Mahonri Young: His Life and Art By Thomas E. Toone Signature Books, 1997. Hardcover: 206 pages. ISBN: 1-56085-055-8 Suggested retail price: $75.00 (US)
Reviewed by: Benson Parkinson

Mahonri Young is a name that has resonated for me almost as long as I've been aware of our history. Here was a fellow Mormon (a relative no less), who had managed to achieve national prominence in an art and use it to do something significant with his pioneer heritage, and with a given name even more unusual than mine. I didn't know much about him (I believe my grandfather must have known him), but I figured he was someone Mormons could look to as a source of pride, and perhaps as a model for how young Latter-day Saints might make their way in the world of art. My impression on reading Thomas E. Toone's new biography is that in large measure I was right -- Young's achievement is monumental (what else do you call epical public statuary), and he plays out, in the course of his life story, all the big themes in the lives of Mormon artists, visual and literary.

Mahonri Mackintosh Young was born in 1877 in Salt Lake City, the youngest grandchild of Brigham Young born while Brigham was alive. Mahonri spent his early years near the mouth of Parleys Canyon on the grounds of the old Deseret Woolen Mills, which his father owned and ran. When Mahonri's father died, his mother moved the family to Salt Lake. Mahonri conceived his artistic vocation in childhood, dropped out of high school after the eighth grade, studied under James Harwood, one of the Paris art missionaries, and worked as a newspaper artist and engraver to earn money to pursue his education abroad. He learned the basics at the Art Students League in New York, and then refined his craft at the Academie Julian in Paris and on intensive sketching tours in France and Italy. (Though he endured teasing for his unusual name as a boy, he came to view it as an asset, signing himself M. M. Young, then Mahonri Young, then just Mahonri.)

In 1907 Mahonri married Cecelia Sharp in Salt Lake City, not in the temple, and with her had two children. He spent the years 1906-1909 in Salt Lake, trying to scratch out a living as an artist. Mahonri sensed rightly that the time was ripe for a sculptor in Utah, that his generation would be the one erecting monuments to their pioneer parents and grandparents. The sculptor also has to figure out how to make a living in the meantime. He convinced B. H. Roberts to sit for a bust, which received good notices in the Salt Lake papers, but which failed to bring any commissions. He did a sculpture in butter at the Utah State Fair and wrangled a contract to do the friezes on the Deseret Gym. He found the LDS Church enthusiastic about his idea for a seagull monument but unable at that time to come up with the money. They did give him a commission for a statue of Joseph Smith, entrusting him with Joseph's death mask, but apparently paid him so poorly Mahonri could not afford a studio or adequate plaster or clay. He was dissatisfied with the finished Joseph, and the Church rejected it. Desperate, he told them if they would let him do the matching statue of Hyrum, he would include another statue of Joseph at no additional charge. They agreed, and this time secured for him a studio, and he completed the pair to their satisfaction. (They are now located immediately south of the Salt Lake Temple but originally stood in an alcoves in one of the big east doors.) He bid for sculptures and friezes for the Technical Arts building of the Salt Lake High School, but still struggled to make a living. At one point he was reduced to pitching hay. The Salt Lake High School job, as well as Mahonri's big commission, the Sea Gull Monument, came through only after Mahonri had moved his family to New York City.

In New York Mahonri concentrated on sculpting laborers, a theme that had brought him the most success in Paris. His work reviewed well and sold well, and Mahonri as a sculptor became associated with the Ashcan school of gritty realistic painters. He spent considerable time on the Hopi, Apache, and Navajo Habitat Groups for the American Museum of Natural History, and made trips to Arizona and New Mexico for research. Widowed in 1917, Young found a patron and moved with the children to Paris for two years beginning in 1924. He competed for but lost a major commission for the Pioneer Woman Memorial in Ponca City, Oklahoma in 1926. He achieved new success with a series of prizefighters. His work continued to receive strong reviews during the Depression, but commissions dried up. Now he supported himself by teaching at the Art Students League, where he was popular with the students and where over the years he taught every subject in the curriculum. In 1931 he married Dorothy Weir, an artist and daughter of the American impressionist J. Alden Weir. Mahonri lobbied hard for the This is the Place Monument, which he completed in 1947, then equally hard for the portrait of his grandfather in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda, unveiled in 1950. Mahonri died in 1950 at the age of 80.

