This is the first BTB video I'm watching and for years my mental image of Robert recording podcasts was from some sort of bunker deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest lit only by a single lightbulb hanging ominously from the ceiling. This will be an adjustment.
TBH that wall looks distinctly like poured concrete, as may be used in a subterranean context (be it bunker or basement) and the shadow from the mic on the wall is well defined, lit from above, and projected only once as though lit by a single source...
Yes. As someone who grew up in an evangelical cult, I can confirm that you have nailed it. Evangelicals are deeply scared of everything, but they want the same things as everyone else, they just want a safe/sanctified version.
Him signing prints with his DNA sounded like an elaborate lie, until learning he literally did territorial pissing. Now I wonder what other things he did to the prints.
The best part about the show being on UA-cam isn’t the helpful visuals, it’s being able to finally experience Sophie’s expressions as she tries to rein in Robert’s grifts.
There's something so funny about the idea that he was running an NFT art scam but without any of the exploitable benefits of a digital medium. It's like hearing someone's got a serial hit and run record and then you find out he's been doing it with a Flintstones car. it's almost impressive if only because no sane person would do it that way. Like being a safe cracker who's just really fast at trying every combination.
I actually had a rare beanie baby- it was my first one, Spot the dog (without a spot). When I went to sell it, I thought about how I had received it: a gift from my mom when I was having a really rough time. I decided not to sell little Spot No-Spot after all, and I never regretted that decision.
Seeing Anderson is the number one reason to watch these on UA-cam. Every other reason is that the podcast rules, but Anderson is the number one reason.
@@FirstIsa All the better to scare off his daughter's future suitors lmao. It takes time to get a good Crazed Mountain Man look going, gotta start on it early 😂
Caspar David Friedrich is also the guy who made Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog . Whatever anyone wants to say about him, the guy had range. His art was meant to address a variety of subjects in a way that invited the reflection of the viewer. What is so deeply frustrating about Kinkade is that his work is, as Robert indicates, such a complete inversion of that. Positivity in art is fine, healthy even, but it's really the thoughtlessness of Kinkade that feels inexcusable. Putting aside what a deeply unethical person he was, his art fails because it does not encourage any kind of reflection, it just gives the viewer permission to enter into a comfortable stagnation.
Something I've noticed about a lot of the modern right wing's relation to art is it's always very stagnant, very dead. Endless reproductions of Christian imagery with no message, commentary. or purpose. Lamenting that western art didn't continue to produce marble statues of muscly dudes until the end of time. I think that feeds into why they love AI art, it doesn't have the pesky problem of the artist's thoughts, feelings, or experience entering the equation.
Exactly, I've seen these posts: "What happened to this kind of achitecture?" "-Hmm, it fell apart? Perhaps it was bombed?". Anyway, there's this one Spanish youtuber / archeologist PutoMikel made a video few months ago talking about this right-wing "return" movement in Europe. I guess there's subtitle in English. ¿Estamos degenerando? El MITO de la Nostalgia | Pensar en el imperio romano (feat. Mythical Iberia)
They shit on the liberal arts constantly, claiming that the only "real" jobs are engineer, banker, and CEO. So, when they want art of their own, untainted by wokeness, conservatives just copy existing forms. Christian Rock was the first demonstration that a "moral alternative" could make money. God's Not Dead spawned a cinematic universe, the Daily Wire is putting out more crap...
As someone who grew up in an incredibly Conservative household, a big part of the right’s stagnant and “dead” connection to art is their lack of deeper thinking and lack of exposure (by choice or otherwise) to other ideas. They take everything at face value. You’ve got cops who love The Punisher with no hint of irony that The Punisher is the result of the police system being broken… they just like The Punisher because he kills criminals with seeming impunity. Or how they loved The Boys until the very last mask of “subtlety” was ripped off this season and they realized The Boys was making fun of _them_ the entire time. They’re not capable of deeper thought or introspection until it’s literally spelled out for them, as if they’re toddlers. They like art that they can look at, not think about, and agree with the surface level message. “I like this painting of Jesus because Jesus is good, and the colors are nice.” Bam, that’s it. No more complexity to the art required - or even wanted.
Our Lord & Savior, nuker of the Great Lakes, siren of atonal shrieks, and harbinger of bastards, Reverend Doctor, Sir Robert Evans has graced us with another delicious morsel of podcastery. Love the video format ❤
XD -It's funny that they have Randy on for this episode when he looks like you imagine some of the subjects of this show should look xD- .... Ok dammit, that might be too mean, I feel bad now.
So when do we get the Behind the Bastards merch with the "Calven peeing on thing" meme but with Thomas Kinkade? Now those are stickers and merch I could get behind. XD
These episodes unlocked a memory I have of a mall I used to live near and visit, and walking past a gallery space selling what I think was this guy's work. It was on my usual route out of the mall so I'd walk past it a lot. I think I only ever went in once, briefly looked at the art, and left again.
Yesssssss... this was my experience also. Also, pretty sure my grandmother had decorative plates with his stuff on them. This episode was all about explicated lost memories. Wild.
My mom, for some reason, likes his art. We have a few prints that hung on the wall at some point in time. I doubt she's even looked at 'em in years. I'ma tell her about the whole 'signed with DNA' thingie. Maybe she'll finally dump 'em at the thrift store drop-off.
James Gurney is an amazing illustrator/artist. I bought the Dinotopia books just for the artwork. Kincaide throwing shade at Picasso is hilarious. Picasso was also prolific, commercial & problematic regarding women.
