Such outbursts, however uncivilized, are nonetheless in keeping with the artist's doctrine of a simpler, more joyous life: dogs pee wherever they want, and look how happy they are. Still, if you've ever heard Kinkade holding forth on QVC about the life-affirming, emotionally uplifting aspects of his artwork and the Christian faith and traditional family values that inspire him, the Times' other revelations seemed decidely out of character. At a Siegfried & Roy show in Las Vegas, a former employee recounted, Kinkade got so drunk he started heckling Roy's codpiece. At a gallery function in Indiana, witnesses claim, the inebriated aesthete manually appraised a female colleague without her consent, then shouted, "These are great tits!"
In the wake of the Times article, Kinkade issued denials and apologies, and insisted that he has, with the help of God, his family and friends, "returned balance to [his] life." But how acquainted, one wonders, has he ever actually been with "balance"? Occasionally, Kinkade populates his cityscapes with distant human figures, and in his more bucolic work, the lone fisherman, his back turned to the viewer, is a recurring motif. But the paintings he's best known for—the forest chapels that glow like General Electric R&D labs, the tiny alpine cottages—are oddly neutered Edens.
To ensure maximum serenity, Kinkade excludes most life-forms higher than plastic hydrangeas and a few lethargic ducks. And it's not just that the people are momentarily missing. Remove that forest chapel's façade and you might see a congregation of teddy bears worshipping inside, or maybe Elijah Wood—but actual men and women? It's impossible to imagine.
In an interview with the magazine Christianity Today, Kinkade claimed that "modernism in painting is responsible for South Park and gangsta rap." Elsewhere, he's discoursed upon the "connection" between Jackson Pollock and the Columbine shootings. Naturally, Kinkade offers his own work as an antidote to such poisons. But despite his vivid palette, look how bleak and barren his pastorals really are. To live purely, they suggest, to achieve the ideals of faith and family that he rhapsodizes about on QVC, one must live at great remove from other men, buttressed from life by crypt-like cottages and bunkers of azaleas.
What a timid depiction of faith! And what a stagnant paradise Kinkade envisions. No wonder he found Sin City so liberating, at least before he restored "balance" to his life. The Strip's neon lights may not burn as brightly as his vacant Victorians, but there are living and breathing people here, at least, pursuing their most human appetites with open abandon. When you live too long on a diet of delightful gingerbread mausoleums, apparently, that's enough to make you piss with joy on hotel elevators.