Dickens and Kinkade

I've been reading Tale of Two Cities recently, and while I think I will prefer Great Expectations by the time I've finished, the struggles of Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton are beautifully realized. Likewise, choose a random painting by Thomas Kinkade, undoubtedly a scene with some combination of cabin, woods, sun, stars, flowers, snow, and hearthy blaze emanating from windows (perhaps all at once), and I find myself admitting that the piece does demonstrate capability in its technical execution. So what makes the difference between the greatest English novelist of the 19th century, and the most popular living artist of the 20th/21st centuries? In other words, why should we forgive the sentimentality of Dickens but not of Kinkade? In a word: sin.

One interesting feature of Dickens's books is his constant reference to Christianity; though it's typically simplified into a moral system from the complex religion it truly is, Christian values are the driving force behind most of Dickens's heroic characters. Though my brief research into his actual religious values makes him more likely a universalist than an honest Christian, his core values seem clearly and solidly rooted in the New Testament. Kinkade, on the other hand, is a self-professing Christian who apparently had the good taste to give each of his four daughters the middle name "Christian", and who has referred to his work at times past as painting "the world without the Fall". For comparison purposes, then, Dickens is a lousy Christian who produces great Christian art, while Kinkade is a professedly serious one who produces kitsch.

Kinkade is perhaps the easier to assess. His paintings are instantly recognizable; all one has to do to describe the bulk of his oeuvre is to throw a random collection of bucolic, down-home-y elements on a canvas that may or may not make sense in the frame together. This produces paintings which are often difficult to describe in normal ways. Look at one of his paintings and ask yourself what time of day is represented. Easy, it's daytime, because there's Mr. Sun, smiling down on the cottage that has... light pouring out of its windows to the extent that it completely obscures the scene inside? Either the woodsman's house is on fire, or Kinkade is in love with a good "hearthy glow". Then ask yourself what season is represented. Aha! That's an easy one; the forest is drenched in snow. Yes, but there are also flowers in the windowboxes and deciduous trees with leaves nearby. I could go on, but this painting speaks for itself. Try to understand what's going on without reading the commentary beneath it. Good luck.

Ranting aside, I want to make it clear that I have no theoretical problem with his subject material; fantasy settings intrigue me: castles in the distance, mountainous landscapes with roads winding up their sides, cliffs with the sun setting behind them. Scenes like these can evoke powerful feelings and encourage the imagination. If I contrast Kinkade with someone like Allen Lee, who created art for The Lord of the Rings that has become almost canonical, I find their compositions superficially similar, yet Lee's are compelling and Kinkade's are flat, Lee's alive and Kikade's dead. The primary difference I can see is that Lee paints the dark side of the story, not just the happy ending. Lee paints the mountains and the cottages, but he also paints the monsters and the danger. With Kinkade, happiness is all that is ever on display, and as a result, his art feels handicapped; catharsis isn't cathartic if it isn't preceded by distress.

Looking at his art from its stated objective, to "paint a world without the fall", I'm left wondering if this goal is inherently flawed, or if Kinkade is simply a poor example of it. For reference, I turn immediately to Perelandra, a book which does effectively the same thing, but with far greater effect. Lewis tells the story of a man who travels to Venus to find it unfallen. It's an alien world, all rolling seas and floating islands, but what makes it truly different from Earth is the native woman's lack of corruption. She sees her world simply; the categories of "good" and "bad" don't seem to exist for her. She does what God tells her to do, and she lives a happy life. And if this were the entire story, it would likely be as boring as anything Kinkade has produced. Luckily, it's not; Ransom brings the devil with him, and the story follows Ransom's struggle against him to keep Perelandra unfallen. While the native woman remains sinless, and thus the happy ending does in some sense pervade the entirety of the work, there is the threat of a Fall throughout the story, and thus there is resolution and catharsis. Essentially, the threat of sin is enough to give the story weight, but I do think its complete absence would do harm to Lewis's work.

Turning to Dickens, we find another artist that many would consider sentimental. Dickens created characters that at times approach caricatures. There's Wemmick, with his post-office-slot mouth, who slowly transforms the further he gets from work, until he arrives at his home, which has a drawbridge and battlements from which he ritually fires a cannon at certain intervals. There's Scrooge, a grasping miser whose physical manifestation seems to be an outpouring of his inner self, and who moves from being the meanest, most selfish man in London to being everyone's Grampa, literally overnight. Dickens's characters, some more colorful than others, can at times seem one-note, as if they were created to fill a role in the story, and all of their personal details chosen to suit. But then there's also Pip, the young boy who seems reasonable and fair in his dealings with others, but who comes to the end of his story and finally realizes his selfishness. He spends the rest of his life correcting his mistakes, and he never gets what he wants; I dare say he's the better for it. Then there's Sydney Carton, the man with a brain that seems capable of anything, even building a legal case while drunk out of his mind; the man who saves people's lives for no reason he can discern, except that doing so means he wins; the man who makes other people's lives dramatically better, though he's unable to care for his own in the same way. This man speaks and acts with nuance, and when life is on the line he acts the man and finds heroism few might have seen beforehand.

This brings me to my point: Pip and Carton are both good characters because they sin but eventually realize it. The ends of their stories are wonderful and heart-wrenching because they've lived, and life includes a substantial dose of sin. They aren't better because they've sinned, but because they recognize their sin. Dickens could have written both worlds without sin, I suppose, but then there would be no story, and no proper ending. Kinkade's art lacks the contextualizing struggle; it's the happiness that goes forward and backward and has no contrast, and thus is meaningless.

Perhaps what makes a happy ending happy is that it comes at the end of a long struggle; without the struggle, it's neither an ending, nor is it truly happy. And what is a struggle without sin, or at least the potential for it?

Note to Future Self:

If ever you find yourself in the process of designing a vessel for the purpose of exploring the dark, vast reaches of endless space, promise me you'll do two things.
First, install a metric crapload of emergency lighting; enough to illuminate every square inch of ever part of every area anyone might conceivably go.
Second, design corridors without a metric crapload of dark corners in which creatures, grotesque beyond polite description, can, and certainly will conceal themselves with the stated purpose of jumping out in a decidedly unfriendly manner.
Do this, and you will earn the gratitude of countless future explorers.
Yours,
Past Self