"Living Waters" by Thomas Kinkade (Getty Images)

Artist Thomas Kinkade, whose light-filled Frank Capra-like visions of Americana turned spinster aunts nationwide into art collectors, has died. Kinkade's family issued a statement Friday indicating the 'Painter of Light' died of natural causes. Kinkade's wife Nanette also said the family was "shocked and saddened by his death."

The Mercury News reports Thomas Kinkade's mass-produced visions of a shimmering, mythic bygone America were enormously popular:

His paintings are hanging in an estimated one of every 20 homes in the United States. Fans cite the warm, familiar feeling of his mass-produced works of art, while it has become fashionable for art critics to dismiss his pieces as tacky. In any event, his prints of idyllic cottages and bucolic garden gates helped establish a brand -- famed for their painted highlights -- not commonly seen in the art world.

Kinkade, whose Media Arts Group was raking in upwards of $32 million a quarter a decade ago, preferred to describe himself as a "warrior for light." In a 2002 interview he said that he used his talents to "bring light to penetrate the darkness many people feel."

Though Kinkade was a wealthy family man and devout Christian there have long been hints of darkness behind the light. In 2009 the F.B.I. was investigating allegations that Kinkade had committed fraud and in 2010, he was picked up for D.U.I. Previously former employees and associates had testified that Kinkade was given to bizarre personal behavior, including heckling Siegfried & Roy, groping fans and allegedly urinating on a Winnie the Pooh statue at the Disneyland Hotel.

Thomas Kinkade didn't lack for confidence in his worth and work. As Susan Orlean reported in The New Yorker in 2001:

If you see his paintings before you meet him, you might expect him to be wispy and pixie-like, but he is as brawny and good-natured as the neighborhood butcher. He has the buoyant self-assurance of someone who started poor and obscure but has always been sure he would end up rich and famous. He is so self-assured that he predicts it's just a matter of time before the art world comes around to appreciating him. In fact, he bet me a million dollars that a major museum will hold a Thomas Kinkade retrospective in his lifetime.

Authorities won't know the exact cause of Kinkade's death until next week. On Friday, his family was reportedly "traveling to Australia and unavailable for further comment." As of Friday they were said to be planning private memorials.

Thomas Kinkade: "The man is catnip for the psychopathologists," critic Jed Perl writes.

The conservative art critic Jed Perl reveals in The New Republic today that, as one might have guessed, he is not a fan of the self-styled Painter of Light, Thomas Kinkade. Mr. Perl adds that there are people that he dislikes almost as much as Mr. Kinkade: the "liberal-spirited or politically correct academics" who have stepped up to discuss--and, in some cases, defend--the artist in a new essay collection that is richly titled Thomas Kinkade: The Artist in the Mall.

"Can the intellectuals who have apotheosized the strip malls be wrong?" Mr. Perl writes. "Can the millions who have purchased a Thomas Kinkade of one sort or another be deluded?" His answer is pretty much, "Yes."

In his rollicking tour of the The Artist in the Mall, Mr. Perl singles out artist and art critic Jeffrey Vallance as among "the most unabashed of the cheerleaders" who contributed to the anthology. Apparently, Mr. Vallance proudly shares that he owns a "Kinkade La-Z-Boy recliner" (which sounds amazing) and argues that the infamous episode in which Mr. Kinkade urinated on a Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland in 2006 qualifies as "performance art." Needless to say, the critic is not pleased.

Mr. Perl almost manages to finish his book review without firing off shots at the contemporary art world, but he just can't help himself, writing:

"At a time when Lisa Yuskavage, an artist no more or less schlocky than Thomas Kinkade, is exhibiting at the blue chip David Zwirner Gallery, which also represents the estate of an old fashioned austere modernist such as Donald Judd, the wonder may be that anybody feels any need at all to justify their interest in Kinkade’s crap."

He has an opinion on the peeing episode too:

"My own feeling, after contemplating the Kinkade industry, is that, so far as the Painter of Light is concerned, we are all a bunch of Winnie the Poohs and he has urinated on us all."