James Gurney is on UA-cam and I watched, fascinated, as he painted a picture of ... US Postal Service trucks in a light rain. The resulting painting was beautiful and I like to think it was made into a postage stamp.
Convincing evangelicals that their prints are safe but mixing his blood into them seems to me like sealing a magical contract or fulfilling a magical obligation.
America, or let's be honest, the U.S. is a country that exists now because of cults. I'm convinced that the pilgrims were just part of a weird cult, and everything after is just an echo of the former. Is it any wonder that we now have the tendency to be swayed by some unique marketing, particularly the religiously affiliated, i.e. signing something in blood? Edited for wrong word usage.
@@sirgreendown6627 Ironically, they're absolutely fine with the non-satanic blood oath more commonly referred to as 'the sacrament'. Seriously, so much Christian/Catholic stuff is heavily steeped in blood this, blood that, bathing in blood, washed in blood, blessings of Jesus' blood- it gets real creepy from an outside perspective, yo. But having a bottle of lotion called 'Vampire Blood' makes me a degenerate devil-worshipper who's going to burn in hell for all eternity? lmao, okay...
You keep bringing up gold, i wish you'd do an episode on that. I'm having a difficult time explaining to my idiot father why it's a grift, and when i try to research it the results are mostly why it's so great 🤦
There's a similar issue for autistic women who want to find other autistic women who've been through pregnancy. ASD comes with sensory processing issues, so knowing what can happen and what kinds of coping mechanisms are available is pretty useful info. Sadly, any results regarding 'pregnancy' and 'autism' are chock full of ableist crunchy-mama BS that tells you stuff like 'foods to avoid so your kid isn't born autistic'. At least the bad results regarding gold investments are rather benign. Searching for support and finding articles about how people like you are a burden? It's beyond demoralizing.
Two things: 1. I had a gym teacher whose dad was the guy who created BC, and I seem to remember him being some kind of weird fundie so that might be an idea for the future. 2. If you want to hear more lurid details of Kinkade's declining years, there's a pretty good Dollop episode on the subject, right here on UA-cam but without video.
Oh yeah, B.C. just got, like, very overtly Christian over the years as Johnny Hart got older. Brought in some really weird implications when the newspaper comic about prehistoric cavemen keeps showing them talking about Jesus and making 9/11 memorials.
B.C. would sometimes tell a "joke" where the main caveman wrote something on a stone tablet, tossed it into the ocean and waited. The punchline would come back on another tablet. I recall one of those where he just asked about the son of god and the reply was something like "of course, people worship the son of god over here, and everywhere".
To me, this type of art is like junk food or comfort food. Not nutritious and only good for a bit of a spike and a cozy feeling. Also, if an ad says something is “collectible,” it’s not.
no that's how weymouth was founded. Fenway is a wonderful ballpark and a cherished monument to sports and americana. Weymouth Massachusetts is a pile of boston's excreta
I can picture the buddy-movie based on Hitler and Gacy and they argue about the restaurant for lunch. JWG - Let’s get lunch. AH - Okay but it has to be vegetarian. JWG - They can serve vegetarians!?! How are they cooked?
The description of the brick and mortar retail outlets for Kincaid's output reminds me of the Successory stores. I remember seeing those in malls in the 90's and wondered how they could afford the retail outlets. Thinking about it now, it was probably a money laundering operation.
Yessss, so good. Thanks for the mainline dose of Successories nostalgia ♥️ Makes me wonder what, if any, business has taken the space that housed Natural Wonders in the mall of my youth.
Jackson Pollock was a drunk and pissed in Peggy Guggenheims fireplace. He likely pissed everywhere too. As they say Imitation is the sincerest flattery.
This feels like watching a recording of Santa's workshop. Its a bit disconcerting. Also the editing and graphics are great folks. Thanks for feeding this co tent beast
First BTB videos I’ve watched and new follower: I can confirm from Archbishop Mitty Catholic High School, the high school his daughters attended and he funded for the theater, that there were huge issues in the family around the late 2000s. I honestly prefer one of his daughter’s more realistic style works in Santa Cruz because she comes off as genuinely honest. From my time at Archbishop Mitty, though, the only folks who spoke positively about Thomas Kincaid’s works and his farce were the White Gen X parents. It was a known fact that he did “alpha-sigma-beta-omega” male bullshit to overcompensate for himself before James Crowder took stage, and people were silenced not to talk about it.
My mother bought one of his paintings at one of those galleries in the 90s, and is absolutely convinced it's worth tens of thousands of dollars. Trying to get her to understand that the frame is worth more than the picture inside is next to impossible, so telling her that Kinkade wasn't really who she thought he was would pretty much break her brain.
I love listening to your Behind the Bastards podcast and every time I'm listening I always want to ask you what motivates you to put the time and constant energy into doing all of the research to do each and every episode? Is it just because you love writing and journalism a lot? Also thanks for making this podcast!
This story reminded me of that 2013's Banksy work called "The Banality of Evil" , and that kind of scenario, you know, "little cabin by the river and the snow-capped mountain on the background", that was very common kind of "kitsch" landscape art you'd find in the street markets here in South America back in the 1980s, at least, because my grandparents had one of those in their living room. Is there a famous pre-Kinkade art or is it some kind of collective colonized-mind sort of thing?
There were a lot of Latin painters working the decorative art industry in the 70s and 80s. Most paintings are rendered well enough, but have that uniform Happy Little Tree tone and composition.
