want the kind
Speaker 2: of things that signal wealth, like having original artwork hanging
Speaker 2: in your home. But you can't really make actual paintings
Speaker 2: that people want to buy at a rate fast enough
Speaker 2: to make serious money, selling them to people who are
Speaker 2: not insanely rich, and using that art as attack shelter. Right,
Speaker 2: if you're selling your originals, you can only sell so
Speaker 2: much art, and if you're selling your originals to people
Speaker 2: who aren't rich, you're just not going to get rich.
Speaker 2: But the value of art is in its exclusivity, and
Speaker 2: Thomas realized that when you're dealing with people who aren't
Speaker 2: in the out, who aren't in the art world, it's
Speaker 2: easy to fake exclusivity because people are dumb. So he
Speaker 2: starts utilizing a printing process that mimics the look of
Speaker 2: a real painting. As sewer Lean describes, a digital image
Speaker 2: could also be soaked in water, peeled off the paper,
Speaker 2: and a fixed to a stretched canvas so that it
Speaker 2: showed the texture of the canvas in a way in
Speaker 2: the way a real painting would. Right, So that's step
Speaker 2: one but a print that looks like it has the
Speaker 2: texture of a painting is still just a print. So
Speaker 2: if you're going to sell thousands of them, people aren't
Speaker 2: going to pay a lot for them. So Thomas has
Speaker 2: another idea. He has to make them unique, but in
Speaker 2: a way that he can mass produce. So he hires
Speaker 2: and trains up an entire factory full of what he
Speaker 2: calls master highlighters to come in and add small bits
Speaker 2: of paint, like they'll paint over a single tree on
Speaker 2: the print, or a little patch of snow or a
Speaker 2: rock or something, and now you technically have an original
Speaker 2: piece of art. Now you've got something you can market
Speaker 2: not just as decor for the home, but as an
Speaker 2: investment vehicle to rooms. Right, And that's the key to
Speaker 2: the Thomas Kincaid story. It's not just that his art
Speaker 2: comforts people. It's that he convinces them that they will
Speaker 2: make money if they buy it. Just like all of
Speaker 2: the rich con artists they admire.
Speaker 3: A great This is an investment. It's an investment, but
Speaker 3: like it's not one of those scary paintings that you
Speaker 3: hear about it at least like, yeah, it's a paint
Speaker 3: that you love that makes you feel safe, and you
Speaker 3: can pass it on to your children. It'll be worth
Speaker 3: so much money.
Speaker 2: It's going to keep appreciating value because look, somebody painted
Speaker 2: that tree in the corner. So this is an original,
Speaker 2: unique piece of work. There's not another one like it
Speaker 2: any are in the world. This is a safe place
Speaker 2: to park your children's inheritance. And you know he's not
Speaker 2: just he's selling these through They launch a series of galleries, right,
Speaker 2: which are art retail establishments. Right They only initially they
Speaker 2: only sell Thomas's work, and they they are they are
Speaker 2: operated individually, kind of like a McDonald's franchise, so like
Speaker 2: independent people franchise kincaid galleries. So he gets them taking
Speaker 2: on the financial risk he gets he's convincing other people
Speaker 2: to take on the financial risk of building a brick
Speaker 2: and mortar or of operating a brick and mortar to
Speaker 2: sell his work. But he gets a cut of every
Speaker 2: sale that they make. And he'll like he'll send his
Speaker 2: Master highlighters out to individual stores to do live events.
Speaker 2: He'll go do speaking engagements and sign prints there. All
Speaker 2: of this creates a pretty viable business. And I really
Speaker 2: need to lean into how much of a scam it is,
Speaker 2: so I want to quote again from that New Yorker article, which.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of Liechtenstein, who has few whom create
Speaker 3: art for him, but he got to put his name
Speaker 3: on it.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, And there's other guys who have done parts
Speaker 2: of it. I think the degree to which Kincaid turns
Speaker 2: this into like an actual factory, mechanized business based entirely
Speaker 2: around him, especially at the time he does it, is
Speaker 2: fairly unique. Again, he is playing with things. He's not
Speaker 2: the only guy doing style. He's not the only guy
Speaker 2: who ever does this highlighting thing, but he is the
Speaker 2: first to do it at scale and make tens of
Speaker 2: millions of dollars off of it. Right, this becomes more
Speaker 2: standard as a result of him, and to highlight kind
Speaker 2: of the degree to which these people are being scammed
Speaker 2: into thinking they're buying an investment. I want to in
Speaker 2: that New Yorker article, it quotes the manager of one
Speaker 2: of Thomas's galleries talking a customer through a purchase. You're
Speaker 2: building a great portfolio. They're nice investments, and this one's
Speaker 2: almost sold out, and they do have a history of appreciation.
Speaker 2: We have some secondary market pieces here, this one Julianne's
Speaker 2: Cottage was released for a few hundred dollars in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two, and now it's thirty seven hundred and thirty dollars.