Our take: This didn't have to happen and shouldn't have. That said, if we had $6000 to spare, we'd go for the diptych Andy Sneezing.
[Observer, The Art Newspaper, NPR]   

2. Thomas Kinkade Gets a DUI
Thomas Kinkade, the self-proclaimed (and hugely successful) "Painter of Light" known for the bucolic, saccharine landscape paintings that adorn dentist office and retirement home walls across the nation, was arrested for driving while intoxicated and spent the night in Monterey County Jail.

Our take: Any day the man's away from his paintbrushes is a public service.  And, as far as embarrassing headlines go, this one's way better than the 2006 report that he once relieved himself on a Winnie the Pooh figure while remarking, "This one's for you, Walt."
[The Sacramento Bee, The Los Angeles Times]

3. Brooklyn Museum Under Fire
A New York Times article on low attendance at the Brooklyn Museum and the arguable failure of its "populist" programming sparked intense web debate this week. Artinfo called for the resignation of Director Arnold Lehman after a 13-year tenure, while Museum Nerd defended the museum, arguing visitor demographics are more important than attendance. Lee Rosenbaum took a thoughtful, in-depth look and Lehman himself responded to the hubbub in a video interview on her Culturegrrl site.

Our take: The Museum had made some questionable choices, and offering the winner of the reality show Work of Art a solo show is just the latest of them.
[New York Times, Artinfo, Museum Nerd, CultureGrrl]

4. Michelangelo's encoded anatomical drawings
Two Johns Hopkins neuroscientists believe Michelangelo hid detailed anatomical sketches in his famous Sistine Chapel frescos as a coded attack on the Catholic Church.

Our take: Someone needs to put a moratorium on The Da Vinci Code at Johns Hopkins Med School.
[Telegraph]

5. Caravaggio's Bones Found
A group of Italian researchers concluded Wednesday that bones exhumed from a Tuscan crypt last year are those of Baroque artist Caravaggio, who died mysteriously in 1610. Although anthropologists confirmed the artist did suffer from syphilis, analysis indicates he most likely died from lead or sun poisoning.

Our take: Let's get this straight. A guy who brawled in bars, killed his tennis opponent, and dodged assassination attempts died from either using too much lead paint or being outside too much?
[Reuters]

6. Damien Hirst Eyes London Museum
Damien Hirst and architect Mike Randall put in a bid to convert the Magazine, a 19th-century Hyde Park munitions store currently used as a dog pound, into a museum for the artist's personal collection. Admission would be free, with one notable exception: Viewers who wish to see Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull For the Love of God will pay a fee. Because he doesn't have enough money already.

Our take: The artist, well-known for both hubris and inventiveness, gets points for innovation. But is he exhibiting For the Love of God because it never sold, or because no institution he doesn't own wants to show it?
[Artinfo]

7. Jeff Koons' "Art Car" Breaks Down
Jeff Koons' garishly striped BMW "Art Car" premiered at the 24-hour Le Mans race on Monday, June 14, only to putter out after five hours. The car lost momentum early in the race due to a punctured tire, and then mysteriously ran out of fuel on the circuit.

Our take: This is so embarrassing for BMW that it might finally put an end to the PR trick of hiring artists to design cars, wine bottles or watches to get a brand publicity. We hope.
[Transom, Times Live]

8. The History of (Net) Art
Hyperallergic chronicled the growth of net art and social media from 2004 to the present in an illuminating three part series (and includes a shout-out to the Observer's coverage of the Facebook phenomenon).

Our take: Who knew artist Michael Mandiberg sold all his possessions on a "performative e-commerce site" a year before eBay bought Paypal?
[Hyperallergic, Observer]

9. Jesus Statue Destroyed by Act of God?
A striking, 62-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ in Monroe, Ohio—nicknamed "Touchdown Jesus" due to the figure's resemblance to a referee designating a touchdown—was struck by lightning on Monday, June 14, igniting both a fire that destroyed the locally loved statue and much Internet buzz.

Our take: According to The Washington Post, the pastor told the residents of a home for at-risk women next door "Jesus took a hit for you tonight," and pledged to rebuild the statue.  If The Lord was just being an art critic, we've got some better targets for him in Chelsea.
[Daily Mail, The Washington Post]

 10. Modigliani Sculpture Sets Record in France
A Modigliani limestone head sold at Christie's in Paris for $53 million, more than ten times the low estimate. The sculpture is the most expensive artwork ever to sell at auction in France.