I want to thank all parties involved for the absence of James Gurney slander. The fear that I felt in my heart when first you uttered his name on this podcast... I'd had no notion of how much Dinotopia had meant to me til that moment.😂
My parents bought an "original" print in the early 2010's and it hung in their living room until about 5 years ago when they replaced it with a TV for my nephew (who is now 5). I don't know where it went, but it will forever haunt my memories. (Note: I was already an adult when they bought it and only saw it when I visited for our weekly family dinners.)
35:25 This bit here reminds me of Bendy from Bendy and the Ink Machine. Bendy's smile is plastered on his face in the exact same way every single time. The soullessness of Bendy's eyes provide the right amount of facial incongruity to take it from just being unauthentic to straight up psychological horror. That's what Kinkade's paintings do. They provide the fakest of 'happiness' in a manufactured, generic display that not-so-subtly tells you that unhappiness is to be punished. Now, I will say, I actually do like the colors used in most Kinkade paintings. The colors are rich enough to emulate a rich, life-filled environment. The issue isn't with the colors themselves. If I could find paintings in those colors that aren't made by a sadistic, Christo-fascist, self-righteous, anti-reality freak, I'd go for them in a heartbeat. Kinkade couldn't make good art, but it had nothing to do with his choice in colors and everything to do with him being a soulless monster who thought unhappiness could be driven out by brute force. It's like he never heard the phrase 'you can't have rainbows without a little rain'.
Not implying anything worse than could have been said plainly in the episode, but it's interesting to compare Kincade's painting with Albert Bierstadt's "The Merced River in Yosemite"
A very informative episode - coming from the UK, I wasn't familiar with Kinkade so thought I'd subject myself to the British Journal of Aesthetics experiment... After perusing Kinkade's art for just 5 minutes after this podcast, I felt how I imagined Edmund Pevensie felt after gorging on the White Witch's Turkish Delight in Narnia. Fed but empty; nauseated and dizzy on such a feast of artistically empty, sugary calories that come with something just a bit sinister.
Thomas Kinkaid is to art what replicator food is to real food in Star Trek. It looks (tastes) fine, good even, but there's just something... off with it.
Probably more than alcohol. I mean the food , close enough, i guess good against food issues. And there are restaurants still. Its probably more to alcoholic replicator drinks. Rootbeer( which honestly is fine, just the beer in the name instead limo is weird)
Perhaps Sam the curator of the Museum of Everything Else in England powered up your Furby remotely when he turned on the Furby Organ he built for the museum. Check out his UA-cam channels; someday his experiments with synthesizers and rotary speakers and clicky-clacky analog telephone exchanges and other electromechanical gadgets will likely open a rift in the space-time continuum and suck us all into another dimension. (See " This museum is not obsolete", "The museum of everything else", and "Look mum no computer!")
Caspars first painting, i really apreciate how it has a raw honesty and isnt trying to sanatizing religion but show its impressive , but also eary and kinda forceful, hitting you with what i gurss felt of religion. But also not pretending it cant be scary and not just safe but complex, primeval even almost. Which is all in the red light and raw ominous power of it. Ok i dont like violent jesus art worshipped but i respect the ominous rawness there.
I think overall, the biggest grift of Thomas Kincade was convincing people there was any depth to his work. I had seen his work and throught it was just pretty pictures. Nothing deeper. The smartest thing Kincade did was convincing people who wanted his art of be deeper, that it was. But, also attaching his work to notable Intellectual properties. If there is any painting or print with DC, Marvel, Disney, or Star Wars Kincade is probably the artist of the piece.
When you see fantastic artists struggling to make a living, and artists like Kincade make millions, it's rough. And when you realize that there's more people out there with no taste in art than there are people with good taste in art.
It's perplexing, because he keeps insisting that art should have no deeper purpose but to make people feel good, but also wants to be seen as deep. Pick a lane, man.
Signing pictures in blood is something one would think evangelical Christians would view negatively. I guess it's fine when one of their own does it, but guaranteed it would be 'satanic' if anyone else did it.
kinkade sits on the mount rushmore of mediocre “artists” with jeff koons, anish kapoor, and damien hurst. as an art educator, i can find value in nearly any work of art but i honestly think there are no redeeming qualities in his artwork. yes the technical skills are there (most of the time) but like there’s no heart, humanity, or substance in them. it feels like truly a waste to even call what kinkade made “art” because it was so mechanized and mass produced and i feel like that is why it is so indistinguishable from ai generated art. that’s not to say, art that exists to make people happy is bad art, or art made by bad people is bad art, but art made simply for the sake of capitalism is bad art.
I went to visit an elderly aunt who is in hospice, and there were Thomas Kinkade prints on just about every door. I think they must have done some kind of activity where these were available; they went a long way towards making the place seem more depressing. That said, I think the chair upholstered in a Kinkade print actually looks pretty good; decoration seems like a perfect use for his scenes, as they aren't much of a stand-in for wall art itself.
I'm glad my dad actually learned how to paint landscapes from watching Bob Ross when I was a kid. We didn't have any of those weirdo's paintings, just my dad's. I think Robert would like my story, "The Sexual Misadventures of Robo-Cop in the 69th Dimension".
@@douglasburtt4901 Brother, there was a game store I went to in the mid 90s that had archive issues of Dragon Magazine (double digits) for COVER price. And 1st edition books for cover price. I was completely foolish not to have just bought them out. Those were absolutely insane garage sale prices even then.
One argument against his art I keep popping up is that it doesn't "say" anything. That it's not real art because it "doesn't say anything." Well, if that's the metric, that essentially clocks out any modern or postmodern art, which, by it's nature, says nothing.
