Science Explains Why It's So Easy to Hate 'Painter of Light' Thomas Kinkade

You got to feel for Thomas Kinkade: The self-proclaimed Painter of Light spent his career facing accusations that he was a hack whose paintings were more suited for a Walmart bin than a museum. Critics have denigrated his charming, bucolic artworks as sugar-drenched, unpleasantly artificial, and something "normal" people should recoil from. When he died last year of an alcohol-and-Valium overdose, the Washington Post pointed out that many considered his work the "epitome of mediocre art."

Now that Kinkade is in the cold, cold ground, people are still ragging on him. The latest poke in the eye comes not from critical circles, but from an international coalition of academics who are investigating humans' reactions to Kinkade's art, and indeed have been doing so since at least 2011. This spring, the long-toiling scholars published a study in the British Journal of Aesthetics, which for some reason is getting press now, asking the question: If people view Kinkade's paintings over and over again, will they come to like them more?