Shedding Light on Kinkade. (Letters to the Editor).

William F. Jasper's article on Thomas Kinkade ("A Beacon in the Night," December 17th issue) allows Mr. Kinkade the opportunity to slander, however unintentionally, people who are in fact his Christian brethren. Some of the most vigorous critics of Mr. Kinkade's art are devout Christians who also work professionally in the visual arts and who find his work highly skilled but predictable, safe, and stale. These are hardly "venomous" attacks by apostles of "darkness," but responses from serious artists who are engaged in the risks of creating work that challenges, inspires, and edifies. Media Arts Group, Inc., which markets Kinkade's images, is very protective of this artist, even secretive, when approached for information. While posing him as a "leading American artist" they insist that any critique "reflect positively upon the artist," thus sheltering him from the kind of honest critiques to which any other serious artist is open and vulnerable. They want puff pieces, which THE NEW AMERICAN has, unfortunately , produced yet another example.

The myth of the art world's energetic attack on Kinkade seems to be expressed through these typical puff pieces (another of which appeared recently in Christianity Today), suggesting that it is part of the overall marketing strategy for his work. I know of few people in the "art world" who even think about Thomas Kinkade, much less oppose him. Yet, even in the realms of academe there is an interest in Kinkade as a social phenomenon, if not an artistic one, with papers at academic conferences discussing his work.

Kinkade is a marketing genius, and a painter of obvious and considerable skill. That he puts that skill in the service of a safe and predictable product does not justify his dismissal of other artists with such mean-spirited rhetoric. That he does so suggests that there is darkness in the light, a darkness that is the artist's own self-idolatry and hubris. In this respect, Mr. Kinkade represents typical patterns that exist in the larger art world to which he offers himself as a "beacon of light."

RICHARD TERRELL

Professor of Art at Doane College Crete, Nebraska

I read with interest "A Beacon in the Night." There is no denying that Kinkade's paintings are beautiful masterpieces, but I'm afraid the tone of the article and others I've read about him tend to polarize those who prefer his style as those who "stand for family, marriage, and home ... patriotism and this great country" against those who prefer other styles (who may not even be "real people"). I am a Baptist Christian who believes in all of those values, who is conservative both theologically and politically, and yet I really enjoy good old-fashioned "Modern Art." Undoubtedly, there is an irrational and destructive modernism, but there is also modernism of the rational and constructive kind. There are those of us who find comfort, joy, hope, and meaning in even nonrepresentational art.

Many people forget that the capture of light was also a major goal of the 19th century impressionists, who are often credited (or blamed) for opening the door to 20th century modern art. The medium is the message, but if it is the purpose of humanity to "think God's thought after Him," I can testify that I have encountered many real scenes in my life that looked exactly like an impressionist painting. One has only to look at beautiful crystalline forms to see that God is a cubist, at our dreams or the visions of the prophets in the Bible to see that God is a surrealist, at the pattern of trees in a landscape, the waves of the sea, the clouds, the stars in the sky to see that God is an abstract expressionist.

RANDY RECTOR

Fort Scott, Kansas