ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case study of the successful American artist Thomas Kinkade, whose artistic output spans several industries, reaches thousands, and makes millions. It invokes Kinkade as a warning, or counter-case, for art and management, to question management studies' embrace of aesthetics or a romantic notion of aesthetic endeavor. Art represents the highest goals of humans, and also the most crass commercialism, speculation, and ego gratification. The growing field of aesthetics and management has reached a critical mass. Thomas Kinkade provides a powerful case study of aesthetics gone awry, a warning about applying excessive art, or at least a romantic, historically uncontextualized vision of aesthetics, to management studies. In Kinkade's case, the connections between art and commerce are fairly clear, and it is easy to disparage his form of mass art. Kinkade's paintings fall into categories such as 'Bridges, Gazebos, Seascapes, Holidays, and Lighthouses'.
