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'Banal and hollow': Why the quaint paintings of Thomas Kinkade divided the US

    From - BBC World News By - Nicholas Barber Edit by - Amal Udawatta (Image credit: The Kinkade Family Foundation) Beloved by many, despised by others, Thomas Kinkade's quaint rustic scenes and his wholesome image belied a dark and tortured story that contrasts with his 'sugary' artworks. Thomas Kinkade was one of the best-selling artists in history, as well as one of the most divisive. When he died in 2012, the American painter had been rocked by business problems, but at his commercial peak a decade earlier, his company was bringing in more than  $100m a year . And yet his work was despised by many critics – not because it was blasphemous or obscene, but because, well, he specialised in quaint pictures of thatched-roof rural cottages nestling in leafy groves. "Thomas Kinkade's style is illustrative saccharine fantasy rather than art with which you can connect at any meaningful level," Charlotte Mullins, the author of A Little History of Art, tells the BBC....

'It was the start of a new movement': The Dutch rewilding project that took a dark turn

   From - BBC  World News  By- Isabelle Gerretsen Editted by - Amal Udawatta Getty Images The Oostvaardersplassen is one of Europe's most controversial and influential rewilding projects (Credit: Getty Images) In 2018, thousands of dead animals, emaciated from starvation, lay strewn across a famous Dutch rewilding project. Was it animal cruelty or just nature taking its course? In February 2018, train commuters travelling between the Dutch cities of Almere and Amsterdam were horrified to see  animal carcasses strewn across the landscape . They were passing by the Oostvaardersplassen, one of  Europe's most infamous rewilding projects , known for its diverse birdlife and  wild cows, deer and horses . For many years, beginning in the 1980s, the ethos at the Oostvaardersplassen was not to intervene and to allow nature to take its own course. The pioneering approach helped shape the  conversation around rewilding  and influenced  nature resto...