{"id":75860,"date":"2010-04-26T21:11:45","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T03:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lookingcloser.org\/?p=75860"},"modified":"2012-10-06T18:21:49","modified_gmt":"2012-10-07T00:21:49","slug":"on-sentimentality-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/","title":{"rendered":"On sentimentality."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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This image and others are available here: http:\/\/www.somethingawful.com\/d\/photoshop-phriday\/paintings-light-part.php?page=1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

I\u2019m making some observations about sentimentality in a couple of upcoming reviews, and to enhance those articles I\u2019ve been reading and re-reading some other essays on the subject.<\/p>\n

I revisited one of my favorites tonight, a piece by Gregory Wolfe, publisher of Image<\/em>, on the popular paintings of Thomas Kinkade.<\/a> And again I was impressed. Here are a couple of excerpts: <\/p>\n

\u2026what scares me about Thomas Kinkade is not so much the treacly emotion he seeks to evoke or his inveterate prettifying of nature, but the political subtext underlying his iconography. The only folk who could ever have inhabited his cottages and lighthouses are prosperous white people. Nearly all of his paintings are of a world circa 1800-1914, with perhaps a small percentage depicting a world between 1914 and 1960. He likes to say that he is a painter of \u201cmemories and traditions,\u201d but he is highly selective in what he chooses to remember, and that choice bears an unnerving resemblance to a world that is comfortingly pre-modern and Anglo-Saxon in composition.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And then, he delivers the sledgehammer\u2026<\/p>\n

The essence of Kinkade\u2019s sentimentality is the packaging of nostalgia. It\u2019s an oxymoronic idea, but it has become a major part of our cultural life, as Florence King has noted: \u201cTrue nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories\u2026but American-style nostalgia is about as ephemeral as copyrighted d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.\u201d Kinkade\u2019s patriotism and his attacks on the horrors of artistic modernism are standard-issue conservative notions. When it comes to theology, however, he is a little more original. The majority of his expressions of faith are fairly conventional, solidly within the evangelical mold, but his theological defense of the world depicted in his paintings is that \u201cI like to portray a world without the Fall.\u201d I have yet to encounter any evidence that Kinkade cites scriptural or other warrant for this modus operandi. The Bible, as a narrative, seems fairly explicit about there being a Before and an After. Moreover, Christ\u2019s message was not to pretend the world isn\u2019t fallen but to take up our crosses and follow him through suffering and sacrifice. To create a body of work illustrating a world without the Fall is, for a Christian, to render Christ superfluous.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wow.<\/p>\n

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This image and more are available here: http:\/\/www.somethingawful.com\/d\/photoshop-phriday\/paintings-light-part.php?page=1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m making some observations about sentimentality in a couple of upcoming reviews, and to enhance those articles I\u2019ve been reading and re-reading some other essays on the subject. I revisited one of my favorites tonight, a piece by Gregory Wolfe, publisher of Image, on the popular paintings of Thomas Kinkade. And again I was impressed. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1051,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal"],"yoast_head":"\nOn sentimentality.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I'm making some observations about sentimentality in a couple of upcoming reviews, and to enhance those articles I've been reading and re-reading some\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On sentimentality.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I'm making some observations about sentimentality in a couple of upcoming reviews, and to enhance those articles I've been reading and re-reading some\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Looking Closer\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-27T03:11:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2012-10-07T00:21:49+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/images.somethingawful.com\/inserts\/articlepics\/photoshop\/01-16-04-kinkade\/Kanzune2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey Overstreet\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeffrey Overstreet\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/\",\"name\":\"On sentimentality.\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-04-27T03:11:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-10-07T00:21:49+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/#\/schema\/person\/2675c6d9f6401acd7568e32160e5374e\"},\"description\":\"I'm making some observations about sentimentality in a couple of upcoming reviews, and to enhance those articles I've been reading and re-reading some\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/2010\/04\/on-sentimentality-2\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"On sentimentality.\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/\",\"name\":\"Looking Closer\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/#\/schema\/person\/2675c6d9f6401acd7568e32160e5374e\",\"name\":\"Jeffrey Overstreet\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lookingcloser\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/14a7727373cd5b470d66842ecf5cc007?s=96&d=blank&r=pg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/14a7727373cd5b470d66842ecf5cc007?s=96&d=blank&r=pg\",\"caption\":\"Jeffrey Overstreet\"},\"description\":\"Visit Looking Closer for Jeffrey Overstreet's latest writing on art, faith, and film. 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