Neiman Marked Off

LeRoy Neiman, who overcame severe myopia and a complete lack of artistic ability to become one of the 20th century’s most well known painters, has died at the age of 91. Best known for his blurry, indecipherable images, mostly of sporting events and personalities, or iguanas playing Canasta – who can tell?, Neiman got his big break in a chance encounter with Hugh Hefner in the 1950s, and provided illustrations for Playboy for more than 50 years, including creating the Femlin character for the Party Jokes page.

Lights Out

Thomas Kinkade, who was to art what Nicholas Sparks is to literature and what Olive Garden is to fine cuisine, has died at the age of 54 from combining alcohol and Valium, likely used to quiet the guilt of having sold the same shitty painting of a cottage designed to trap wayward children in a Grimm Brothers story with an unearthly glow emitting from within a few million times. He claimed to be America’s most collected living artist (when he was alive), with an estimated 1 in 20 Americans owning one of his paintings, thanks to appearances on QVC, stores in half the malls in America, Hallmark calendars and licensing agreements to put his art on Wal-Mart gift cards and in new housing developments. Claiming to be a devout Christian – going so far as to give 4 of his children the middle name Christian – Kinkade said that he attempted to give his paintings a larger moral dimension, even as he charged exorbitant prices for personally adding a splash of light to the same painting you could buy at the mall. The moral stalwart also once took a leak on a statue of Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland and said, “This one’s for you, Walt.”