Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Thomas Kinkade: the Evil-est Painter

Episode Date: August 29, 2024

Robert and Randy conclude the story of Thomas Kincade by talking about the massive fraud he committed and also some sex crimes. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube! New videos every Wednesday and Friday. (Backlog episodes on Saturdays until we catch up) Subscribe to our channel: Youtube.com/@behindthebastards  Sources: https://archive.is/Exc9H#selection-1601.0-1605.107 https://mbird.com/art/the-drunken-downfall-and-death-of-thomas-kinkade/ https://www.patheos.com/blogs/cultivare/2012/05/the-dark-light-of-thomas-kinkade/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/painter-of-light-thomas-k_n_16801 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-mar-05-fi-kinkade5-story.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/mar/25/arts.artsnews https://archive.is/DJgOU#selection-1229.0-1233.162 https://www.latimes.com/la-xpm-2012-apr-08-la-me-thomas-kinkade-20120408-story.html https://www.salon.com/2012/04/09/thomas_kinkade_the_george_w_bush_of_art/ https://www.salon.com/2002/03/18/light_4/ https://medium.com/@scottproposki/remembering-thomas-kinkade-and-learning-from-his-meteoric-rise-7dafbf3476d6 https://www.susanorlean.com/articles/art_for_everybody.php https://www.salon.com/2002/03/18/kinkade_village/ https://www.degruyter.com/foxyCartCheckout?fcsid=h6o7rl8tvhra7lcqcmokpsq5ar  https://hereswhatsleft.typepad.com/home/2004/12/conservative_ar.html https://news.artnet.com/art-world/brexit-art-preference-study-1368613 https://medium.com/@baudart1965/thomas-kinkade-paintings-not-worth-much-if-anything-because-of-oversaturation-d298f1661b1e https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-08-29/science-explains-why-it-s-so-easy-to-hate-painter-of-light-thomas-kinkade https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/thomas-kinkade-death-of-a-kitsch-master https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/jul/12/features11.g22See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kalser Media. Oh man, welcome back to Behind the Bastards. You know, this is part two of our episodes on Thomas Kincaid with Randy Milholland of Something Positive. And in between recording episodes, we usually do both parts on the same day. And we'll always have a break in between

so we can grab a little bit of lunch, you know, just have some minutes without the headset on, recharge. This time I sat down and I wrote an 8,600 word short story where Hitler and John Wayne Gacy solve a series of murders in 1980s New Orleans. And I'm gonna be honest, I'm having some mixed feelings about it.

Turned out more erotic than I had initially intended. And I think largely, honestly, Randy, I think I mostly used it as a vehicle to express a lot of my anger at the Federal Reserve. Read it. I mean, I think that was all expected from everyone. Like I, I, I am surprised it's not more erotic. I thought that there would have been like a heaving scene

where they talked about manhood and explosions. I had to cut that because Hitler gives a speech about the gold standard at the site of the second murder that I really felt got across something important. I'm gonna put it up on my sub stack, Sophie. We'll get it out there for all of the listeners. So you're gonna just tease the audience that you've written a thing and then not read it.

Sophie, you're not allowed to podcast the opinions I have about the Federal Reserve. They'll come for me. They'll come for all of us. Oh, can I design the cover for this book at least? Please, please. I'm thoroughly enjoying our rollover here where you're trying to save our-

The Hitler-Gacy mysteries. You're trying to save our jobs and I'm trying to provoke you. Sophie, I know you feel the same. That's why we're business partners. You're just as angry at the Fed as I am. You've been voting for Ron Paul for years before he was even in office.

And we still write him in every year. Every year. For every position. County Commissioner Ron Paul. County Commissioner Ron Paul. But for me Ron- Local dog catcher Ron Paul. But for me Ron Paul isn't a man.

He's really just a friendly cat. Well, Ron Paul kind of, I think exists above and beyond the concept of sexuality, which is why he's so erotic. Anyway, Randy, are you ready to learn more about Thomas Kincade? Okay. I'm terrified to learn more about Thomas Kincade. I'll be honest with you.

You should be. Because I feel like this is gonna go downhill real fucking fast. It definitely will. We think of Franklin as the dodging dude flying a kite in the rain. Benjamin Franklin is our subject for a new season with Walter Isaacson.

He's the most successful self-made business person in America. A printer, a scientist, a founding father, but maybe not the guy we think we know. Franklin casts his lot on the side of revolution. And it's another thing that splits the family apart. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal. I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly, every Thursday. Each week you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing.

They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Thomas started becoming a household name in the early to mid 1990s,

a time when collectibles were taking off in a big way. As we talked about last episode, this is the decade again, Pokemon, Magic Gathering. There's this whole new subculture and Thomas is aware of all this. And he's aware that I think, I think part of what he's aware of is, if you're a Zoomer, you won't remember this,

but millennials in the audience will recall every time you had magic or Pokemon or fucking Masters of the Universe toys, some new collectible craze take off, there'd be a chunk of the Christian rite telling everyone that this was the devil, that this was Satan trying to get his hands on our children. And I kind of think-

Oh, the fear of Furbies is amazing. The fear of Furbies too, right? And I, D&D, you know, which is less of a collectibles thing, but it still kind of speaks to the mood at the time. And I, this is not something I've heard anyone else write. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I kind of suspect part of what Thomas is consciously doing here is recognizing, well, for a wide variety of reasons, evangelical Christians cannot or don't feel comfortable buying into these other sort

of collectible things, but they're people like anyone else. Whatever thing in the human brain gets ticked by collecting a bunch of shit, they have that too. I just have to provide them with something that's safe. Right? And I do kind of suspect that that's what he's doing. Especially when he does stuff like- Oh, that's absolutely what he's doing.

Yeah. Yeah, because it's such the same thing, the artificially restricting the selection, right? The trying to get people to hoard stuff, convincing them these are investment vehicles. And he would also, this is kind of where things get fun. He started spreading insane rumors about the links that he would go to to make sure

that his highlighted art pieces were like worth collecting, that nobody was getting a fake, right? That you were getting an original Thomas Kinkade print if you bought a Thomas Kinkade print that a real person had like slapped a little bit of paint on a tree for. Most additions were supposedly signed with ink that contained Thomas's DNA from either his hair

or his blood, quote, to prevent fakes, which I love because the insinuation here is that some of the $30,000 millionaires buying his art could afford to have the signature DNA tested somehow if they needed to prove that their Thomas Kinkade was an original. Like, where are people going to get that their Thomas Kincaid was an original, like where are people going to get that test done, Thomas?

How are they doing this? Oh my God, does Thomas Kincaid have something in common with Kiss? Because there was a whole story about them mixing their blood and the ink from their Marvel comic. Yes, and I honestly, I think that more artists should do this, right? Like when you get it, you should be able to listen to

not just the normal edition of this podcast, right? That's for poor people. If you're a man of means, you should be able to buy the exclusive edition of this podcast, which comes with a vial of either my blood or my hair, you know? You never know what you're gonna get, but something that was once a part of me, you know?

And all you have to pay, it's just $22,000 an episode. That's a bargain. Anyway, it's a collectible, everybody. Guaranteed to appreciate. You're gonna kibble them off anyway. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Toenails, earwax. You know what, a special benefit for our online listeners who are crazy rich people with money.

