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One of the really low practices I see is the marketing of "Mormon Art". Friburg and others play on the heartstrings of fools in their work to separate these fools from their money. It is all about the money. Religious art in general is the same. Rarely inspired work it is designed to be warm, touchy-feely and is for the most part not fine art by any stretch of the imagination.

It is designed to be a puff piece. Propaganda designed to sell and make money.

Most of it is crap and those producing it are rip-off artists preying on gullible fools.

El Greco, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Chagall, Rembrandt, Bernini, Dürer, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., . . . If they'd been real artists instead of hacks, they wouldn't have churned out all that religious trash.

Hi Joe,

Some time ago, I posted a number of threads on this forum dealing with Mormon art.

Here is one of them.

Kimball's Mad Vision

Mazmuur Naafi: The Arabic Psalm of Nephi

Ahmed Jamal Qureshi
Digital print on paper, 2002

"The gospel finds beautiful expressions in every culture. Pioneers of the past brought with them the arts and architecture of Europe, while today's pioneers have an array of new cultural riches that broaden our appreciation of the restored gospel. In the Arab world, imagery in art is often eschewed in favor of sacred text shaped into flowing designs. Here, the artist has adapted a mosque dome form to display the circuitous text in a stately Thuluth font of Nephi's cry of trust in the Lord (2 Nephi 4:16–35). The text concludes in the center where the word "God" is written in a flowing Diwani font. In the four smaller circles in the corners are names of four individuals who brought the book of Nephi to us: Nephi, Lehi, Moroni, and Joseph Smith."

Clearly a fluff piece right?

There's lots of great religiously themed art. I get the sense of that when you think of religious art, what springs to mind is Christian schmaltz. But it should be apparent to you there's more to it that that.

On an aside, I was looking up the two surviving lines of Ovid's Medea the other day. Thus far, it's been lost to time thanks in significant part due to Christian suppression of the work. In the process of looking for this I was reminded that in late antiquity there was a prose, "cleaned-up" summary of Metamorphoses written to be more appropriate for Christian audiences that had wide circulation. It reminded me of modern "family flicks" attempts to censor films to make them palatable to fundamentalist Christian audiences. It's something that has particular popularity among Mormons. Meh.

Humorlously, the google ad I get for this thread is a banner with some pretty bad religiously themed Mormon "family art."

Gazelam wrote:


Mazmuur Naafi: The Arabic Psalm of Nephi

Ahmed Jamal Qureshi
Digital print on paper, 2002

"The gospel finds beautiful expressions in every culture. Pioneers of the past brought with them the arts and architecture of Europe, while today's pioneers have an array of new cultural riches that broaden our appreciation of the restored gospel. In the Arab world, imagery in art is often eschewed in favor of sacred text shaped into flowing designs. Here, the artist has adapted a mosque dome form to display the circuitous text in a stately Thuluth font of Nephi's cry of trust in the Lord (2 Nephi 4:16–35). The text concludes in the center where the word "God" is written in a flowing Diwani font. In the four smaller circles in the corners are names of four individuals who brought the book of Nephi to us: Nephi, Lehi, Moroni, and Joseph Smith."

Clearly a fluff piece right?

A very nice piece.

Incidentally, Ahmed Qureshi is a former student of mine, and a friend.

I used to walk past a Hispanic religious curio shop, and was always intrigued/freaked out by one of those sad pictures of Jesus on the Cross (with those little lines in the picture so his eyes could follow you as you moved).

Some of the pictures of such religious suffering do stand in stark contrast to the heroically proportioned figures from the Book of Mormon displaying both piety and gallantry as they strike bold poses.

Daniel Peterson wrote:El Greco, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Chagall, Rembrandt, Bernini, Dürer, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., . . . If they'd been real artists instead of hacks, they wouldn't have churned out all that religious trash.

Interestingly enough, I think there has been some great Mormon art that was commissioned for decoration much like Michelangelo et al. Granted they weren't masters, but good stuff. There are some good murals, stained glass and sculpture. This is also true for some great Mormon folk art. But I don't think this is what JoetheClerk is referring to. I believe he is talking about the junk commercial art prints ground out for DB and general consumption. These tend to be stereotype reinforces and, aside from the artistic ability of the artist, hardly can be called art by the usual definition of the word.

Daniel Peterson wrote:El Greco, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Chagall, Rembrandt, Bernini, Dürer, Fra Angelico, etc., etc., . . . If they'd been real artists instead of hacks, they wouldn't have churned out all that religious trash.

Dannyboy, if they could have found better patrons then they would not have had to put time and talent into promoting fairy tales.