Posted on 01/07/2007 4:44:09 AM PST by grjr21
A North Carolina artist intrigued by the public obsession with celebrity has found herself feeding that obsession with a painting of actress Angelina Jolie as the Virgin Mary hovering over a Wal-Mart check-out line.
Kate Kretz has painted for 20 years but none of her previous work has garnered the attention given "Blessed Art Thou," showing this weekend at Art Miami, an annual exposition of modern and contemporary art.
The painting has gotten much attention from celebrity web sites and blogs. Since the buzz started, the number of daily unique visitors to Kretz's own blog has jumped from an average of 30 to 15,000 on Wednesday.
"My intention was to ask a question and get people to think," Kretz said in a telephone interview Friday from Miami. "I had no idea so many people would be asking a question and thinking."
The painting — acrylic and oil on linen — depicts an angelic Jolie in the clouds, holding her newborn daughter, Shiloh, with children Maddox and Zahara at her legs. Below them is a Wal-Mart checkout line. The painting is for sale for $50,000 through Chelsea Galleria in Miami, which represents Kretz.
On her blog, Kretz, 43, said the painting addresses "the celebrity worship cycle." She said she chose Jolie for the subject "because of her unavoidable presence in the media, the worldwide anticipation of her child, her 'unattainable' beauty and the good that she is doing in the world through her example, which adds another layer to the already complicated questions surrounding her status."
Washington Post art critic Blake Gopnik, asked to comment about "Blessed Art Thou" on a Post blog, was unimpressed. "Once you've deciphered it, there's not much chance of giving it a second look," Gopnik wrote.
it sounds like act I of Tosca, where Mario is painting the Virgin Mary with Tosca's face but not her eyes.
I am never comfortable when celebrities are made to look like Mary or any other Christian symbol. Personally, I think Angelina Jolie, an openly bisexual and very ungodly person, is an extremely poor choice for this.
Best I can tell from the small picture is that it is awful and the idea behind it is stupid.
In other words, Jolie is a saint? Not by any stretch of the artists brush.
Woody Allen -- What does it say to you?
Girl -- It restates the negativeness of the universe. The hideous, lonely emptiness of existence. Nothingness. The predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity. Like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void with nothing but waste, horror and degradation forming a useless straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
Woody Allen -- What are you doing Saturday?
Girl -- Committing suicide.
Woody Allen -- What about Friday night?
I have no idea about her other works.
I'm looking at her ability to paint the human form, people's faces, paint the folds of the dress, the clouds, the store and shoppers.
She's talented.
No wonder muslims are contemptuous of our nation.
But hey, maybe soon Walmart will be selling Chinese-made knockoff black velvet paintings of this bisexual child-collecting Buddhist-wannabe psychologically disturbed former cutter as the Madonna. What a country.
She could have a future air brushing vans, or as a commericial artist, but the composition is horrible, though humorous. Perhaps cartooning is in her future.
As you ruminate, consider separating the culture from the marketing and promotion by Hollywood. They are separate, and many, like me, just do not participate. Also, I do not think that the society produces that anymore than in produces Cheerios. And Hollywood may not reflect much more than itself.
Ping
I think you're belittling her artistic abilities because you don't like the subject matter.
As I said originally, subject matter aside, she's a talented artist.
I think there should be at least one picture of either Angelina Jolie or Michelle Malkin posted on FreeRepublic, every day.
Actually, if there are any very talented Freeper artists, you would become famous overnight if you painted a picture, Heaven on top and Hell on the bottom, showing the angels in heaven as prominent republicans and the demons below, and the damned, as democrats.
Hmmm... looks more like the whore of Babylon to me.
whoa...
Let's see ....She has an affair with a married man. Then they have a child without getting married. Great example. I will be surprised if they stay together long enough to raise those kids to adulthood.
"As I said originally, subject matter aside, she's a talented artist."
Physical ability aside, I'm a talented guitarist. /s
The woman is OK as best. Her view of middle america is the same tired old recycled junk we have seen for going on 10 years. She lays paint to canvas no better than many graphic artists I know. If she hadn't made an attempt to take a shot at us knuckle-draggers in fly-over country, I would have never heard of her.
The subject matter is what made her known to us, nothing else.
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