Every time you buying an exclusive Behind the Bastards premier collector's edition episode, you get three minutes of Hitler and John Wayne Gacy solving crimes in 1980s New Orleans. Collect them all to get the whole story. You sickos that heard Robert say things about hair and toenails and thought, ooh, I would want that. Keep that to yourself. I'm gonna stay off the subreddit this week. Don't post anything.

Subreddit's gonna be popping today. Stay off the internet. Like my mom always says, keep that on the inside like a winner. Yeah. So critics. Also let's be honest, any rich person who's listening to your podcast is probably

just getting ideas on what they're gonna do with their wealth. Yeah, yeah. I don't know how many of these $22,000 collector's edition episodes we're going to sell. How about this? Um. Critics continue to dog his work,

continue to dog his work. Somehow the whole, I put my own blood and my signature on these prints prints didn't win them back. But as he grew older and richer, he got better at striking back at them as this segment from an article in Salon makes clear. In nearly every encounter with the press, Kincaid delivered a diatribe

against the art world establishment that had shut him out. They were elites touting unfathomable, downer junk to hardworking people who needed uplift instead. Arts knobs were the aesthetic counterparts of the so-called liberal elites. So he's doing culture war stuff with his too, like you're, which is again, he's not unique in this. That's really starting on the right in the 90s

to a significant degree. People are finding out how to monetize the culture war. But he's kind of the first guy to mix that with like the collectibles industry, which I find interesting, right? You are participating in a culture war against leftist intellectuals by buying my prints. It's back to the whole evangelism, how many evangelists?

Like, you know, the world is against you, but like here I'm with you. Now buy this prayer vial of water. Right. Yeah, exactly. Now I should note here that one time Thomas said of Pablo Picasso, he had talent but didn't use it in a significant way.

I'm sorry, what? What a wild man to say that about. Yeah, man, Guernicke, not really much, not a lot of talent being used there, right? He kind of half-assed his way through that piece of art, that century-defining piece of art. That is, that's stunning. That is amazing. Amazing stuff.

Amazing stuff. Oh my. I am. That's definitely like Bob Denver knocking down, Amazing stuff. Amazing. Amazing stuff. Oh my. Oh. I am. That's like Bob Denver knocking down like an act. Yeah. Like a, oh my God, like some major act. Oh God. It's like he's talking about like some jazz musician

who put out like one really great album and then like Overdosed or something where it's like, oh, it's a tragedy that he didn't like, you know, master his demons and make more art. But like Pablo Picasso made a lot of very influential art. What are you talking about? Across mediums. Yes.

Jesus. What a wild thing to say. I had a great experience like 10, 15 years back at a mobile world Congress in Barcelona, Intel and Nokia bought out the Picasso museum 15 years back at a mobile world Congress in Barcelona, Intel and Nokia bought out the Picasso museum for like a party. And so it was just like,

you were just kind of like walking through and on the walls are just like these, these like sketches that he had done too, including a bunch of him like having sex with his girlfriend, which I felt like, I don't know, should this be up on the wall of, well, like, I don't know, should this be up on the wall of, well, like, I don't know, it's not creepy for you to draw, depict your own relationship with somebody.

It's kind of weird as the people running the museum to be like, well, yeah, we should stick this up on the wall. It's like, I don't know, man. That's a little private to me. That's, yeah. I don't think I need to see that. Yeah, he does a good job of depicting what the beard looks like in that situation,

if you're really curious. You can learn a lot about Picasso. Pretty good, pretty good. These were all not thrusting pictures. I'll say that much about them. Anyway, it was a fun time. Was it more of a laser guy? Yeah. You can say that much about them. Anyway, it was a fun time. Was it more of a later guy? Yeah.

You can say that. So in 1994, can Kate took light? I wonder what can Kate, no, I don't. In 19, no, he's about to, he's going to sexually harass people later in this episode.

Oh, God damn it. I was gonna say Picasso would never, but Picasso probably did. I'm actually rather sure that he, there's some things about him that- Yeah, almost certainly. In 1994, Kincaid took Lighthouse Publishing public. It was initially very successful, raking in millions of dollars and shooting up the value of the stock to something like 20 or 2525 a share at its height. Kincaid became the only working artist to, in Sue Orlean's words, be a small cap equity issue.

This is unique. It's not unique for artists to commercialize, but the way that he does it. He's the only guy doing it this way. Later in 1994, he is named Artist of the year by the National Association of Limited Edition Dealers, evidence that he had been spotted and appreciated by the sort of people who are making a fortune on the burgeoning collectible culture. Business Week named Lighthouse a hot growth company in 1995. From 1997 to mid 2005, Kincaid earned an eye watering total of 53 million dollars for his work

This included almost 12 million dollars for these studio proofs that he retouched with highlights Nice work if you can make it If you Did you find the suckers with the money? I mean, I don't know what to say like I See nothing wrong with becoming rich off your work I see everyone's you know rich off your work. I see nothing wrong with selling your stuff out there, but I do hate the whole like grift part of it. Yeah, there's definitely a degree of evil here.

At the same time, if you have a chance to make $53 million painting trees on a canvas, who's not gonna do that? Yeah. Right? Like who wouldn't? I get that. Yeah. If I could make wouldn't? I got a kid. Yeah. Yeah. If I could make a bunch of prints of Popeye

and make extra money by just painting the pipe on him afterwards. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Doing a little dash of brown. Hearst Media, I promise I will not be doing that. Please don't hire me. I might though, if you wanna see me paint some pipes, you know, or paint, once we get that Hitler Gacy art, you know,

I could do a little dollop of color on there, 12 million dollars a print. Stop drifting. It'll appreciate, Sophie, it's going to make the money. This is a great investment vehicle. What's my cut? You know, cash out your 401K. What's my cut?

We always go, you know we always go 50-50. Listener. Then I'm very pro. Cash out your 401ks and pick up some of our erotic Hitler gasey art, you know? It's the Bitcoin of the 2020s. God, I feel like people who bought these prints with paint on them are the same people

who probably all sexily buy the Trump dollars. Yes, yes. Or the Trump teddy bears. These, 100% of his customers have since gotten caught up in a scam where they bought $500 Trump bills and are, or they are collecting Iraqi dinars waiting for Trump to get back in and revalue them. Like they are all born marks.

That is, that is who he profits off of. That's why there's one of these in every tin house. They must really love the gold advertiser you have. Oh God. Sorry. We all love gold. I mean, it's again, a great investment vehicle. Only goes up.

Don't look into that. So as the business went on, Kincaid proved himself a savvy innovator. The people he brought on to advise his company once it started making millions of dollars seemed to have felt he was walking a tightrope, providing art that looked original and unique, but wasn't original and unique in any sense that mattered.

When Thomas told them he wanted to start offering different sizes of print and versions of his prints in limited products like mugs and Lazy Boy lounge chairs, seriously, they hit Lazy Boy chairs. What? Yeah, yeah. A carnage painted on them? Yeah, I think like a, or like a, Boy chairs. What? Yeah, yeah. A cottage painted on them? Yeah, I think like a, or like a, whatchamacallit, a landscape, yeah.