Toone's biography is a handsome volume, 9"x12" (which is small for a coffee table book), black-covered, with many prints and photographs, the majority black and white (not a weakness since most are sketches, plaster, or bronze). The photos are well chosen and well situated in the text, so that one finishes the book with a strong visual sense of the progress of Mahonri's oeuvre. (I did notice the image on the front jacket, from the Sea Gull Monument, is backwards -- compare the same subject on page 100, which is in the right way.) From a narrative point of view, Toone's writing is a little thin. One gets the main points, also that Mahonri was a cheerful, friendly man, but one apprehends little of what fires him. This, for example, is Toone's account of Mahonri's courtship of Dorothy Weir: "[In 1929] Young returned to New York and began seeing Dorothy again. From this time on, their relationship became increasingly serious. One night he put his arm around her while riding in a New York cab. Then he kissed her. She protested. She told him she thought they should not see each other. He disagreed. They became engaged on 25 January and married on 17 February 1931" (143). There's a wonderful story here, but the part of it that matters is the part between "He disagreed" and "They became engaged." The book is full of redundancies. Perhaps some of this is intentional, as if the author assumed that people would mostly be looking at the pictures and reading the page or two surrounding the ones that interested them, rather than straight through.

But this is primarily an art book, and in my (non-art-expert) eyes, on that count it succeeds very well. Toone's technique is to interrupt Young's personal history for a column or two of discussion of the historical movements and specific works that influenced Mahonri at a given time, then advance to a paragraph or two describing the completed work, almost always accompanied by a print or photo, then finish with a couple of more paragraphs assessing how well it succeeds. Here is an excerpt on the Sea Gull Monument:

     The monument incorporated and synthesized the two sculptural themes that dominated [Young's] early career -- his strong Mormon heritage and the theme of labor.
     In the sculpture portion of the monument one sees the same influences as in Young's other work, particularly the Rodinesque handling and modeling of the surfaces. The figure of the man in the left-hand corner of The Arrival of the Sea Gulls is reminiscent of Rodin's Thinker. Like Thinker, Young's figure suggests a feeling of resignation and despair.
     A more specific prototype of this figure can be found in Constantin Meunier's free-standing sculpture, The Miner. Throughout his life Young collected articles and pictures of this artist's work. The Meunier figure symbolizes the exhausted miner, the Young relief the exhausted pioneer. Comparing The First Harvest bronze relief of the Sea Gull Monument with Meunier's harvest relief on his Monument to Labor, both feature strong, stout figures that work the grain fields and share a common monumental feeling.
     In the sea gull reliefs, Young proved himself a master at creating the illusion of great vistas and depth, which is a quality not found in Meunier's work. In this Young resembles the Renaissance masters, particularly Donatello, who he so admired after discovering him on his trips to Italy.
     In many ways the Sea Gull Monument became the realization of his dream of a monument to labor, as well as his tribute to his own pioneer heritage, and stands as the culmination of his early career. (102-3)

The text is accompanied by an early sketch and a black and white photo of the completed monument, plus color photos of the three reliefs (77, 99-101), together with the verbal descriptions (98-102). I've looked at the monument dozens of times, walk by it sometimes now on my way to work, but reading this I realize I never once saw it before. Add to that the account of Young's drawn-out lobbying for the commission and the practicalities of its execution, plus a vital clue in an earlier chapter as to the spiritual meaning seagulls held for Mahonri (2), and as far as I'm concerned Toone tells a gripping story. (The book also includes a chronology, index, and bibliography, all thorough and useful.)

In Mahonri, the young LDS artist in search of his patrimony is faced with the phenomenon of a Mormon artist who was not active in the Church. (Toone wrote an Ensign article [October 1985, pp. 40-45], which gives a good overview of Mahonri's life and work, but while Toone's biography deals with Mahonri's inactivity, the Ensign article fails to mention it at all.) What makes Mahonri Mormon then? an accident of birth? his upbringing? Of course he is best remembered for his works with Mormon themes. Also, he faced all the issues, fought all the fights that Mormon artists and writers do -- judging from Toone's account, in that sense he is entirely typical. Should a Mormon artist train at home or abroad? Mahonri absorbed what he could in Salt Lake but traveled to the art centers of the nation and Europe for his real education. Are artists born to their work? Mahonri sensed at least that he was historically situated, and he was determined to play a role. Does the artist address the saints or the gentiles? Mahonri, capable of both, and in spite of his sense of mission, found he could not make a living in Salt Lake City.

How does one get past the guardians? This is the great untold story in Mormon art and literature -- writers have to deal with publishers, playwrights with selection committees, artists with curators and institutional patrons, each with its own agenda and frequently little sympathy for the artist's circumstances or vision. When Willard Young, principal of the LDS high school and Mahonri's uncle, refused to sign the contract for the Deseret Gym commission out of concern for nepotism, Mahonri resorted to trickery to secure his signature. When the LDS Church got Mahonri his studio for the Joseph Smith commission, one condition was that he be closely supervised, which must have been vexing for the artist. Toone shows Mahonri lobbying hard for the "This is the Place" commission, working every civic, church, and family angle, putting up his own money, dealing with the vagaries of committees and contracts (he came away from the experience feeling he had been cheated out of $11,000). An old hand by the time he did the Brigham Young portrait for the Capitol, he appeased both state (who wanted a stern, stalwart Brigham) and family (who remembered a gentle, kindly one) by having one corner of his grandfather's lips turned up and the other pulled down.

