We always knew Angelina Jolie was a goddess but, Jesus, we had no idea!

Behold Our Lady of the Wal-Mart.

Patroness of the Checkout Counter, Mystic Rose of the Tabloids, Guardian of Children in Every Color of The Rainbow.

Pray for us.

Or adopt us.

Yes, Angelina is simply too impossibly beautiful for even committed and confessional dickhunters like us to resist!

The painting Blessed Art Thou has an asking price of $50,000 and was intended, says artist Kate Kretz, to address “the psychological ramifications of celebrity worship, particularly as they relate to class and consumerism.”

Though she has painted and exhibited for 20 year, none of Ms. Kretz’s previous work has ever garnered the attention she received when the painting appeared at a Miami art show in 2006. Predictably, a small but vocal group picketed the event.

“The title Blessed Art Thou,” she wrote on her blog at the time, “is taken from a line in the Catholic prayer Hail Mary: ‘…Blessed art thou among women.’ Our culture is deifying celebrities, but in the Bible, it is the meek who are blessed.

“Angelina Jolie was chosen as the subject because of her unavoidable presence in the media, the world-wide 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.”

The art critic for the Globe and Mail, though, had a somewhat more acerbic take:

“Kate Kretz’s painting . . . gets its messages across . . . It presents Angelina Jolie as our nation’s Madonna of Consumption.

In a glory of siliconed breasts, collagened lips and foreign-adopted cherubs, Angelina reigns over Wal-Mart’s banality — its all-American brands, its all-American flag, its all-American obesity.

The problem with the picture, art-wise, is that its messages are way TOO clear.”

Aw hell, give us all-American banality or give us death!

Who doesn’t need a little … jolie, a little joy in their day? Who wouldn’t welcome a miracle bursting forth on their ceiling with cherubs singing? Of course, we might prefer Brad to be part of that miracle — or, as long as we’re wishing, let’s go crazy — Rafael Verga, but we’ll take the gods and goddesses we can get.

hattip to My Second Shelf Life
Ms. Kretz recently exhibited her new work,
the Sublime Collection in Raleigh, N.C.

Also of interest
Prayer Cards of the Stars