In every one of Kinkade's paintings they show, the perspective seems to be subtly fucked in this really unnerving, offputting way. The lines just don't go quite where they oughta and it makes me feel queasy just looking at them. He's nowhere near the evilest painter, though. Art history is absolutely full of grade A bastards.
I think the relation between Kinkade’s cross painting and Caspar David Friedrich has an extra dimension. This is because the blue/white “above the clouds” and prominent rock vista in Kinkade’s cross version seems extremely similar to what’s arguably Friedrich’s most famous painting: “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” (which is very often used to illustrate romanticism more generally). Basically, Kinkade seems to have cobbled together the bottom of the “Wanderer of the Sea of Fog” with the top of the “Cross in the Mountains” while leaving out the crucified Jesus.
Getting to see Sophie's long-suffering facial expressions is worth the corkboard background.
Exactly this - Sophie is a human emoji.... :)
Did you notice the images changing in the background?
I kind of want to see the full version of the Anderson Army shop.
Came here to say exactly this.
This is the first BTB video I'm watching and for years my mental image of Robert recording podcasts was from some sort of bunker deep in the woods of the Pacific Northwest lit only by a single lightbulb hanging ominously from the ceiling. This will be an adjustment.
He could be that usually and its just his persona, and he has his machete duel fighting for sports bunker😒
TBH that wall looks distinctly like poured concrete, as may be used in a subterranean context (be it bunker or basement) and the shadow from the mic on the wall is well defined, lit from above, and projected only once as though lit by a single source...
That's actually the reality, his webcam is AI generated to make it not look like that
@@EvilGenius007nailed it imo 👌
I mean we don't know that he _isn't_ filming from a bunker
Yes. As someone who grew up in an evangelical cult, I can confirm that you have nailed it. Evangelicals are deeply scared of everything, but they want the same things as everyone else, they just want a safe/sanctified version.
As a former evangelical, what would you have said if you learned that some magic the gathering cards were signed with the artists blood???
Him signing prints with his DNA sounded like an elaborate lie, until learning he literally did territorial pissing. Now I wonder what other things he did to the prints.
What I'm really curious about is if anybody ever actually had one tested. Ever. Even just to call bullshit and see if it was real
WHEN I WAS KINKADIAN
CULTURES WEREN'T OPINIONS....
Yeah, I wonder if blood was the only DNA he used. . .
It sounds like something the evangelicals that bought his shit would call a 'dark satanic blood ritual'.
opening the comments at the start of the episode is terrifying without fail lmao
The best part about the show being on UA-cam isn’t the helpful visuals, it’s being able to finally experience Sophie’s expressions as she tries to rein in Robert’s grifts.
Picasso’s a huge bastard, I think he’d make a great subject for an episode.
Him and gauguin came to mind for possible artist episodes
@@hannahoffenhauer4171other YTers have covered him, but Bill Murray, too.
Salvador Dali literally wrote a letter to Franco saying "I love what you've done as Fascist ruler of Spain." He deserves an episode, too.
Or you could just watched Nanette.
@@samcyphers2902read Dali's autobiography... I find his childhood horrific, he describes pushing a friend off a bridge just to see how it felt...
There's something so funny about the idea that he was running an NFT art scam but without any of the exploitable benefits of a digital medium. It's like hearing someone's got a serial hit and run record and then you find out he's been doing it with a Flintstones car. it's almost impressive if only because no sane person would do it that way. Like being a safe cracker who's just really fast at trying every combination.
I actually had a rare beanie baby- it was my first one, Spot the dog (without a spot). When I went to sell it, I thought about how I had received it: a gift from my mom when I was having a really rough time. I decided not to sell little Spot No-Spot after all, and I never regretted that decision.
Seeing Anderson is the number one reason to watch these on UA-cam. Every other reason is that the podcast rules, but Anderson is the number one reason.
Hey its Big Joel's dad!!
Biggest Joel
Big Dad
Big Joel's father is dead guys....
Ha
YOU HAVE OPENED MY EYES
Nice of Randy to take the time out of shooting his proof of life hostage video to record this episode.
Even more as he does very elaborate artsy ones , so good work. Must be a lot of work.
Good he found time.
The older Randy gets the more he looks like his drawings of Alan More.
@@FirstIsa All the better to scare off his daughter's future suitors lmao. It takes time to get a good Crazed Mountain Man look going, gotta start on it early 😂
As someone whose camera lense would receive approximately the same grime rating as his... yeah, okay, that's fair play.
Caspar David Friedrich is also the guy who made Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog . Whatever anyone wants to say about him, the guy had range. His art was meant to address a variety of subjects in a way that invited the reflection of the viewer. What is so deeply frustrating about Kinkade is that his work is, as Robert indicates, such a complete inversion of that. Positivity in art is fine, healthy even, but it's really the thoughtlessness of Kinkade that feels inexcusable. Putting aside what a deeply unethical person he was, his art fails because it does not encourage any kind of reflection, it just gives the viewer permission to enter into a comfortable stagnation.
Something I've noticed about a lot of the modern right wing's relation to art is it's always very stagnant, very dead. Endless reproductions of Christian imagery with no message, commentary. or purpose. Lamenting that western art didn't continue to produce marble statues of muscly dudes until the end of time. I think that feeds into why they love AI art, it doesn't have the pesky problem of the artist's thoughts, feelings, or experience entering the equation.
Exactly, I've seen these posts: "What happened to this kind of achitecture?" "-Hmm, it fell apart? Perhaps it was bombed?". Anyway, there's this one Spanish youtuber / archeologist PutoMikel made a video few months ago talking about this right-wing "return" movement in Europe. I guess there's subtitle in English.
