Part 1

In 1991 the publisher Gibbs Smith brought out Utah Art, by William Seifrit, Robert Olpin, and Vern Swanson. Originally conceived as a catalog for the Springville Museum of Art, this landmark publication included a detailed overview of the field by three of its top scholars, with around 120 color plates and many black and white photos. When supplies were exhausted, rather than reprint, Gibbs Smith decided to publish an expanded version under the title Utah Painting and Sculpture, with additional text by Olpin and Swanson and 40 new plates bringing the volume forward to 1997. The result, more than a gift book, is an extremely useful, if not definitive, work for both historian and amateur. (The three authors also collaborated on the more recent Artists of Utah [Gibbs Smith, 1999], containing 110 images and biographical sketches and profiles arranged alphabetically. The latter book is an updating of Olpin's 1980 Dictionary of Utah Art.)

Swanson points out in the preface to Utah Painting and Sculpture that Utah, unlike neighbors New Mexico and California, has never had a major artist colony or large numbers of patrons and yet manages to produce art that competes with these states' in quality. "Having observed exhibition and marketing patterns for the past decade I would say that Utah, per capita, exported more art than any state in the United States" (vi). Utah hosts a surprising number of artists who exhibit in galleries in New York and across the country but who choose to live in the state because of the scenery or lifestyle. But Utah is also home to several indigenous art movements drawing on Latter-day Saint spirituality, history, or lifestyle. While the art from places like Salt Lake, Park City, and the state universities typically reflects (and lags behind) national trends, the LDS-inspired art from Springville, Alpine, and Brigham Young University is original, largely independent of national trends, and yet of comparable sophistication. The questions facing Mormon artists are similar to those facing LDS writers: How do you blend art and spirituality? How do you pursue your art and support a family? What temptations await you if you do get a toehold? Utah Painting and Sculpture, while not focused on Mormon art per se, offers insight into all these questions, and does a better job in some ways than Richard G. Oman and Robert O. Davis's Images of Faith: Art of the Latter-day Saints, Deseret Book's catalog of the Church Museum of History and Art (1995). The two books complement each other well.

William Seifrit, a psychologist, covers the first 50 years of art in the state. Much of the earliest art, both landscape and portrait, is by itinerate artists, some of them in the employ of exploration parties like Fremont's and Gunnison's (15). The pattern even into the next century was to take likenesses of General Authorities and other prominent citizens and then work one's way out into the community before moving on (18, 32). George Ottinger, a significant local LDS artist, complained in his journal that "the local people 'as a general thing like pictures and admire them but they have no money to spend for them, unless some stranger . . . comes to the Valley'" (18). Ottinger attempted to scratch out a living from artistic commissions but more typically by hand-tinting portraits by photographer Charles Savage, by sign painting and hand-graining furniture, and by giving the next generation of Utah artists their first lessons. (His greatest artistic success came from historical paintings -- LDS, classical, and especially Aztec. One wonders if, like B.H. Roberts in his novella Corianton [Contributor, 1889], he saw in these last book of Mormon overtones.) Ottinger spent 1876-1890 as Salt Lake fire chief, and later held other jobs, which kept him going financially but left him inadequate time to paint (28, 47). Artists like Ottinger, Danquart Weggeland, and Alfred Lambourne received encouragement from the Deseret Agricultural & Manufacturing Society fairs, precursors to territorial fairs, pursued the occasional Church commissions, painted backdrops for the Salt Lake Theater (another form of Church patronage), and later sold to wealthy gentile mine owners. Ottinger, Philo Dibble, C.C.A. Christensen, and others gave lectures, in some cases illustrated with their paintings, and a number of artists put together elaborate panoramas, with which they sometimes toured (18, 25). (Christensen, who got his living by farming, is best remembered for sewing 22 of his large Church history canvases together and mounting them on a set of scrolls, which he would crank from frame to frame as part of his presentation. For many years he toured with it all over the territory [31-32]).

It falls to Seifrit to chronicle the early efforts of the late 19th century Utah impressionists. This group of painters were trained in Paris, many in the course of special Church missions to prepare them to decorate the Salt Lake, Manti, and Logan temples then nearing completion. The book details the careers of several of these, particularly John Hafen (who worked mostly for the Church), Lorus Pratt, James T. Harwood (perhaps the strongest of this group), and the younger John Willard Clawson (who spent most his career in California as a portrait painter in the tradition of John Singer Sargent). From the point of view of Mormon art, Seifrit fails to answer some fairly basic questions: Why did these religiously-motivated painters gravitate to impressionism? For no other reason than that this was the newest thing in Paris where they studied? Why did they seem almost to avoid religious figures, focusing instead on harvest scenes and landscapes? Are we to infer religious meaning from these rustic scenes? I once heard an expert on U.S. regionalist impressionism comment that harvest scenes were common everywhere but were generally pessimistic, with an edge of social commentary or class politics, and that Utah impressionists were uniquely optimistic, that they found spiritual significance in labor, and that they were pretty well the only ones to put impressionism to overtly religious ends. Seifrit gives no clue to this if it's true.

