Art and tech

(This is a weekend non-political post. Yeah, I know that I've been writing a lot of non-political stuff lately.)

I used to paint pitchas for a living, and for some years, I've been helping a student get her degree as an art historian. In my household, as you might imagine, "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade is a punchline. Nevertheless, I cannot understand Lambert's comment here. He uses the term "the culture of airbrushing" to define Kinkade's schtick, even though Kinkade never uses an airbrush.

The link goes to this Vanity Fair piece, which discusses a movie based on Kinkade's work. I haven't seen the film and probably never will. Kinkade's visual guidelines, reprinted in the article, are not foolish, even though he does not understand the term "depth of field." Anyone who uses Barry Lyndon as a cinematographic reference point is no idiot.

This paragraph ticked me off:

“Putting Thomas Kinkade in an art-historical context is like trying to put Jack Chick in the context of the illustrated comic strip,” says Peter Frank, associate editor of The Magazine Los Angeles and senior curator at the Riverside Art Museum. “In the age of Photoshop, anybody can do this kind of crap.”

Bullshit. And that's the judgment of someone who knows Photoshop about a thousand times better than Frank ever will. I may not like Kinkade's work, but I must admit that he accomplishes his imagery the old-fashioned way: Dabbing oil paint on canvas one brush stroke at a time. Even if you own a fancy Cintiq, Photoshop offers no quick way to mimic that look. If I were paid to "do a Kinkade" on a computer, I would probably use Corel's Painter. Even then, the results wouldn't look like hand-applied paint. If "anybody" can do it -- well, let's see Frank try.

As for Jack Chick, publishing magnate and religious kook: I see no reason why Chick cannot be viewed in the context of his medium -- which is the comic book, not the comic strip. The Comics Journal has done pieces on Chick. On a number of his projects, Chick employed ghost artists -- either Alfredo Alcala or Jess Jodloman -- who were excellent draftsmen. (Chick gave his ghosts the pseudonym "Fred Carter" to hide the fact that they were Filipinos -- i.e., Catholics. Chick's own drawings are, of course, as emetic as is his weltanschauung.)

One of my pet peeves is the art "expert" who cannot address any issue beyond subject matter, and who betrays no knowledge of craft or technique. I once passed a gallery selling paintings by Leroy Neiman. The listed medium was oil, even though he used acrylics. I told the manager that he shouldn't be running a gallery if he couldn't tell the difference between oils and acrylics. He responded by confessing that he never really cared for "airbrushing" anyways -- an astounding confession. Like it or hate it, Neiman's work bears no trace of the airbrush. I used to make a living (and not a bad one) with a Paasche in my hand, and I still get infuriated by dolts who use "airbrushing" as a catch-all term for "art I don't like."

I'm not asking anyone to like Kinkade or Neiman or any other kitsch-peddler. I cannot defend their work, although my stiffed landlords would have been happier men if I had found similarly remunerative gimmicks. My point is this: You should learn how things get done, even if you are discussing the dreary toil of a meat-and-potatoes illustrator (like me). If you take no interest in the how of art, if you restrict all of your commentary to subject matter, if you have ever in your life attached the adjective "mere" to the noun "craftsmanship," you are an English major. Stop pretending that you know something about painting pitchas.

(Oh, and don't get me started on art history. That's another racket. Most art historians are English majors who wandered into the wrong classroom. Universities should make them take studio classes -- and Congress should enact a law forbidding people who have never held a brush from writing about those who have.)