¿Estamos degenerando? El MITO de la Nostalgia | Pensar en el imperio romano (feat. Mythical Iberia)
I love marble statues of muscley dudes they're right
@@brassenVaush did one on RW Brutalism, which is weird because H1+l3r hated Brutalism.
They shit on the liberal arts constantly, claiming that the only "real" jobs are engineer, banker, and CEO. So, when they want art of their own, untainted by wokeness, conservatives just copy existing forms. Christian Rock was the first demonstration that a "moral alternative" could make money. God's Not Dead spawned a cinematic universe, the Daily Wire is putting out more crap...
As someone who grew up in an incredibly Conservative household, a big part of the right’s stagnant and “dead” connection to art is their lack of deeper thinking and lack of exposure (by choice or otherwise) to other ideas. They take everything at face value.
You’ve got cops who love The Punisher with no hint of irony that The Punisher is the result of the police system being broken… they just like The Punisher because he kills criminals with seeming impunity.
Or how they loved The Boys until the very last mask of “subtlety” was ripped off this season and they realized The Boys was making fun of _them_ the entire time. They’re not capable of deeper thought or introspection until it’s literally spelled out for them, as if they’re toddlers.
They like art that they can look at, not think about, and agree with the surface level message. “I like this painting of Jesus because Jesus is good, and the colors are nice.” Bam, that’s it. No more complexity to the art required - or even wanted.
Our Lord & Savior, nuker of the Great Lakes, siren of atonal shrieks, and harbinger of bastards, Reverend Doctor, Sir Robert Evans has graced us with another delicious morsel of podcastery. Love the video format ❤
Only on BTB can you get such incisive questions like "What would John Wayne Gacey's fursona be?"
I was practically yelling HYENA at my phone, but nooooo
@@puddintain9164As a hyena furry, no thanks - there's enough stereotypes floating around about hyenas as it is.
I say JWG was a _duck._
I think human is more apt. Don't sully the animal world (or furry world) with his nonsense :-D
Dolphin. Because those fuckers pretend to be nice, when they're actually sex criminals
A Clownfish.
"in the same way that John Wayne G-WE'RE BACK!" fantastic cut 41:23
I remember those Kinkade art gallery stores. They always felt weird and creepy to me as a kid.
And smelled like stale potpourri
Yes to BOTH!!
I can’t believe they got 1990’s Allen Moore for the podcast!
XD
-It's funny that they have Randy on for this episode when he looks like you imagine some of the subjects of this show should look xD-
.... Ok dammit, that might be too mean, I feel bad now.
The resounding silence following Robert's "it's good for SOME stuff..." made me laugh XD
So when do we get the Behind the Bastards merch with the "Calven peeing on thing" meme but with Thomas Kinkade?
Now those are stickers and merch I could get behind. XD
I was so prepared for Robert to say that the only valid form of artistic expression is ska.
This is so true. (pick it up! pick it up! pick it up!)
Only the very best artistic expressions are transmitted globally by "ska-tellites".....😉
why state the obvious?
[Joe Kassabian disliked this comment]
These episodes unlocked a memory I have of a mall I used to live near and visit, and walking past a gallery space selling what I think was this guy's work. It was on my usual route out of the mall so I'd walk past it a lot. I think I only ever went in once, briefly looked at the art, and left again.
Yesssssss... this was my experience also. Also, pretty sure my grandmother had decorative plates with his stuff on them. This episode was all about explicated lost memories. Wild.
My mom, for some reason, likes his art. We have a few prints that hung on the wall at some point in time. I doubt she's even looked at 'em in years. I'ma tell her about the whole 'signed with DNA' thingie. Maybe she'll finally dump 'em at the thrift store drop-off.
James Gurney is an amazing illustrator/artist. I bought the Dinotopia books just for the artwork.
Kincaide throwing shade at Picasso is hilarious. Picasso was also prolific, commercial & problematic regarding women.
Picasso also painted Guernica which is the polar opposite, in both style and intent, of anything Kinkade ever painted.
James Gurney is on UA-cam and I watched, fascinated, as he painted a picture of ... US Postal Service trucks in a light rain. The resulting painting was beautiful and I like to think it was made into a postage stamp.
James Gurney is a GEM and continues to do demonstrations for artists to study, he's so open about his process so others can learn. Beautiful work.
For anyone aspiring to paint or get better, please look at his social media!
Convincing evangelicals that their prints are safe but mixing his blood into them seems to me like sealing a magical contract or fulfilling a magical obligation.
Satanic Blood Oath
Is it blood or is it something else?
exactly! is that the reason he is the richest artist ever? the grifts were part yes but people had to have liked his work first...just sayin
America, or let's be honest, the U.S. is a country that exists now because of cults. I'm convinced that the pilgrims were just part of a weird cult, and everything after is just an echo of the former. Is it any wonder that we now have the tendency to be swayed by some unique marketing, particularly the religiously affiliated, i.e. signing something in blood?
Edited for wrong word usage.
@@sirgreendown6627 Ironically, they're absolutely fine with the non-satanic blood oath more commonly referred to as 'the sacrament'. Seriously, so much Christian/Catholic stuff is heavily steeped in blood this, blood that, bathing in blood, washed in blood, blessings of Jesus' blood- it gets real creepy from an outside perspective, yo. But having a bottle of lotion called 'Vampire Blood' makes me a degenerate devil-worshipper who's going to burn in hell for all eternity? lmao, okay...
