Art for Everybody

evangelicals’ relationship with art is something i find myself fascinated and frustrated by. this doc enters that conversation through the life of one such ‘christian artist’—a new story behind a familiar name that epitomizes exactly how evangelical christians have let…

hunter

Surprised at how much I enjoyed this portrait of the Painter of Light, a man who prostrated himself before the altar of capital and paid dearly for it. If Napoleon was Hegel’s history on horseback, Kinkade was the petit bourgeois kitsch of the Bush years on a Harley,…

Walt Lewellyn

“There are no Al-Qaeda terrorists hiding in the bushes of his paintings.” I for one didn’t know the name Thomas Kinkade until I saw this, and though the doc’s structure—he’s secretly the most popular painter in America that people haven’t heard of, here’s his style and…

Ryan Lee

added to my long list of documentaries that create a climax out of nothing for sake of a narrative

Clara

My issue with "Art for Everybody" is the structure. I don't understand why we are told at the beginning that Thomas Kinkade has a light and a dark persona and that his story is so much bigger than anyone could imagine, only to have all of the dark parts crammed in the…

mmazala

art is made to challenge, to reflect, to dig deeper, and to express before we even have the words to. an interesting look at what happens when we forget that and only aim to please the simple.

anna kay acquaro

This is kind of like the karmic opposite of the Henry Darger documentary I watched a few months ago. deeply Freudian for the evangelical mall artist to have a secret vault full of “unsellable” freak paintings — really got me thinking about the performative incuriosity that…

annie 🛸

A surprisingly well-rounded look at the man and the art. I think it’s easy to hate on Kinkade with his art in a vacuum, but(!) nothing is in this lovely imaginary vacuum. In the real world kinkade is a tragic figure who got trapped a grift and a particular brand of faith…

Caleb Dillender

With both of us hailing from Northern California and the Central Coast, Thomas Kinkade has been an inescapable presence throughout my life. The self dubbed "Painter of Light," was at one time arguably the most popular contemporary living artist in the world. I don't need to…

Johnny Pomatto