That sounds like a nightmare. I don't wanna wake up surrounded by Thomas Kinkade art. This is reminding me of Kiss again. Like, don't forget to get your Thomas Kinkade coffin. These are not, they're not very different people in a lot of ways. No, they're not. I think Gene Simmons is a lot more honest.

Cause I'll say this, Thomas always pretends to not be the kind of guy he is. Gene Simmons is pretty much the kind of guy he is, right? One thing you can't say when you hear ugly stuff about Gene Simmons, you can't pretend he misled me, right? It's like, well. No, you really can't. I can't always knew you were a piece of shit, Gene.

Yeah. You feel like it's like oily to be around you. Yeah, yeah, I would have to take a shower shaking your hand. I just know that about you. So anyway, his investors, Kinkade's investors, when he starts putting out lazy boy chairs are like, well, what if this devalues all the prints

you're putting out? These are supposed to be investment vehicles. People are supposed to be serious art. This might make it look cheap. And Kincaid replied, fuck you motherfuckers and whipped out his dick. I mean, not like literally. I would respect that.

But also he kind of did literally because Thomas Kincaid was the kind of guy who liked to assert his dominance in social situations, particularly business settings by pissing on stuff. This is a regular thing in his career. So he did kind of whip his dick out on them, right? Yeah, I used to know- He seriously, he reenacted the bathroom scene from Wolf?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've seen, I used to know kind of like mid-level drug lord, lower mid-level drug lord who would do that whenever he showed up at a site. It's just like whip his dick out and start pissing all over the ground in front of the farm or something. You know, it's just, there's some guys

who just have that in them that need to like, this will somehow gain me a benefit in this situation. I prefer the, I got this from the old Upright Citizens Brigade, but the ass pennies idea. That one works a lot better. You know, look that one up kids. Look up the ass pennies sketch if you ain't seen it. When my daughter was two,

and if I wasn't giving her enough attention, she would just pull her trainers off and pee on the floor and make sure I saw it. And that's what it makes me think of. Did no one put Kinkade in a corner for a timeout to say we don't do this? That may be it, because you're right. Having spent time around a little kid now,

it is one of the first levers that you learn as a little person you can play. It's like, well, if I am not getting the attention I need, they have to pay attention if I start pissing on something. Sure do. Yeah, Thomas Kinkade is just kind of stuck in that two-year-old stage. So for an example of how this kind of went,

in the late 1990s, he held a company gathering at the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim, according to the Huffington Post. Quote, this one's for you, Walt, the artist quipped late one night as he urinated on a Winnie the Pooh figure, said Terry Shepherd, a former vice president for Kincaid's Company in an interview.

Gross, sir, gross. Of all the things to piss on, Winnie the Pooh. And again, I would like to reiterate, Kincaid's Company currently has a license with Disney and does Disney prints, Marvel prints, and Star Wars prints. Yeah. Also, he's called Winnie the Pooh, not Winnie the Pee.

Get it right, Thomas. You do have to pay an extra 50% for one of the Winnie the Pooh prints that he pissed on. Those are a dwindling commodity now, tragically, since his passing. His hair is in the signature. Now, this incident, him pissing on the poo, came up in a court case.

That's why we know it. So this vice president had to tell this story under oath. And when Thomas was questioned about it, he told the truth and described that he was, he said that basically, this isn't a thing I did just once. I am drawn to quote, ritual territory marking. Oh, wow.

Very funny. So does he own the Hundred Acre Wood now because he peed on Wayne the Pooh to assert his dominance? That's how it works. That's how it works. That's how he got ownership of it from AA Gnome. That old fucker just couldn't fight back.

Didn't have a strong, his prostate's been swollen up since World War I, so he can't even get a good stream out. It's hard to fight back when you're a corpse. Well, yeah, that too. Men are gross. That's gross. Yeah, we are. We are, that is accurate.

Don't be judgmental. Don't be judgmental, you know? The world needs all kinds. Without people peeing on plants, how will they get enough nitrogen? I think it's nitrogen. Anyway- I don't think that that's good for plants, per se. It's good for some stuff. You know? Anyway, here's ads. We think of Franklin as the doddering dude flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments

are the most important scientific discoveries of the time. I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous.

Women start wearing their hair in what was called a coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do.

One session, 24 hours. EPM 110, 120. She's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it. That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people.

There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest

athletes, musicians, actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the sound bites that have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just this relaxation. It's not feeling stressed. It's not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary because I've been through hell and some horrible things.

That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone. You're going to die being you, so you've got to constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly. Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials, you need to share it. Cause you're gonna inspire someone. You're gonna give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit.

Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. We're thinking about peeing on things. No, we're not. Always a good time. You are, that're back. We're thinking about peeing on things. No, we're not. Always a good time. You are, that's you. That's your brain.

I'm gonna go out into the woods today and pee on some stuff, Sophie. So for a while, the times were good, at least for Kincaid and his closest allies, but their fortune was entirely reliant upon having a healthy garden of marks to keep funneling the money up. Because again, this is basically an MLM or a pyramid scheme.

Now I'm not talking about most of his customers here. Most of them are misled by the sales pitch, as is the case with multi-level marketing though. The big money for Kincaid isn't in individual sales. It's in convincing people who have startup capital to go in and invest in starting a gallery to sell your shit, right? That's the part of this that really does look most like a pyramid scheme, right?

Because while Lighthouse is a public company, each Kincaid's signature gallery is a business owned by private operators, much like a McDonald's. Much of Thomas's work outside of painting was selling himself to the people who wanted to own galleries. One of these people, last name Spinello, later claimed in court that Kincaid's personal life story was a big part of the sales pitch.

Quote, we were told success story after success story and of course the Tom story and his Christian views and the way he runs his life. So these are like old retirees who have banked a few million and are being told like, oh, this nice Christian man is giving us a chance to really increase our wealth. He wouldn't lie to us. Look at what a good Christian he is. Now, of course, like any man with this much money, Thomas was not living the chaste and sober life of a monk.

From an article in the LA Times, quote, in testimony and interviews with the Times, Shepard and other former employees said they often went with Kincaid to strip clubs and bars where he frequently became intoxicated and out of control. John Dandoy, Media Arts Group's senior director of retail operations from 1995 to 1999, testified in a hearing that the artist was a sort of Jekyll and Hyde character whose behavior worsened as the alcohol flowed. Tom would be fine, he would be drinking, and then all of a sudden you couldn't tell where the boundary was, and then he became very incoherent and he would start cussing and doing a lot of weird stuff.

Dan Doy, who left the company to become chief executive of a group of galleries owned by Kincaid's brother, recounted that about six years ago the artist was so intoxicated during a performance by Siegfried and Roy in Las Vegas that people seated nearby moved away from him. I think it was Roy or Siegfried or whatever had a codpiece on his leotards, Dan Doy testified. And so when the show started, Tom just started yelling, codpiece, codpiece! And had to be quieted by his mother and wife.