You keep bringing up gold, i wish you'd do an episode on that. I'm having a difficult time explaining to my idiot father why it's a grift, and when i try to research it the results are mostly why it's so great 🤦
dan olson, or foldingideas has a video on gold that goes into the weird grift of it, hes guested on the show before pretty sure
They kind of go into it in one of the G Gordon Liddy episodes
Welcome to the modern search engine. Google used to actually be useful.
There's a similar issue for autistic women who want to find other autistic women who've been through pregnancy. ASD comes with sensory processing issues, so knowing what can happen and what kinds of coping mechanisms are available is pretty useful info. Sadly, any results regarding 'pregnancy' and 'autism' are chock full of ableist crunchy-mama BS that tells you stuff like 'foods to avoid so your kid isn't born autistic'. At least the bad results regarding gold investments are rather benign. Searching for support and finding articles about how people like you are a burden? It's beyond demoralizing.
PLEASE do an episode on Pablo Picasso!
Thomas Kinkade would have reallly, really have loved NFTs
He would have been a great match for +Rump.
06:27 Sophie's mom's expression made me laugh and startle a co-worker who was in a meeting, I'll be using that expression with great frequency
Two things: 1. I had a gym teacher whose dad was the guy who created BC, and I seem to remember him being some kind of weird fundie so that might be an idea for the future. 2. If you want to hear more lurid details of Kinkade's declining years, there's a pretty good Dollop episode on the subject, right here on UA-cam but without video.
I heard something similar about BC, but for the life of me can’t remember where…
Oh yeah, B.C. just got, like, very overtly Christian over the years as Johnny Hart got older. Brought in some really weird implications when the newspaper comic about prehistoric cavemen keeps showing them talking about Jesus and making 9/11 memorials.
B.C. would sometimes tell a "joke" where the main caveman wrote something on a stone tablet, tossed it into the ocean and waited. The punchline would come back on another tablet. I recall one of those where he just asked about the son of god and the reply was something like "of course, people worship the son of god over here, and everywhere".
To me, this type of art is like junk food or comfort food. Not nutritious and only good for a bit of a spike and a cozy feeling.
Also, if an ad says something is “collectible,” it’s not.
"BOSTON: Let's go shit over there." And that's how Fenway Park was built.
no that's how weymouth was founded. Fenway is a wonderful ballpark and a cherished monument to sports and americana. Weymouth Massachusetts is a pile of boston's excreta
@@tora0nekoLiterally no one cares what flavor of Massholes we are dude. Besides, we're all sht in our own special ways here.
@@sourgreendolly7685 i care and that's what matters to me
I can picture the buddy-movie based on Hitler and Gacy and they argue about the restaurant for lunch.
JWG - Let’s get lunch.
AH - Okay but it has to be vegetarian.
JWG - They can serve vegetarians!?! How are they cooked?
The description of the brick and mortar retail outlets for Kincaid's output reminds me of the Successory stores. I remember seeing those in malls in the 90's and wondered how they could afford the retail outlets. Thinking about it now, it was probably a money laundering operation.
Oh Dear Holy Gawd! I actually tried getting a job at one of their gallieries- I just couldn't keep a straight face! 😂
Yessss, so good. Thanks for the mainline dose of Successories nostalgia ♥️ Makes me wonder what, if any, business has taken the space that housed Natural Wonders in the mall of my youth.
@@quincywilliams9860 I liked their 7 colored "jade" vases.
Posted at the perfect time for my drive home!
“This is good, we can use all of this” something Sophie has never said 😊
"You've handled my ass pennies! You've all handled my ass pennies!" 😆
Jackson Pollock was a drunk and pissed in Peggy Guggenheims fireplace. He likely pissed everywhere too. As they say Imitation is the sincerest flattery.
I want a printed canvas with that first sentence in a massive white font on some sickly green background. Or Tee Spring.
This feels like watching a recording of Santa's workshop. Its a bit disconcerting.
Also the editing and graphics are great folks. Thanks for feeding this co tent beast
First BTB videos I’ve watched and new follower: I can confirm from Archbishop Mitty Catholic High School, the high school his daughters attended and he funded for the theater, that there were huge issues in the family around the late 2000s. I honestly prefer one of his daughter’s more realistic style works in Santa Cruz because she comes off as genuinely honest. From my time at Archbishop Mitty, though, the only folks who spoke positively about Thomas Kincaid’s works and his farce were the White Gen X parents. It was a known fact that he did “alpha-sigma-beta-omega” male bullshit to overcompensate for himself before James Crowder took stage, and people were silenced not to talk about it.
Huh, I never figured Walter would make it to archbishop. Good for him.
Beyond the "joke", do you know if she's working as an artist? Does she have a place where one might see her art?
Thomas Kinkade is James Gurney's Wario
Exquisite.😂
THATS HYSTERICAL!! 👍🤣
But actually 😭
I have to wonder, where did the velvet Elvis type paintings come from? There's gotta be a seriously twisted mind behind that shit, right?
We pivot to video and don’t show Picasso fucking? Unsubscribing now
😂
Alan Moore's son from America seems really chill.
My mother bought one of his paintings at one of those galleries in the 90s, and is absolutely convinced it's worth tens of thousands of dollars. Trying to get her to understand that the frame is worth more than the picture inside is next to impossible, so telling her that Kinkade wasn't really who she thought he was would pretty much break her brain.