Our take: Past a certain price, these sums are all pretty inconceivable, but the French still have a ways to go to match the 2006 sale of Jackson Pollock’s No. 5, which went for a whopping $140 mil.
[Bloomberg]

Populist art is, thankfully, never "about" anything other than enhancing one's mood. It is, by definition, a shared joy: Toulouse-Lautrec's gaudy posters decorated smelly, syphilitic fin-de-siècle Paris; Tretchikoff's Blue Lady , which adorned every home during my childhood, raised up the fragile spirit of postwar Britain. And popular artists, unlike their more intellectual contemporaries, can actually paint. Check out the technique on the heroic, heavy-metal fantasy extravaganzas of Boris Vallejo (you know the ones! He paints those Raquel Welch–type broads in skimpy leather bikinis riding warty prehistoric rhinos, which requires a lot more skill than a Pollock or a Rothko).

BUT! There's a new artist on the fromage circuit who has ambushed my personal popular-art crusade. I'm talking about the "painter of light" himself, Thomas Kinkade-not to be confused with Rubin Kincaid, the manager of the Partridge Family. Thomas Kinkade is America's most collected living artist, a painter-communicator whose tranquil, light-infused team-daubed paintings bring hope and joy to millions each year-or so says the brochure I received when a perverse and sadistic friend bought me a year's membership to the Thomas Kinkade Collectors' Society.

Despite the misty Christian underpinnings of his work, the 45-year-old Mr. Kinkade is a mogul of Trumpian stature, a stop-at-nothing merchandiser whose $600 million empire is fueled by 350 eponymous galleries, sofa licenses, wallpapers, night-lights, La-Z-boy chairs, a novel, a planned community called Hiddenbrooke, endless QVC appearances-all of which would be fine, except for the fact that the art consistently fails to deliver any of the much-vaunted "hope and joy."

Permit me to explain. The excruciatingly twee Kinkade oeuvre consists of biblically inspired, light-infused romantic landscapes: rustic, wisteria-strangled villages, babbling brooks straddled by mossy stone bridges, rose-enrobed Cotswold cottages with gently smoking chimneys, glistening gazebos, lighthouses, etc. Though clearly intended to impart a cozy, fresh-baked-muffin, home-at-last feeling, this overload of feel-good iconography creeps me out deeply. It's not my fault! Mr. Kinkade provides no clear narrative and no clues as to what is occurring behind those misty hedgerows and suspiciously glowing lattice windows, leaving me to assume the worst. Is Mrs. Kinkade pulling a Bundt cake out of her oven? Is Granny Kinkade faggoting the perimeter of a doily? I don't think so!

As far as I'm concerned, inside every Kinkade cottage is a veritable bloodbath, a Pasolini-esque hellhole where-at the very least-children are cannibalized, and Granny Kinkade is fed dead rats by Satan and forced to admit to terrible crimes she never committed. Come back to the five and dime, David Lynch, David Lynch.

Before you dismiss me as a certifiable lunatic, why not take the Kinkade Rorschach test yourself and see what you come up with when you project your imagination onto kinky Kinkadeville? Are there decomposing bodies buried under those luscious peonies and dew-drenched lupins? Don't be stupid, of course there are!

Back to that vermin-ridden hovel of yours: If you have a few bucks in your art budget, you could do worse than log onto www.adoraporcelain.com. This site sells ceramic plates-a longtime favorite medium of popular artists-by smarty-pants art stars like Jack Pierson, Karen Kilimnik and others. My pick: John Waters' The Girls , a set of three 101¼4-inch plates, each adorned with photographs of three ghastly mannequin busts-Kim, Tina and Kathy-which inhabit Mr. Waters' Baltimore abode and which he creepily claims have become his "friends." This $600 limited edition-hang 'em, don't lick 'em!-will be available in late August at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and Printed Matter. Call 212-929-1404 for more info, or e-mail gmc@adoraporcelain.com.

Last week I spoke to Mr. Waters, who is summering in Cape Cod, and asked him if his plates held any appeal for Kinkade lovers, "Well, no," replied the legendary cinematic provocateur, "The girls on my plates would kick his ass and set his studio on fire."

Hope and joy!