As another example of the book's weakness at depicting the LDS artists' spiritual motivations, the idea for the art missions originated with John Hafen, Edwin Evans, and Lorus Pratt, who then approached Church leaders. Seifrit mentions the artists' desire "to become better prepared to paint murals in the Salt Lake Temple," but otherwise treats the proposal more or less as a business transaction (41-42). In Images of Faith, Robert Davis prefaces his account with Hafen's statement that "the highest development of talent is a duty we owe to our Creator" and his prediction that the art of Zion would surpass that of the Paris of his day (41). But other times Utah Sculpture and Painting is better, as when it hints that Harwood's enthusiasm for the Church may have waned: "My hobby, I am a farmer; profession, an artist; religion, a church with one member (116). This goes to one of our fundamental questions -- how do you blend art and spirituality. Now it is Images of Faith that silent on the matter.

Stylistically, Seifrit's chapter is the flattest in the book, punctuated by extended catalogs of mostly lost paintings drawn from old newspaper accounts of exhibits and fairs, and a certain arbitrariness. Taking up the career of George Ottinger, Seifrit writes: "Although he was basically an unhappy, envious man (a conclusion inescapable after reading his journals), Ottinger was an artist worthy of mention here" (16-17). On its face Seifrit's statement makes no sense. What does the artist's emotional state have to do with whether he is worthy of mention? Seifrit doesn't comment particularly on the happiness of other artists, but Ottinger's mood is a running theme. No doubt this is meant to inject a little human drama, but as it is we're left wondering whether Ottinger's gloom grows from his temperament or his difficult circumstances or even whether it's more perceived than real (lots of people use their journals to unload). And yet Ottinger's story does sound like it would reward a literary look (whether novelistic or critical). Seifrit signals one other figure of potential literary interest: Alfred Lambourne, who gradually moved away from romanticized nature painting more-or-less reminiscent (to my untrained eye) to Albert Bierstadt to devote himself to nature prose and poetry (88-89). All in all then Seifrit does his job.

Part 2

In part 1 I gave a mixed review to William Seifrit's coverage of Mormon art during its first 50 years -- which I admit from the outset is an unfair standard, since that's not what the book reports to be. Again the questions most of interest from a Mormon literary point of view: How do you blend art and spirituality? How do you pursue your art and support a family? What temptations await you if you do get a toehold?

Robert Olpin covers the years from 1900 to 1950. This includes the work of the Paris art missionaries on the Cardston, Mesa, and Hawaii temples, and their varied career paths. Utah in this period produced a number of nationally prominent sculptors, including Mahonri Young (best known for his Seagull and This Is the Place monuments), Cyrus Dallin (best known for his Paul Revere, the Brigham Young on Main Street, and the Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple), and Solon and Gutzon Borglum (the latter best known for Mt. Rushmore -- try to get more prominent than that). All three were expatriates, not just from the state but the Church. Young was a grandson of Brigham Young but an inactive Mormon. Dallin's mother was a member of the Church, as were the Borglums' parents, though they did not belong. Even in Utah this period was a much easier one than the previous for an artist to make a living, whether independently or at a university. Olpin, who is dean of the University of Utah's college of art, spends a good deal of time on the development and internal politics of art departments at various Utah colleges. For example (skipping ahead a few years), Arvard Fairbanks, was an arch-conservative who basically saw modernism as part of an international communist conspiracy. Shortly before Fairbanks's tenure as dean of the U. of U. art department ended in 1955, he split off a conservative sculpture department with himself as chair. Angelo Caravaglio, one of the founders of non-objective sculpture in Utah, "was designated as a 'three-dimensional designer' over in the Department of Art" (143). As Olpin notes, the U. of U. generally led out in artistic matters.

Olpin exhibits a scholar's depth and openness to a multitude of styles. He draws extensively on conversational interviews with Waldo Midgley and George Dibble, whom one senses were personal friends. His style tends toward flamboyant and discursive, with frequent explanation points. Frequently his two-or-three paragraph treatments of individual artists extend into the first part of the next paragraph, so that what you think is going to be a summation turns out to be a transition. I found this jarring until I began to think of the text as a slide lecture -- live, I think the technique would work very well. Olpin's section is also weak on the question of how art relates to spirituality. For example, Olpin describes LeConte Stewart as a "tonal impressionist whose views evoke a rural quiet not often accessible to most of us" (120). Stewart is in fact the most remarkable realist in Mormon art, someone with an intimate knowledge of how the Utah land is laid down and how vegetation grows on it, whose sense of color and atmosphere is unparalleled. Again, mine's an untrained eye, but I have made the landscape that he depicts a study during 40 years of hiking and traveling and living here, and I've always felt his imitation is so true that one could only call it worshipful, the creature emulating the Creator. And sure enough, Davis in Images of Faith quotes Stewart as saying: "When you know and love a tree you can paint its spirit, the quality God gave it. . . . When I go out to paint a tree I feel the Lord's spirit. I cannot do what He has done; the least I can do is paint it, but in painting it I have come to see Him in nature" (92-93, 95).