The ass pennies reference🤣🤣🤣one unforgettable UCB sketch, along with Little Donnie😅
Never lose the Logitech controller! I get a kick out of it every time 😂😂
I love listening to your Behind the Bastards podcast and every time I'm listening I always want to ask you what motivates you to put the time and constant energy into doing all of the research to do each and every episode? Is it just because you love writing and journalism a lot? Also thanks for making this podcast!
If you can get Hannah Gadsby as a guest, you can do a Bastards episode about Picasso with her informing you.
At least that bastard Pablo had talent. Nobody ever called Picasso an *sshole. As the song goes. Even though he definitely was.
YES YES YES
This story reminded me of that 2013's Banksy work called "The Banality of Evil" , and that kind of scenario, you know, "little cabin by the river and the snow-capped mountain on the background", that was very common kind of "kitsch" landscape art you'd find in the street markets here in South America back in the 1980s, at least, because my grandparents had one of those in their living room. Is there a famous pre-Kinkade art or is it some kind of collective colonized-mind sort of thing?
There were a lot of Latin painters working the decorative art industry in the 70s and 80s. Most paintings are rendered well enough, but have that uniform Happy Little Tree tone and composition.
I want to thank all parties involved for the absence of James Gurney slander. The fear that I felt in my heart when first you uttered his name on this podcast... I'd had no notion of how much Dinotopia had meant to me til that moment.😂
god, i hope there are more guest appearances from randy's cats
The idea of THE Charles Baudelaire breaking the bad news about Kinkaid investments via advice column is kind of weird.
the facial expressions add a lot, especially Sophie.
“He’s Winnie the Pooh, not Winnie the Pee!” 💀💀💀
My parents bought an "original" print in the early 2010's and it hung in their living room until about 5 years ago when they replaced it with a TV for my nephew (who is now 5). I don't know where it went, but it will forever haunt my memories. (Note: I was already an adult when they bought it and only saw it when I visited for our weekly family dinners.)
This episode reminds me that I have seen a Kinkade gallery when I was growing up.
Uric acid is good for tomatoes but probably not for Pooh bears 😂
It's great for linen and linen is perfect with ammonia (byproduct of uric acid) for doing windows. You're welcome for that useless information.
Been waiting for this one
JFC the chairs do have lighthouses and shit on them.
35:25 This bit here reminds me of Bendy from Bendy and the Ink Machine. Bendy's smile is plastered on his face in the exact same way every single time. The soullessness of Bendy's eyes provide the right amount of facial incongruity to take it from just being unauthentic to straight up psychological horror. That's what Kinkade's paintings do. They provide the fakest of 'happiness' in a manufactured, generic display that not-so-subtly tells you that unhappiness is to be punished.
Now, I will say, I actually do like the colors used in most Kinkade paintings. The colors are rich enough to emulate a rich, life-filled environment. The issue isn't with the colors themselves. If I could find paintings in those colors that aren't made by a sadistic, Christo-fascist, self-righteous, anti-reality freak, I'd go for them in a heartbeat. Kinkade couldn't make good art, but it had nothing to do with his choice in colors and everything to do with him being a soulless monster who thought unhappiness could be driven out by brute force. It's like he never heard the phrase 'you can't have rainbows without a little rain'.
Not implying anything worse than could have been said plainly in the episode, but it's interesting to compare Kincade's painting with Albert Bierstadt's "The Merced River in Yosemite"
What's franchising my AI Artists?
Thank you for the Anderson cameo
A very informative episode - coming from the UK, I wasn't familiar with Kinkade so thought I'd subject myself to the British Journal of Aesthetics experiment...
After perusing Kinkade's art for just 5 minutes after this podcast, I felt how I imagined Edmund Pevensie felt after gorging on the White Witch's Turkish Delight in Narnia. Fed but empty; nauseated and dizzy on such a feast of artistically empty, sugary calories that come with something just a bit sinister.
Not to take away from Boston, but Jacksonville FL is overlooked when it comes to public urination. I’ve seen so many jugs of piss on street corners
Also New Orleans. The streets run with piss.
Isn't that really just all of north Florida and the panhandle really?
Where there are truck routes, there also be trucker bombs.
You know... Randy Milholland looks exactly like I think he would.
Thomas Kinkaid is to art what replicator food is to real food in Star Trek. It looks (tastes) fine, good even, but there's just something... off with it.
Probably more than alcohol. I mean the food , close enough, i guess good against food issues.
And there are restaurants still.
Its probably more to alcoholic replicator drinks.
Rootbeer( which honestly is fine, just the beer in the name instead limo is weird)
KinkAde: Like KoolAde But Kinky.
Randy! Still a sweetheart, after all these years
Look. I dont believe in satan or ghosts. But I took the fucking batteries out of that Furby AND IT TURNED ON AT NIGHT?!?!?! HOW DID IT DO THAT?!?!?!?!
Chuckle ran out of Good Guy dolls?
😂 I knew like, three people who earnestly told this exact story. Maybe there's something to it?😂
Perhaps Sam the curator of the Museum of Everything Else in England powered up your Furby remotely when he turned on the Furby Organ he built for the museum. Check out his UA-cam channels; someday his experiments with synthesizers and rotary speakers and clicky-clacky analog telephone exchanges and other electromechanical gadgets will likely open a rift in the space-time continuum and suck us all into another dimension. (See " This museum is not obsolete", "The museum of everything else", and "Look mum no computer!")
I wanna know where Robert gets his robes.
From his contacts in the Illuminati, naturally.
Caspars first painting, i really apreciate how it has a raw honesty and isnt trying to sanatizing religion but show its impressive , but also eary and kinda forceful,
hitting you with what i gurss felt of religion.
