MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

When considering artists creating in the last 30 years, Thomas Kinkade and Damien Hirst stand at nearly opposite ends of the spectrum. The former is known for mass produced, saccharine kitsch – sunsets over an idyllic America that never existed – while the latter produces over-the-top statements on death and wealth – or whatever you would make of a $12 million shark suspended in a tank of formaldehyde. They work for drastically different audiences; whether they love or hate him, Hirst remains the subject of high-art criticism and controversy, while Kinkade elicits snickers from the art world, yet it is claimed that his work appears in one out of twenty houses in America.

Despite drastic differences, these artists bear a strange similarity to one another: both seem to be great businessmen. Neither has much of a literal hand in their work, with each playing the ideas man and delegating the actual creation of pieces to others. Both have become millionaires from marketing themselves – from branding an idea, a worldview. Hirst seems to present a form of clinical observation, a sterile, perhaps cynical take on our ephemerality and feebleness. Kinkade, conversely, gives us a naïve fantasy world of warm lighted cabins and snow-capped firs – a recollection of a bygone age that never really existed. Both artists are selling something people want, and selling so well that, though the gap between them appear vast, it is perhaps a distinction without a difference.