Part 3

We're ready to move on now to the contemporary period, keeping in mind our Mormon literary points of interest, no matter how arbitrary or irrelevant they may have seemed to the authors: How do you blend art and spirituality? How do you pursue your art and support a family? What temptations await you if you do get a toehold?

Vern Swanson, director of the Springville Museum of Art, covers the years 1950-1991, and with Olpin is the author of the new material on 1991-97. Swanson, the most polished writer of the book's three authors, documents the growth and relative decline of university art departments, notes the growing numbers of independent artists in various markets (from modernist to western), and relates local trends to national ones. He is also the most focused on Mormon art, much of which he includes in his "Metaphysical and Metaphorical" category. James Harwood's daughter Ruth, who died in 1958, he identifies as a precursor of this movement. A poet who resided in California, "she devoted most of her career to creating symbolist and metaphysical posters, cards, graphics, and book covers for theosophical tracts and literary publications" (186; see 106-7). The sample of her work on page 107, executed in an Art Nouveau style, would strike modern viewers as new-age in feel. Minerva Teichert might be considered another precursor, though Swanson treats her under "Cowboy-Western Art." Teichert is probably best known for murals at Ellis Island and the Manti Temple (122) and for her stunningly tonal, Mayan-inspired Book of Mormon series. Swanson notes that "by the 1980s, her work was finally recognized for its artistry, monumentality, and originality. Evaluating her oeuvre, one sees compelling evidence of her greatness" (185).

Swanson, who went to BYU on a football scholarship but wound up in art history, was peripherally connected with the Art and Belief movement there in the 1960s. Building on the example of such metaphorically-inclined modernists as Alex Darais and Franz Johansen, a group of students including Trevor Southey, Dennis Smith, and Gary E. Smith coalesced around professor Dale Fletcher. "Fletcher conceded that Art and Belief was a new reactionary movement [against modernism], . . . 'the black square, the soup can, the raw portrayal of sexual confusion, and the twiddling of the optic nerve.' For him the antidote to such decadence was Old Testament Mormonism." He "stressed the need for studying the ancient Egyptian and Greek canon. Understanding sacred geometry, divine symmetry, and those past epochs where religion played an integral part in the lives of artists were subjects for intense contemplation." Not all the artists associated with this movement agreed on whether "a set of distinctively 'Mormon' iconographs" would or should emerge (194-95). But in fact pyramids, pools, windows, objects repeated in different stages of development, three-dimensional space giving way to two-dimensional, number tables, enigmatic handwriting, and construction lines (as on blueprints), have found their way onto the canvases of many of these artists and those they have inspired.

Nudes have been problematic in Utah going back at least to Mahonri Young, who had so much trouble finding models for a class he taught in about 1906 that "once we tried to get a 'lady of the evening' to pose. She was shocked but not speechless'" (100). Arvard Fairbanks's 1928 "Mother and Child" may, Vern Swanson asserts, have done something to make the nude more acceptable to Mormon audiences (188), but a good part of that momentum was doubtless lost when painter Alma B. Wright's affair with one of his models became known (129). Wright spent the rest of his life in Europe, including several years in a German POW camp, where his family kept him in food and art supplies (145). Another taboo, ironically, was the religious figure. "Utahns' native tastes reflected the iconoclastic sensitivities of their northern European Protestant ancestors, and very few artists have produced more than historical church and Book of Mormon paintings." Swanson credits Arnold Friberg, who taught briefly at the U. of U., with changing that situation. Friberg is best known for his set work for Cecil B. De Mille's Ten Commandments, his Canadian Mountie calendars, and especially the muscular Nephites and Lamanites that appear to this day in paperback copies of the Book of Mormon -- the utter antithesis of Minerva Teichert's Book of Mormon paintings. Even so, "Friberg's representations of Christ drew some criticism from the LDS church, but his persistence prevailed and he is, in the 1990s, considered the most beloved religious painter in Mormonism" (189-90). One painter who pushed up against both taboos was Trevor Southey, who left BYU in 1977 in the wake of controversy over his religious nudes (201).