But also not pretending it cant be scary and not just safe but complex, primeval even almost.
Which is all in the red light and raw ominous power of it.
Ok i dont like violent jesus art worshipped but i respect the ominous rawness there.
Oh my god the “cut short story” ad bit😂
I think overall, the biggest grift of Thomas Kincade was convincing people there was any depth to his work. I had seen his work and throught it was just pretty pictures. Nothing deeper. The smartest thing Kincade did was convincing people who wanted his art of be deeper, that it was. But, also attaching his work to notable Intellectual properties.
If there is any painting or print with DC, Marvel, Disney, or Star Wars Kincade is probably the artist of the piece.
When you see fantastic artists struggling to make a living, and artists like Kincade make millions, it's rough. And when you realize that there's more people out there with no taste in art than there are people with good taste in art.
It's perplexing, because he keeps insisting that art should have no deeper purpose but to make people feel good, but also wants to be seen as deep. Pick a lane, man.
Signing pictures in blood is something one would think evangelical Christians would view negatively. I guess it's fine when one of their own does it, but guaranteed it would be 'satanic' if anyone else did it.
kinkade sits on the mount rushmore of mediocre “artists” with jeff koons, anish kapoor, and damien hurst. as an art educator, i can find value in nearly any work of art but i honestly think there are no redeeming qualities in his artwork. yes the technical skills are there (most of the time) but like there’s no heart, humanity, or substance in them. it feels like truly a waste to even call what kinkade made “art” because it was so mechanized and mass produced and i feel like that is why it is so indistinguishable from ai generated art. that’s not to say, art that exists to make people happy is bad art, or art made by bad people is bad art, but art made simply for the sake of capitalism is bad art.
I am now dreaming of a Lethal Weapon movie with Robert in Glovers part and old Adolf playing the unhinged part of Gibson.
COD-PIECE! COD-PIECE!
this was the only anecdote where i actually would have liked to have been sitting at the table with Kinkade ;-)
5:14 Robert, you're on UA-cam now, that's what Patreon is for!
I went to visit an elderly aunt who is in hospice, and there were Thomas Kinkade prints on just about every door. I think they must have done some kind of activity where these were available; they went a long way towards making the place seem more depressing.
That said, I think the chair upholstered in a Kinkade print actually looks pretty good; decoration seems like a perfect use for his scenes, as they aren't much of a stand-in for wall art itself.
I will give you my empty plot of land in Riverside county if you publish that short story.
ya okay the question is where because you are either 45 using toll to dland or two hours and in sweltering hell like heat most of the year.
Maybe look into Picasso? That man was the painting bastard of the 20th century. Terrible human being.
Dali was a $hitbird in his own right.
Randy and Jimmy Carr share a laugh style
Ass Pennies was "Kids in the Hall" as I recall. Hilarious sketch though.
aw you really twist the knife in my back on the iraqi dinar @13:24
I'm glad my dad actually learned how to paint landscapes from watching Bob Ross when I was a kid. We didn't have any of those weirdo's paintings, just my dad's. I think Robert would like my story, "The Sexual Misadventures of Robo-Cop in the 69th Dimension".
I’m disappointed that Boston was mentioned but Robert didn’t use his Award-Winning, World-Famous Boston accent
YYYEEEEEOWH OIM FrOm BUuSTOnN!
I know it's not the same but I hope this helps
So, he was the anti-Bob Ross
Picasso was a monster. And had a weird long name.
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
@@SpoopySquid honestly, there was no hope with that name
You really should look into Picasso's history with women... That could definitely make a 4 part episode on Behind the Bastards. You have no idea... 😢
I like to imagine whenever Sophie’s looking down she is studying tort and libel law.
"And D&D, which is less of a collectables thing..."
Oh Robert. Sweet Robert. You have no idea.
Recently the local used book store had several 1st edition PHBs for $90 each. If I had only known...
@@douglasburtt4901 Brother, there was a game store I went to in the mid 90s that had archive issues of Dragon Magazine (double digits) for COVER price. And 1st edition books for cover price. I was completely foolish not to have just bought them out. Those were absolutely insane garage sale prices even then.
I get the strong sense that Randy’s views on Subway’s franchising model are 100% informed by the subway arc in Achewood 😂
One argument against his art I keep popping up is that it doesn't "say" anything. That it's not real art because it "doesn't say anything." Well, if that's the metric, that essentially clocks out any modern or postmodern art, which, by it's nature, says nothing.
New Orleans checking in right now. I need to read this. You can set the story at the old US mint
In every one of Kinkade's paintings they show, the perspective seems to be subtly fucked in this really unnerving, offputting way. The lines just don't go quite where they oughta and it makes me feel queasy just looking at them. He's nowhere near the evilest painter, though. Art history is absolutely full of grade A bastards.
Is it possible the play/movie “Urinetown” is about Boston?
Ohhh god I just realized that the Texas board of ed is using Kinkades landscapes in the textbooks we use
I love how the Nixon picture looks like an AI vision of Nixon merged with Professor Oak from Pokémon.
I think the relation between Kinkade’s cross painting and Caspar David Friedrich has an extra dimension.
This is because the blue/white “above the clouds” and prominent rock vista in Kinkade’s cross version seems extremely similar to what’s arguably Friedrich’s most famous painting: “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” (which is very often used to illustrate romanticism more generally).
Basically, Kinkade seems to have cobbled together the bottom of the “Wanderer of the Sea of Fog” with the top of the “Cross in the Mountains” while leaving out the crucified Jesus.