It worked on me, though I hate to say it. Thomas Kinkade wasn't dead but a day before I started viewing his work differently. What I once pooh-poohed as soulless dreck soon became soulless dreck with a certain cozy charm. When a living person makes crappy art it is just crappy art; when the artist dies, that crappy art becomes elevated to kitsch, and kitsch lures me like a siren's song every time. And since you can't libel the dead, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that it looks like the guy drank himself to death, which also raises the value of his paintings for me. One thing I will not do, however, is argue whether or not his work was "art," because it most certainly was. It stirred things in the viewers' hearts... More >>>