Wow. Yeah. Oh, he's like that uncle everyone has. Yeah, he's your drunkle. He's heckling Siegfried and Roy, you know That one that one's more or less. Look I have I heckled floor shows in Las Vegas while too drunk to be controlled Yes, do I do it every time I go to Las Vegas? Absolutely, you know

Would I have done that to Siegfried and Roy possibly, you know, that's not why we're angry. I just thought it was a funny story. I'm amazed. Also, there are women out there who can say they gave lap dances to- Thomas Kinkade, to the Painter of Light. Which is a trademark, by the way. You can't call yourself the Painter of Light, only him. I want to see a Thomas Kinkai painting

with a beautiful country landscape, that nice mist in the morning and the sun breaking through with the orange and red clouds on a strip club. Just like a side of the road nowhere strip club. Yeah, glowing from the inside nowhere strip club with like a little Thomas Kinkai out front smoking a cigarette and thinking about how his life Went so wrong. Yeah, why his wife won't return his phone calls. That's the art we need

So for a while his wife Nanette was able to exercise partial control over Tom when they were together But as the years went on to Thomas traveled constantly for business. His galleries sold unevenly most of the year, but they always received huge bursts of sales, sometimes hundreds in a day with lines out the block when he showed up to give a talk and personally highlight pieces. So he would have to travel around to galleries in order to keep sales going. And this leads to him being away from his wife and being away from any kind of moderating aspects on his behavior, which leads to him partying constantly in this company culture where the employees who work for Thomas directly, like the master highlighters and his business managers

and marketing people, come to view Thomas as something of a god and his backstory is like this sacred text because he's worshiped whenever he shows up at one of these places. He has fans lining up out the door. So you can't really think of him as this normal person. There's almost this derangement that goes on for the people working beneath him. And there's this kind of cultic belief system that springs up within the Kincaid Company itself, which is embodied by one of his business managers talking to the guardian here and saying, quote, there's over 40 walls in the average American home.

And Tom says our job is to figure out how to populate every single wall in every single home and every business throughout the world with his paintings. Which is a deranged thing to say and want, but it does, it does, Thomas Kincaid walked so that AI fucking image generators could run, right? Also, this is like L. Ron Hubbard shit.

It is, right? That like, there's something, this is a big part of the narrative too, that like there's something healing about our paintings. People need them. And so, you know, the fact that Thomas himself is this messy drunk who does not live the actual life he pretends to live. The fact that we're charging an arm and a leg for these is justified because these are making the world better.

You mean you're a prince that you've dribbled one dot of paint on? Yes, yes, yes. These are part of healing the planet and bringing it back to God. As one line from a company brochure noted, in the often hurried unsympathetic and complex world we live in, the images Thomas Kincaid paints offer a place of refuge, a place where the transient things of life give away to the things that matter most, faith and family, a loving home, and the people who know and love us. Now, this all sounds patently silly, just an obvious soulless grift,

but Kincaid's work really touched a huge number of people. The fact that I think they were wrong to be touched by what was a patent soulless grift by a man who did not believe the things he pretended to say to them didn't matter, right? And I got to say, one of the few people to tried to grapple with this and do a really good job of it was Joan Didion, who wrote this about Thomas Kinkade. The passion with which Byers approached these Kinkade images was hard to define.

The manager of one California gallery that handled them told me that it was not unusual to sell six or seven at a clip to Byers who already owned 10 or 20, and that the Byers with whom he dealt brought the viewing of the images a sizable emotional weight. Right, these are early super fans. And there's a degree of what you're gonna see in Trumpism where once it comes out, the kind of lifestyle

he really lives, it doesn't affect his fan base at all. They don't care, because what they need is not the reality of Thomas Kinkade. They need this like fantasy of who and what he is and what his art represents. And he's not a necessary part of that past a certain point. Well, it's like that with most like conservative Christian groups.

Like look, Jerry Falwell, you know, happened and he still had people. Fuck, Jim Baker still has a career. He went to prison. He literally went to prison. And it's, I like Didion's criticism because she actually looks into what's going on. Like what is the actual meaning being transmitted

beyond kind of the surface with his paintings in a way that is not the snooty high art criticisms of his work? Didion drills down into some of the reasons his art is upsetting better than anyone else I can really think of. When she's doing this, one of the things she brings up is this year 2000 post on Kincaid's website where he writes about a trip to the Yosemite Valley. Quote, when my family wandered through the National Park Center, I discovered a key to my fantasy, a recreation of a Milwaukee Indian village. When I returned to my studio, I began

to work on the mountains declare his glory, a poetic expression of what I felt at that transforming moment of inspiration. As a final touch, I even added a Milwaukee Indian camp across the river as an affirmation that man has his place even in a setting touched by God's glory. Now before we get into- I'm sure that's a real thrill to be included in his show. In this Thomas Gengade painting. Before we get into Joan's breakdown of why this is fucked up, first here's the painting

itself. You see you get the mountains, sunset, a lot of light playing through them. It looks like maybe an early fall image. You've got a couple of very stereotypical looking teepees there. Oh God. Yeah, now it's, I gotta say, I did look into this. It's, you know, it's an idyllic image, right?

Inoffensive on its face, but I will say the structures that he puts, you know, in the of the Miwok is not entirely wrong He seems to have based this on an actual display at Yosemite. So he doesn't get this totally, you know incorrect It is true. It is it is worth pointing out the more common shelters used by the Miwok were what they called Umotka, which is a conical bark house lined with pine needles and layered outside with earth which is a conical bark house lined with pine needles and layered outside with earth. And the Koja, which is a semi-subterranean dwelling and a lot of the sun shelters

that were kind of more temporary were rectangular and flat-topped, but they did have shelters that looked kind of like this. So I will say his depiction is not like, it's not super, he didn't just like draw a random teepee, you know, and this is not a tribe that used anything like that. I think he based it off of a depiction of a Milwaukee.

So he did some base research at least, so. Yeah, I think he was just inspired by a thing that had done some base research, and that probably explains it. But I did look into it, because I wanted to know, like, did he just throw a TP on there, because, you know. And no, that apparently is not wrong.

So good on him, that's one mark. There's one mark there, right? But Joan does a really good job of explaining what is messed up here. Affirming that Mann has his place in the Sierra Nevada by reproducing the Yosemite National Park Visitor Center's recreation of a Miwok Indian village is identifiable as a doubtful enterprise on many levels, not the least of which being that the Yosemite Miwok were forcibly run onto a reservation near Fresno during the Gold Rush and allowed to return to Yosemite only in 1855.

In other words, Kincaid has commercialized a moment from the past in the same way that this land was commercialized at a different point in a much more violent way and is only capable of commercializing this moment that ignores the complexity and the pain in that history, right? Cause there's no room for complexity or pain in his art, right? We just have this kind of idyllic portrayal of a village that he's stuck on something that's supposed to go

on some boomer's wall in their, in their like retirement home in Scottsdale, right? It's a further kind of commodification of that. That's like seeing a painting of this gorgeous field in the path, like, oh, that's the Trail of Tears. Mm-hmm. What the fuck? Yeah, and you're kind of, it's just kind of like ignoring

what is more, I don't know, it's a very concave thing to do, is fair to say. Now, the best criticism I found of his work came from a blog, Here's What's Left from 2005. The writer identified as Michael is somewhat the passing interest in art history who I think might've come from the evangelical background. And he compares this piece by Kincaid

that we started the episode with, right? You've got the cross up on the hill, you've got that big bright sunlight, you know, illuminating it with the painting that likely inspired it by 19th century German painter, Kaspar David Friedrich. It's called the cross on the mountain. Now you can just see right there. Yes, these are very different artworks in their quality.

Even as someone who's not at all- There's a mood to that. That has some anguish to it. The crowds, you can make the argument that's the blood of Christ. I mean, going back to my evangelical childhood. And you actually have Jesus on the cross, like the silhouette of the suffering,

whereas it's just a cross in Kincaid's. Yeah, yeah, I think those are all really good notes. And it's worth noting that that like actually putting Christ on the cross is a thing that Caspar does in another similar work of art, the cross and the cathedral in the mountains. And I think Kincaid's work is kind of a hybrid of these two, right?

But you can see down there, the cross and the cathedral in the mountains where you've got kind of these, you've got like basically this forest and there's a, you can see a cathedral kind of coming up out of the forest in a way that almost makes it look like it's grown out of the forest. And again, you could look at this as another artist who like Kincaid painted the same shit

over and over again while he does a lot of crosses in the woods, right? But I don't really think that's what's happening here. Kaspar has something to say. He is showing Christianity, and this is something that was relevant to the kind of politics within Christianity at the time, as an outgrowth of the natural world, right? Michael in his write up quotes an art expert named Christina van Pruyen who says of the first painting by Caspar, the cross stands at the brink of the evening horizon, which signifies the disappearance of God from the lives of the modern world during the enlightenment.

If the burgeoning of evergreens near the cross also indicates that a new religion is emerging. Colin Eisler has more to say about the second painting. Protestantism, conveyed by the vehicle of the visual arts, tended to see nature more as pagan mother than God's work, too close to pantheism for comfort. Friedrich presents an exception, his anti-classical emphasis upon experience, its reception and communication stress the personal." experience, it's reception and communication, stress the personal. And I'm not quoting that because I am as, like, I'm not religious, I don't believe in any of this stuff, but I'm quoting it because it's worth noting that with these pictures that clearly inspired Thomas's by Caspar, there's a lot to say, there's a lot to analyze, there's a history wrapped up in that.

You can see pieces of the history of movements of huge numbers of people and what they believe represented in his art. And there is none of that, right? The point Michael makes in his criticism is no one will ever have this much to say about the meaning held within a Kincaid work, right? Yeah, no, you're right.

It's weird because like you look at the Kincaid painting next to those, like, you're right. It's weird because you're looking at Kade painting next to those. You know, the Caspar paintings, there's just, again, a lot of emotion, use of color to like, to convey how you're supposed to feel, how he feels about what's going on. And it's not necessarily bright and cheery,

but it also like, let's talk about what's, you know, this feeling of Christianity, the suffering of Christ, et cetera, or even, like you said, the church growing out of nature. And then Kincaid's like, wow, he painted a lens flare. Yeah, he put a lens flare on a cabin. And there's also, you can see, in these two different works made at different times,

they're clearly the same man, but like who has grown and changed over time, right? Like they look different as opposed to every Kincaid painting could have been made at the same time, right? Like it's kind of impossible to even mark out, is it an early period or a late period? I'm sure there's some weird Kincaid historians,

but the rest of us aren't going to do that, right? Yeah. And I guess the point I'm sure there's some weird Kincaid historians, but the rest of us aren't going to do that, right? Yeah. And I guess the point I'm making here, and I think the point that these critics are making, that Joan makes, is that Kincaid, it's not that what he was doing in his art is, he's not purposefully being racist against Native Americans, but the inability of his work to ever deal in anything that touches on sadness kind of means that he's always going, there's a shallowness, a one-sidedness to it that is kind of gross and gross and commercial when you are touching on something where there's a

darker history there, right? But Kincaid's whole life, all he's doing is he's selling emotional morphine, right? There must've been some creative whole life, all he's doing is he's selling emotional morphine, right? There must have been some creative drive in this man at some point. There's certainly pain in his childhood. I mean, he's a more than competent artist and he knew what he was doing. And I don't think, again, there's nothing wrong with, like, I just want to make art that makes people happy. But there's just some things that are kind of hard to, like... Yeah. And it's not just that he wants to make them happy.

There's an ideology behind what he believes will make people happy, right? And that ideology is social conservatism. Laura Miller makes this very clear in an article she wrote for Salon, Thomas Kincaid, the George W. Bush of Art. And that title isn't just her being kind of like shitty. Quote, Herman Brock maintained that someone who chooses George W. Bush of art, and that title isn't just her being kinda like... shitty?

Quote, Herman Brock maintained that someone who chooses to make Kitsch is ethically depraved, a criminal-willing radical evil. The novelist Milan Kundera believes Kitsch to be the natural expression of totalitarianism. That's a lot of moral weight to place on a bunch of garish cottage paintings, but Kincade was always the first to present his work as a form of ideology. Kundera defined Kitsch as the absolute denial of shit, meaning it offers an airbrushed, sterilized, sentimentalized view of the world. From that, it doesn't necessarily follow that art wallows in shit.

But art doesn't exist for the primary purpose of denying it either. Kitsch is, first and foremost, a lie. Its very existence is founded on bad faith. And the best example of that is the fact that Kincaid is an official member of the George W. Bush presidential prayer team from whom he received an award. He is a friend of George W. Bush. He met him a number of times. And he's this, it's this flattening of American culture during this period where we are taking

a very dark turn, where we are invading two countries, where there are huge numbers of deaths overseas as a result of American action. And Kincaid sees his goal, not just to pray for the guy behind a lot of it, but to sell people during this time when they're scared and upset about the violence that they are a part of to calm them down with these anesthetizing pieces of art. He really does see his goal as that. Keep pulling the lever and voting for Republicans. Here's a nice picture of a cabin. Now you can feel comfortable as you slide off into senility. That is what Thomas Kinkade is doing.

And while he's doing this and portraying himself as this upright Christian pinnacle of like, you know, what the evangelical spirit can achieve, he is spending all of his free time at strip clubs, drinking and abusing prescription drugs. He's pissing on shit to show dominance. Oh, I didn't know about that. Oh God. Oh yeah, yeah. He's also doing, he's fucking,

he's mixing like hard liquor and Valium a lot. And he's also sexually harassing and assaulting his employees. In the court cases that we've been building to, and have quoted from earlier in this, witnesses testified as seeing Thomas at one of the many signing parties for his paintings. He got so drunk he fell off a bar stool

and per the Huffington Post, palmed a startled woman's breast. Then when the wife of a former employee tried to help him up, he cursed her out. Now that's an ugly story, but much worse is the tale of a company party at a motel in South Bend, where Thomas met with a group of signature gallery owners

to sign a bunch of their prints. This meeting came about because Thomas had convinced all these men and women to invest their savings into starting galleries for his art. He promised them sales and ever escalating profits and by August of 2002 those profits had started to stall. So the event was a goodwill gesture but later in the night there was an open bar and Thomas got very drunk. Next, per the Huffington Post. At one point, according to testimony and interviews with three others who were there, Kincaid polled the men in the room about their preferences and women's anatomies.

He was having a conversation with the men in the room about whether they liked breast or butts, said Lori Koepke, Coates Director of Gallery Operations, who also testified about the party. There were only two women in the room, and I was very uncomfortable at that point. It was during that baudy discussion, according to arbitration records, that Kinkade turned his attention to the other woman. He approached her and palmed her breasts and he said, these are great tits. Ernie Dodson, another coat employee told the Times, adding that he drank no alcohol that night. I was just standing there in the corner in amazement.

It was like, holy cow. And man, Dodson, I'm not really impressed that she didn't drink. You didn't like stop him, you didn't do anything. You didn't say like, wow boss, that's like fucked. Like you're not, you're bundling someone. There's a fucking limit. Yeah, this is really a step in moment, brother. I'm not impressed that you didn't drink. I'd be more impressed if you were drunk too

and you had the moral presence to just hit the guy, right? At least push him off, like dude, don't do that. Yeah. That's a bare minimum. Hey, stop. Yeah, that's gross, man. This is a fucking company gathering and you are grabbing someone's tits.

What the fuck? Anyway, when this came out, Kincaid denied the allegation. He said this in a deposition, you've got to remember, I'm the idol to these women who were there. They sell my work every day, you know. They're enamored with any attention I would give them. I don't know what kind of flirting they were trying to do with me. I don't recall what was going on that night. Hey buddy, quick tip here. I was too blacked out to know what kind of quote unquote

flirting led to me groping someone? Not a defense. Anyway. You're disgusting. You're disgusting. Ew ew ew ew. You know what's not disgusting though, Sophie? You know what makes me feel good? What makes everyone feel good? What- Groping these ass. Yeah. Well, we maybe don't say groping. But we do emotionally in the same way that John Wayne gave. We think of Franklin as the dodging dude, flying a kite in the rain, but those experiments are the most important scientific discoveries of the time.

I'm Evan Ratliff. Last season, we tackled the ingenuity of Elon Musk with biographer Walter Isaacson. This time, we're diving into the story of Benjamin Franklin, another genius who's desperate to be dusted off from history. His media empire makes him the most successful self-made business person in America. I mean, he was never early to bed and early to rise type person. He's enormously famous. Women start wearing their hair in what was called the

coiffure a la Franklin. And who's more relevant now than ever. The only other person who could have possibly been the first president would have been Benjamin Franklin. But he's too old and wants Washington to do it. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I've been thinking about you. I want you back in my life. It's too late for that. I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project.

All you need to do is record everything like you always do. One session, 24 hours. EPM 110, 120, she's terrified. Should we wake her up? Absolutely not. What was that? You didn't figure it out? I think I need to hear you say it.

That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. This machine is approved and everything? You're allowed to be doing this? We passed the review board a year ago. We're not hurting people. There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams. Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Angie Martinez. Check out my podcast where I talk to some of the biggest athletes, musicians,

actors in the world. We go beyond the headlines and the sound bites that have real conversations about real life, death, love, and everything in between. This life right here, just finding myself, just relaxation, just not feeling stressed, just not feeling pressed. This is what I'm most proud of. I'm proud of Mary, because I've been through hell and some horrible things. That feeling that I had of inadequacy is gone.

You're gonna die being you, so you gotta constantly work on who you are to make sure that the stars align correctly. Life ain't easy and it's getting harder and harder. So if you have a story to tell, if you've come through some trials and troubles, you need to share it. Cause you're gonna inspire someone.

You're gonna give somebody the motivation to not give up, to not quit. Listen to Angie Martinez IRL on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and I've just had a word with our own HR department. I apologize. I have deleted roughly a third of my short story.

That's it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, Sophie, it is mostly about the Federal Reserve. In fairness, I'm going to rewrite it later. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. That'll smut it up some. What would John Lee Casey's fursona be? Oh, oh God. It's gotta be like a big Garfield style cat, I feel like. See, I was thinking of one of those monkeys that's kind of colorful, basically with clown makeup. Yeah, that's a good one,

because that'd be really scary to get murdered by too. This is good. This is useful stuff. So the company messaging to prospective gallery owners painted a very different picture of Thomas. Lighthouse used terms like partner, trust, Christian, and God, arguing that not only was a concave gallery a good investment, it helped you serve a higher calling,

i.e. God wants you to get rich selling Thomas's paintings. He always denied- Oh, so we're prosperity gospel now, huh? Yes, yes, very much so. And Thomas would always deny to the press that he marketed specifically to Christians, but his limited edition prints each had Christian fish symbols printed on them along with Bible verses, his favorite being Matthew 516, let your light shine before men.

One of the people who fell for this was Jim Cote. Cote opened his first signature gallery in 1996 and claims that at the start, sales were great because Tom at that point was very popular and there were limited outlets to buy his art. But as the years went on, the situation deteriorated as the LA Times reports. Coat alleges Media Arts Group, which is what the company becomes known as, pushed him to open more galleries, threatening to set up its own outlets in his territory. Coat eventually had three stores, all of which failed. This is not bread and milk, he said.

You can't have galleries on every corner. Coat said his net worth of more than $3 million had been erased, gone are his marriage, his house and most of his possessions. He doesn't blame his divorce entirely on his gallery's failure, but it certainly didn't help. He shut his last store in December and is filed for bankruptcy protection. At this point I've got a dog and an apartment and that's it. This is not where I thought I'd be at 56. Doesn't deserve a dog.

No, I mean, I'm sure he sucks too, but it is interesting the way this con goes, right? Where he's like, okay, you've bought one. Well, if you don't, you gotta set up another, like a block away. Otherwise we're gonna set up one and run you out of business by undercutting. Isn't that how Subway does their franchises though?

Yeah, they just had a meeting about how they're circling the drain too. But yes, I think you are correct. And you have to like, there's no way that they didn't understand that this was gonna destroy him because they know. They're just trying to suck money out of these people. Yeah.

Yeah, this is like a long-term investment. This is just get this guy's money, our problem is solved. Yeah. Whatever. Well, it's even worse than that because he's not just screwing these people to suck money out of them. He's screwing these people to crash the stock value of the company because Kincaid makes a bunch of calls in the early 2000s that a lot of people will argue and has been argued successfully in court were deliberately made to tank the stock from a high of almost $25 to less than $3 a share.

And then once the value of the stock had collapsed, he bought his company back and took it private. This is what causes that court case, which concludes in 2006 and found that Kincaid's company had deliberately misrepresented itself to prospective gallery owners. Per the LA Times, the arbitration panel found that the company and Barnett, who ran a training program for prospective gallery owners known as Thomas Kincade University, painted an unrealistic and misleading picture of the prospects for success and never warned potential investors of the inherent risks. We were told success story after success story and of course the Tom story and his Christian

views and the way he ran his life, one of the gallery owners told the arbitration panel. This panel ultimately rules in favor of two gallery owners from Virginia who had sued him awarding them almost $900,000 in damages. These people, all of whom had had money to burn when they started talking with Kincaid's people, are the least sympathetic of his victims because a lot of regular, not rich people got scammed into buying crappy prints as an investment too. In the early 2000s, Kincaid's company started publishing books. A write up I found in Salon describes them all as being made by a semi-industrial process

just like his highlighted paintings. In short, he would write an introduction and presumably a proven outline and then someone else would write the novel. Now you can compare this to his old friend whose dyna-topia books were labors of love, whatever else you might say about them. He actually cares about that stuff. You can tell.

Yeah, it's clearly the work of someone who cares deeply about telling a dinosaur story. And having fun, really, honestly. And having a good time with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember them very fondly. I haven't picked them back up since I was like 12, but I remember them fondly.

I remember there was a Dino Token video game that had puppets. See, now that I didn't play, shit, that sounds awesome. So all these books, as best as I can tell her, about quaint small towns, generally there will be a woman who comes from the big city with a big job that's stressing her out. And she comes to a small town

and she gets swept off her feet by some like farmer who convinces her the real joy in life is having a bunch of kids and no longer voting. So they're hallmark movies basically. They're all hallmark movies. A lot of them focus on how sinful Boston is compared to the countryside, which I do approve of. I mean, I don't disagree.

Mm-hmm. Now, what I find- I think he loved Boston because everyone pees in everything there. Yeah, it is the city of piss. Boston smells like urine. That's what we all say about Boston. Yeah, the city of piss.

Look, Los Angeles, lot of good piss. New York, great piss town, you know? But Boston, of all the towns that smell like urine, definitely, well, maybe Philadelphia. Anyway, there's actually a lot of towns that smell like piss, but Boston's top of the pack. I'll give it that. The day I moved to Boston,

I was walking through Harvard Square, and I turned a corner, and a woman was holding her five-year-old kid over a potted plant on the street It's just sitting in it like it was a very Texas where it's like Like Boston this goes shit over there. Yeah public right off the red line Okay, that's the Boston City motto Boston just go shit over there

Have we love it all the comments you're gonna get from your Bostonian fans. We love it. All the comments you're gonna get from your Bostonian fans. Yeah, it's okay, it's okay. I live in Portland, the city of also shitting all over the place. It's fine. Look, you wanna talk about shit, go back to the idealized like 1920s,

these people imagined back when there were horses all over everything. Oh God. That's a lot of shit. We barely shit in our cities compared to how much shit there used to be in the 1920s, these people imagined, back when there were horses all over everything. That's a lot of shit, you know? We barely shit in our cities compared to how much shit there used to be in the city. Downtown Savannah, Georgia in springtime, it just smells like horse urine everywhere.

So what I find most interesting about this Salon article about Thomas's shitty Kincaid novels is how the writer describes the reaction of Kincaid's fans to a negative review of the first book in the series What? Well, no actually this is a little different because this comes out after he's kind of been started to be disgraced I began to receive emails from people who had sunk their life savings in Thomas Kinkade's signature galleries Essentially mall and shopping district outlets for his prints and been fleeced

I didn't really understand how the financial architecture of Kinkade's gallery empire worked, and I sure didn't share their taste in wall art. But these people struck me as decent and sincere. They believed in Thomas Kinkade, not just in the man or the company, but in the ethos supposedly represented by his art, one in which, to quote Kinkade's introduction to Cape Light, people have the time to savor life's simple pleasures and lead deep, satisfying lives. It's not hard to find accounts like these, of people who purchased Kincaid Prince's investments and feel ripped off. I found one letter in a Medium post by Charles Baudelaire, who apparently takes art questions

from fans. Dear Charles, I have four original oil paintings by Thomas Kincaid. I bought them about 25 years ago and paid $6,000 for each of them. I love them and it gives me great pleasure to look at them. But because I am moving to an assisted living facility and will have no room for these paintings, I need to sell them. I thought I'd at least get my money back and was shocked when the best offers I received were between $300 and $400 each.

I cried for days. How could these beautiful works of art sell for such a pittance? Because they just printed them out, man. That is heartbreaking. Sorry. I don't wanna make an old man feel bad about paintings that bring him happiness in his twilight years, but like that is what happened.

You got ripped off. I'm sorry. Like maybe one thing if they said, hey, buy these paintings, aren't they pretty? You'll just enjoy looking at them every day. Cool, great. Yeah. But you was told it was going to appreciate. Yeah, exactly. If someone wants to pay thousands of dollars

for a painting that looks pretty, that's not a scam unless you're making them think that this is something that will make their money appreciate. You know? Yeah, that's a bummer. He really is the Trump of the art world, isn't he? He's the Trump of the art world. That's exactly, yeah, I may steal that from you

for the title and then you can take me to court. Go for it. We're gonna spend the rest of the 2020s litigating this. Everything I'm hearing about is people who believed him. I mean, there was a fucking King King University. Yes, yes, for teaching his gallery owners how to get fleeced. As the early 2000s faded into the aughts, King Cade was still a big business,

although the number of galleries devoted to his work had plunged from a high of 350 to something like half that. So he's still a big business. That's still a lot of galleries for King Cade shit. Yes, that's bigger. I mean, there's no other single artist. Yes, that's bigger than, I mean, there's no other single artist you can say that about. Really, anywhere.

I'm shocked there are more Kincaid galleries than Disney stores. I don't think there's any artists on earth like that. Yeah. Now, that just made me Disney being actually caring about having a sustainable business, right? Now, somewhere around 2008 or 2009, his marriage fell apart and he and Nanette separated.

Kincaid does seem to have loved her despite his cheating and included constant references to her and their marriage in his work. He would like put the date of their anniversary in paintings after they had split up. And he seems to have spiraled increasingly once she left. His drug use and drinking grew more severe. The Daily Beast describes one December 2010 event

that shows his mood well. Quote, fans in Denver had been promised a 30 minute inspirational presentation. What they got was an ungroomed, underdressed speaker who was none too pleased with the media's coverage of his recent arrest for drunk driving. I sneeze in public and I make a headline, he sneered. Then he complained about the media's lack of attention

to his charitable works America's most known most beloved artist shows up at an Orange County Hospital. We threw an all-day kids event We hosted art contests. We gave art packages to all the kids I talked to them about journaling their life about creating something every day that makes a statement and we sent word out to every newspaper Come down see this day of joy this day of celebration No one showed but make one wrong step in public and they put it on the front page. Yeah, man. Thomas Kinkade gives kitschy fucking journals

to sick kids is not an art story in the way that rich artists caught drunk driving is. Maybe that's wrong, but it's just obvious. You remember that since this episode, Camp Krusty, where like Krusty shows up, like, you know, in the journals, he leeches, where were you when I did farming? Yeah.

So when he finishes, Kinkade asks the organizers to make sure that his room is alcohol free, and then he keeps the owner of the Colorado Kinkade Gallery up until like the early hours of the morning talking about his ex-wife. Just a perfect picture of a man spiraling. Oh, God, no.

This is definitely the terminal part of the spiral. A month after that event, he spends 10 days in jail on his DUI charge. He tries to get sober after that, but he just keeps relapsing, falling back into drugs and alcohol. A little over a year later, he is found unconscious. He spends several days in a coma.

And when he wakes up, the doctors say basically, hey man, you have to sober up now or die. You don't get more chances, right? This isn't the kind of thing where like you can dry out for a while and then get back to the drinking and drugs. This is it. If you fuck around anymore, you're dead. And as is often the case, he does not take this warning. Two months later on April 6th, 2012,

he overdoses and dies. Thomas Kincaid was 54, reporting after his death revealed that he was actively under federal investigation for securities fraud. So there is some suspicion that maybe this was suicide. You know, it's possible, right? He apparently was, again, a lot of crimes associated

with this, the painter of light. Trump of art world. The Trump of the art world. The immediate wake of his death saw a huge surge in sales. Fans gathered at 50 some galleries around the country in a public wake. And then the autopsy report came out which showed that he had died of acute alcohol

and Valium intoxication. I think most of his followers, some of them are surprised, but it doesn't really reduce the amount of love for his work. I actually find some of the writing on this gross where they're like, ha ha, this man, like, look, now everyone's gonna stop liking him

because he OD'd. And it's like, I don't know, man, a lot of artists people love kill themselves with drugs. It's kind of the norm for artists that people love. Yeah. That also paints addiction as a personal failing and addiction is a disease. Like I'm not cool with that.

Like you can hate someone, but also be sad that they fell down addiction. And I would say the fact that he, after splitting up with his wife, fell to addiction is not contradictory to the Christian values in the same way that the fact that he is sexually assaulting people and committing securities fraud is, right?

That is all way more upsetting to me. Like, the death is a little sad. It's like, oh no, everything else is disgusting. Yeah, right? So what did more damage to his memory was the fact that there's this horrible legal fight afterwards between his ex-wife and his new girlfriend who claimed to have letters that he wrote her while drunk,

promising her a bunch of his assets. The matter's eventually settled out of court, but it made it kind of impossible to hide the unsavory elements of Kincaid's legacy. Now if you have paid attention at all to how evangelical Christians responded to Trump's many foibles and immoral acts, you're not surprised that a lot of people continued to love Kincaid after all this came out. His company is still around. It's opened up to new artists and even branded content.

So obviously they've seen the need to expand since his death, but by all accounts, he is still an exceedingly profitable artist. Thomas though now has to rest in the eternal hell that awaits all artists. Because if your work is notable enough to be discussed in any fashion, any fashion, some critic is always going to get the last word, right?

If your work is worth talking about, it's always gonna be a critic who gets the last word because you're gonna die someday. And in Thomas's case, some of those critics were scholars from the British Journal of Aesthetics who conducted a study to see if they could quantify how bad his art was? This study, mere exposure to bad art,

tested whether or not repeated exposure to Kincaid's work would cause someone to like it more or less. And they paired Kincaid, the control group was a better artist, right? Somebody who had like a general level of critical, you know, acclaim. And after repeated viewings, participants reported no change in their appreciation of the acclaim. And after repeated viewings, participants reported no change

in their appreciation of the good art. Quote, but repeated viewings of the painter of light prompted strong negative emotions with participants saying they liked his stuff less each time it popped up in front of their eyes. Now here are those reactions in graph form taken from an earlier unpublished form of the research. And yeah, there's a theory that this may be because exposure to Kincaid over time makes

the flaws in his work glaringly obvious, and so people come to hate it the more they look at it. This is clearly not true to his many fans, but it does lend some comfort to the rest of us, right? If you are like, I find this guy like more upsetting every piece of art that you've shown of his, there's scientific backing for that. You are in the norm.

So good news there. And boy, one of them- That just feels like petty bitch shit. It is really, it's incredibly petty for a dead man who like died in a very sad fashion, alone of an overdose to be like, let's see if we can scientifically prove he sucked. It's so bitchy.

That gets into some of my disdain for critics in general, because there is such a, I need to prove why it's not opinion, it's fact. Here I'm proving, no, oh my God. It's the pettiest thing I've ever heard of. And I respect, there's a degree to which you have to respect that level of pettiness. Oh no, it's impressive.

You spent some time on that. You really put in the effort. Here's a chart. To hate this guy's paintings. And I guess I just wrote 8,500 words about why I don't like his art. So I'm not that petty, but I'm certainly in the upper level of pettiness here.

You would ask people why you don't like him. I think that's a difference. I do not that petty, but I'm certainly in the upper level of pettiness here. You went off to why you don't like him. I think that's a difference. I do not. That is fair. I believe, I felt this for a long time, the only real valid artistic expression in our society is reprinted t-shirts of Bart Simpson during the Gulf War. That's all great art,

is just some kind of reprinted Bart Simpson t-shirt made in order to includes all the generated black shirts that they did. Yes, of course, of course. Yes. Any early nineties illegal Bart Simpson merchandise is art and nothing else is.

Anyway, that's gonna be my new plug your art? Wow. So, you can see my mean-spirited comic at somethingpositive.net, or at mousetrapped.blog is another thing I do. I also draw the Sunday Popeyes at comicskingdom.com slash Popeye.

And if you go to comicskingdom.com slash, I believe it's hold on. I'm not prepared. Why would I be? I'm still winded by a, I did not expect this to have sexual assault. Comickingdom.com slash olive hyphen Popeye. Tuesdays and Thursdays there's new strips there. I do the Thursday strips. Yeah, yeah. Comickingdom.com slash olive hyphen Popeye. Tuesdays and Thursdays there's new strips there. I knew the Thursday strips.

Yeah, wow. That did not go where I thought it was going to go. No, no. Well, you know, I'm always happy to hear that, Randy. And all I can say is... I still feel like I have Dog Mouth luckier than compared to most of your guests. Oh, yeah fairly low This is one of our more low stakes bastards for sure There's no dead children in this episode that I'm aware of yeah, no dead kids, you know some old people lose their savings

definitely a sexual assault or two Yeah, that sucks. That was upset, but but not not our worst not our worst, but you know next time we have Randy on and I finally reveal the dark truth behind the person who does high and lowest I'm just gonna say Look there's literally a National Cartoon Society meeting next week I'm supposed to go the word war crimes war crimes gets thrown around a lot these days, but it should be thrown around here, yeah. That's gonna make a real awkward meeting next week.

We'll wait until I publish my investigation and we get the high and lowest person up in front of the Hague. Robert? Which one? The ICC. Is there a couple, I don't know much about high and lowest, I'm gonna be honest with much about High and Lowest. High and Lowest is technically a spin-off of Beetle Bailey.

I believe Walker and I believe it's his kids and I believe the kids behind the creator of Haggar the Horrible started it. Oh, well, you know, Haggar the Horrible. We'll see how horrible he was next time. Randy, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure. Yes, thanks for being around. All right, everybody.

That's the episode. Go to hell. I love you. Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We think of Franklin as the dodging dude flying a kite in the rain.

Benjamin Franklin is our subject for a new season with Walter Isaacson. He's the most successful self-made business person in America. A printer, a scientist, founding father, but maybe not the guy we think we know. Franklin casts his lot on the side of revolution, and it's another thing that splits the family apart. Listen to On Benjamin Franklin with Walter Isaacson on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Andrea Gunning, the host of Betrayal.

I'm excited to announce that the Betrayal podcast is expanding. We are going to be releasing episodes weekly every Thursday. Each week you'll hear brand new stories, firsthand accounts of shocking deception, broken trust, and the trail of destruction left behind. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kay hasn't heard from her sister in seven years.

I have a proposal for you. Come up here and document my project. All you need to do is record everything like you always do. What was that? That was live audio of a woman's nightmare. Can Kay trust her sister or is history repeating itself? There's nothing dangerous about what you're doing. They're just dreams.

Dream Sequence is a new horror thriller from Blumhouse Television, iHeartRadio, and Realm. Listen to Dream Sequence on the iHeartRadio app,