In 1972 core members of the Art and Belief movement, including Southey, the two Smiths, and the actor/musician (and later AML-List participant) Marvin Payne, organized the North Mountain Artist Cooperative in Alpine, northeast Utah County. Swanson writes of the group, "All were interested in Mormon art and viewed their cooperative in utopian terms." They envisioned a artists' association, an art center, and an art school. "This was a lofty ambition in a culture in which artists seldom worked closely together. Eventually the communal aspect became a reality when, in 1976, they began purchasing land" and building homes for themselves and a sculpture garden in nearby Highland. "Here, some of Utah's premier artists lived and worked together in a support system that helped make it possible for them to become the first generation of Utah artists who could make their livelihood totally from their art" (208). From the point of view of our third question, what temptations await the Mormon artist who does get a toehold in the world of art, this episode has to be one of the most fascinating episodes in the book. Several of these artists have had major success. Some have since moved away from the state. Some no longer use Mormon material in their art. Dennis Smith has stated publicly that he does not believe core doctrines of the Church, and Trevor Southey left the Church entirely. In 1978 movement founder Dale Fletcher joined a pyramid cult (195). This is the kind of thing you don't get from Images of Faith, which hardly mentions Fletcher or Southey.

Part 4

Swanson follows Art and Belief through two more generations. Wulf Barsch is credited with "breath[ing] new life into the sagging Mormon art movement and basically propell[ing] it into the 1980s. . . . Barsch's exploration of spiritual-mystical themes through his own very private interpretations has established him as one of America's premier religious artists" (201-2). There is truth to the term "private interpretations," but what I like about Barsch and the second and third wave Art and Belief painters chronicled by Swanson and Olpin is that their symbolism is not private but is shared among a community of artists of similar outlook and values. They are intelligible. One can learn about them and understand them. Many of their symbols are obvious to any Saint who has studied the scriptures and been to and thought about temple. There is something fundamentally Mormon about a common symbol set, just as much as common labor on an irrigation ditch or temple. These artists are able to share and build on each others' labors, so that all are lifted. By contrast, the private symbol sets of some other metaphysical artists seem weak and egotistical. (Other significant modernist-inspired Mormon artists, not all of whom fit easily in the Art and Belief movement, include Hagen Haltern, who codified his aesthetic theories in Art and Integration; Lee Udall Bennion; Jeanne Lundberg Clarke; the fantasy painter James C. Christensen; David Linn; and a painter who apparently emerged too recently to be included, Walter Rane.

Towards the end of the new chapter, Swanson and Olpin identify yet another major movement. "The most surprising development in Utah art," they write, ". . . has been the incredible rise of classical realism in Utah County (275). They trace realism through Harwood, Alvin Gittins, Arnold Friberg, and the division of the BYU art department into art and design departments in 1982. It occurred to me years ago when I started to see narrative and religious figure painting by Greg Olsen and others that, though inclined toward the sentimental, BYU ought to encourage it because it spoke so immediately to ordinary Mormons. According to Swanson and Olpin, that was exactly what was happening in the design department. "Rather than conform to current fashions in art, . . . they decided to give the Church what it wanted, i.e., figuratively trained artists who could give objective and ideal form to distinctly Mormon subjects." Friberg's and Arnold T. Barrett's "love of multifigured storytelling painting is greatly responsible for the birth of narrative painting in Utah. Once this view was firmly in place, it created a groundswell of talented LDS artists who wished to paint the Mormon gospel" (275). These include Olsen, Liz Lemmon Swindle, Derek Hegsted, and another emerging artist too new to make the cut, David Lindsley. They focus primarily on Christ's life and parables and figures from modern Church history, especially Joseph Smith and his colleagues and family. Another thought I had a few years back on seeing all the Soviet realism that Swanson was collecting for the Springville museum, was that BYU ought to take advantage of some of the Russian emigres to give a boost to what could become a world-class tradition here. Again Olpin and Swanson are ahead of me, pointing out the influence nonmember Soviet-born realist Alexander D. Selytin has had since moving to Utah in 1990. (James C. Christensen has also painted realistically, and one should mention here a separate group of realists inspired by the Mormon landscape and especially pioneer architecture, most notably Al Rounds, and a third group of sculptors depicting idealized family groupings, including Dennis Smith and more recently L'Deane Trueblood. If the book has a weakness, it's in failing to identify those two movements, both of which extend back to the '70s.)

The color plates in this book are ordered by year in four sections throughout the book, which since the text does not refer to them in chronological order gets to be quite a nuisance if you're reading straight through. The book includes a chronology and several useful indexes and catalogs. List members will be interested to know that subscriber Paul VanDenBerghe was one of Utah Painting and Sculpture's editors shortly before being hired at the Ensign. I've been measuring the book against an unfair standard, since it's on Utah art, not Mormon art, but in truth this book is well nigh indispensable for understanding the latter, and giving as much or more insight into Mormon-related aesthetic questions as books actually written to that subject. The new chapter adds so much useful information to make us hope Gibbs Smith will consider a new updating in a few more years.

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