Speaker 2: So that's a big part of the promise, this will
Speaker 2: appreciate you're really making money, you know. And I think
Speaker 2: that that is a key aspect of it. It's not
Speaker 2: just that these people like comforting art. It's that they're
Speaker 2: being convinced that their greed is being played with two
Speaker 2: right babies. Yes, it's exactly Beanie but and it happens.
Speaker 2: The fact that this all happens in the nineties, this
Speaker 2: is happening. Kin Kate is really hitting his stride at
Speaker 2: the same point that Beanie babies become a thing. Pokemon too.
Speaker 3: The question like, you know, that's when market exactly because
Speaker 3: everything's baseball cards are really big earties.
Speaker 2: And he is he is influenced by that. He is
Speaker 2: paying attention to how collectibles are going, and he is
Speaker 2: applying that to his own art. Highlighted paintings are being
Speaker 2: sold as studio proofs. Kin Kate himself would even do
Speaker 2: a small number of highlighted copies where he's painting over
Speaker 2: prints of his own paintings. The normal highlights could start
Speaker 2: as low as fifteen hundred dollars, while as can Kit
Speaker 2: Kincaid's highlights. And again he's just like painting a tree
Speaker 2: or something on a painting he already made would go
Speaker 2: for thirty or forty thousand dollars. But he kept a
Speaker 2: hold of most of his originals, which helped add to
Speaker 2: the perception of value for his prints, right. And he
Speaker 2: would cut off artificially. He would stop selling individual prints
Speaker 2: at varying times. He would make sure there were limited runs,
Speaker 2: which again it's the city he's learning from beanie babies,
Speaker 2: from you know, collectible cards. That's what adds to the
Speaker 2: value in this secondary market that gets people buying in
Speaker 2: because they think, well, I can get rich off of
Speaker 2: this painting. You know, maybe people will want it a
Speaker 2: lot in thirty years for some reason, and then it'll
Speaker 2: really prove to have been a good investment.
Speaker 3: It's all speculation and there's no proof that it will
Speaker 3: have any value.
Speaker 2: No, no, and in fact it doesn't. These are terrible investments.
Speaker 2: And this is by the way, he when I call
Speaker 2: him a con artist, he is going to be found
Speaker 2: in court to have or his company to have people. Yes, yes,
Speaker 2: Thomas himself has dropped from the case. The company he
Speaker 2: starts UH is found to have misrepresented the business opportunity
Speaker 2: that k Kate sell Ka Prince represented Trump's cabinets. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know he would have been like the Minister of
Speaker 2: the Interior or some ship. Speaking of cabinet positions, Randy,
Speaker 2: when I'm elected president, Now, let's see what am I
Speaker 2: What am I going to make you? What am I
Speaker 2: going to make you? Sectaf You're in charge of the army, Randy, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you got to figure out a war and start it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's America. We can figure out. God.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we need we need like a like a like
Speaker 2: smaller than Afghanistan, but bigger than Grenada. You know, really
Speaker 2: find us one of those sweet spots, and let's just
Speaker 2: let's start sending in Marines.
Speaker 3: You know, Greenland's head fucking good.
Speaker 2: I think we can. I think we could take Greenland. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think we could take Greenland. You know a lot
Speaker 2: of minerals. Yeah, they probably have some president dictator. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do it, all right, everybody, Evans, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Let's say twenty thirty two, Uh, it's time for Greenland
Speaker 2: to pay Wow, Randy. Do you have any any place
Speaker 2: on the Internet that you exist?
Speaker 3: Yes, unfortunately quite a few places. My main comics Something
Speaker 3: Positive is that Something Positive dot Net. I also have
Speaker 3: mouse Trapped, mouse Trapped comic dot blog, also comics Kingdom
Speaker 3: dot com, slash Popeye. Every Sunday is a new Popeye strip.
Speaker 3: Come see why so many of your seventy and sixty
Speaker 3: year old uncles and aunts fucking hate me because I
Speaker 3: ruined Popeye by including people of color.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, well check out Randy. Check out us on
Speaker 2: youtubeube or not. If you want to continue listening to it,
Speaker 2: you can just listen to it. I promise most of
Speaker 2: the episodes we do will not be about painters, but
Speaker 2: when we do episodes about artists, it helps to have
Speaker 2: a video.
Speaker 3: So any episode about Hitler is about a painter.
Speaker 2: It is it is. You know what we are. We're
Speaker 2: going to launch our pure art criticism episode of Hitler.
Speaker 3: Hitler and John Wayne Gacy's and how would they match up?
Speaker 2: I think they would have been friends, actually they'd gotten
Speaker 2: the opportunity. I think Hitler would have really liked him
Speaker 2: if you'd gotten to know him. One of history's great tragedies,
Speaker 2: the friendships that never were. There's a good there's a
Speaker 2: good study history there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Hitler and John Wayne. Yeah. I want Hitler and
Speaker 2: John Wayne Gacy as like detectives in New Orleans solving crimes.
Speaker 2: The short story that will finally get me canceled The
Speaker 2: Hitler Gaysey Files.
Speaker 1: On the podcast Some Word for You Okay Bye. Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For
Speaker 1: more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts.