Polygamy-Porter wrote:Seriously Daniel?
Seriously. The musical compositions -- actually, now that I think about it, there have been three -- were serious pieces of a distinctly modern kind written by a classically-trained academic composer, a Latter-day Saint, who holds a Ph.D. in composition from a university on the American east coast.
Polygamy-Porter wrote:So you paid to have a couple of paintings done and have a song written for your family,
No "song" for my family. One of the pieces was a setting of an ancient Egyptian poem, in Egyptian, and the other two were instrumental (e.g., one was for cello and piano, for public performance in concert by a specific professional cellist whom we know).
Polygamy-Porter wrote:AND this explains how involved Mormonism is to the wide world of art?
No, this makes the point that my wife and are seriously involved in the visual arts and in music, and specifically with Latter-day Saint instrumentalists, composers, and painters. To the tune of, relative to our fairly modest income, a considerable amount of money. (
Commission is the term that is used in such cases.)
We know the scene reasonably well, as, in a sense, participants and not just onlookers.
Which is to say that, if this were a good place for a discussion of the topic, I would find it quite interesting, and would very likely have something to say.
Polygamy-Porter wrote:I will assume the paintings were of family or children?
They were not.
But notice how quickly your assumption becomes Doctor CamNC4Me's certainty:
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:What kind of egomaniac commissions a painting of one's self and one's family?
Sheesh.
The answer is, of course, that
lots of people commission such paintings. Portraiture is one of the largest areas of painting, as anybody even minimally versed in the history of art would know. And it continues to be such, even since the rise of photography. There is nothing whatever wrong with it.
But I did not. We have commissioned no paintings of ourselves and/or of our family.