That leaves the most fundamental issue in Mormon art -- how does one's art relate to one's testimony? Obviously Mahonri was attracted to the Mormon story. Even his "gentile" works stress such Pioneer values as self-sufficiency and the dignity of labor. One might relate his realism to his grandfather's clear-headed practicality, or Mahonri's fascination with motion to the Mormon stress on progress, with each creature striving to fill the measure of it's creation. (The sacralization of labor is a thread common to the Paris art missionaries as well, which I understand is distinctive in all the varied strains of Impressionism.) Toone notes that Mahonri developed a distaste for polygamy, both because of the religious excesses of a good friend's mother, a first wife who dominated the others, and out of sympathy for boys with fathers on the underground, for all practical purposes as fatherless as he. Toone notes also Mahonri developing a taste for beer in taverns. Despite Mahonri's inactivity, he remained friendly to the Church, was intimate with its leaders (especially Heber J. Grant), offered it free advice on artistic matters, and showed genuine pride and sympathy for the pioneers' achievement. One might speculate whether his contribution would be greater if he were more connected, more a part of his birth community. Doubtless not without the artistic vision and technical mastery he combined with the real and obvious connection he did have. Mahonri was a product of Mormonism, and is interesting both as someone who gives expression in the world to many of our deepest values, and as someone with a lot to teach us about how to blend the temporal and spiritual. He got to like his name, and it's one in which all who were born to or embrace Mormonism can take justifiable pride.

Benson Young Parkinson
<byparkinson@cc.weber.edu>

------
Benson Parkinson lives with his wife and five children in Ogden,
Utah.  A writer and editor, he moderates AML-List, an internet
mailing list devoted to Mormon literature.  His published works
include a novel, The MTC:  Set Apart (Aspen, 1995), and a
biography, S. Dilworth Young (Covenant, 1994).

Addendum (2 April 1998)

I usually ride the bus to work in Salt Lake but drove yesterday because of a dentist appointment, and found myself with 15 minutes to run over to West High and look for the Mahonri Young sculptures. I had no idea where to look, but driving south on 4th west past a demolition site immediately west of the stadium, I saw plopped in a corner amid other debris the mottled white, larger-than-life silhouette of "Man Pounding -- Stone" (see Toone p. 94).

I parked and hurried over, and sure enough, there it was, as though the Caterpillar operator (who was sitting on his machine across the yard) had nudged it aside to haul off for his refuse garden. This, apparently, was the site of the Technical Arts Building. The statue had lots of damage, some old, some new. The right arm was the mostly missing down to the rebar. (The left appeared to have been severed and reattached earlier, not quite flush with the stump.) Fragments of the right foot lay on the ground. The sculpture appears originally to have been finished in plaster, which was chipped and flaking in the photograph, giving it and its companions their flaking appearance (as though they've all got psoriasis or leprosy). There were a few places where that's smooth and intact (the calf for instance) in what I saw, but that's mostly all gone. In spite of it's fragmentation, the piece looks very reparable to me -- wonderful detail still in the facial features, beard, all the musculature of the back, legs, and arms. I'm pretty impressed to see ninety-year-old concrete that's held up that well. I don't know whether there's an effort to salvage the piece, or the three companion statues, or the three friezes, but it would be more than a tragedy to lose them. If I understand right, the four statues are some of the only examples of laborers by this nationally prominent sculptor that were cast life size or larger. The "Man Pounding" is wonderful to look at, even in its present condition. I find it inspires in me a lot of the same feelings as Rodin (though informed by a very different sensibility).

Does anyone know if any efforts were made to salvage and restore these pieces? Is anything being done? Can anything be done! How about the friezes form the recently demolished Deseret Gym?

The Church Museum of History and Art west of Temple Square has a bronze version of "Man Pounding," about 1 1/2 feet high. (For a photo of this piece see Toone p. 96.) BYU's Museum of Art has a couple of other Mahonri's in its sculpture garden, "Industry" (a man in cap holding7 a sledge hammer and a big monkey wrench), and "Agriculture" (a man in undershirt and straw hat sharpening a scythe), both 4 feet high and bronze (Toone p. 151). Utahns and visitors can also see his "This is the Place" monument, of course, near the mouth of Emigration Canyon in Salt Lake (southeast of the UofU), and the Joseph and Hyrum statues and the Sea Gull Monument on Temple Square. (A lot of his best work is in the reliefs for the two big monuments.) The Brigham Young statue in front of the BYU administration building (i.e. south of the building) is also Mahonri's, from the "This is the Place" monument.

Benson Parkinson
<byparkinson@cc.weber.edu>
Ogden, Utah, USA