Aristotle Smith wrote:One of the common complaints that critics of the church make is that all artistic renderings of the translation of the Book of Mormon are completely wrong. They always show Joseph poring over gold plates or using the Urim and Thummim, or deep in thought, or something that accords with common Mormon misunderstandings of how the translation happened. They never show it how it happened, with Joseph sticking his head in a hat.
LDS apologists have generally retorted that it's artistic license or the artists don't know what is going on. I mean the artists just paint the stuff and the GAs believe in the freedom and integrity of the artist and his/her product so they wouldn't dare tell the artists to go back to their studios and get the paintings correct. Above all they always emphasize that art isn't doctrine and that only bozos get their doctrine from art.
Up until now I have sided with the apologists, but I am now switching sides to the critics on this one. Why? Because of this art work put in the December 2011 issue of the Ensign. Please take a minute to compare the original art work on the left and the Enisgn's version of the art work on the right at this web page:
http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2012 ... st-angels/Basically, someone at the COB decided to edit Carl Bloch's "The Resurrection" to make it more in harmony with LDS beliefs. Specifically, the angels in the Ensign version lack wings and are dressed more modestly.
If the LDS church can censor and edit a great painting to accord more with Mormon doctrine, then they sure as hell can tell their in house and contract artists to get the translation renditions correct. From this we can conclude that the COB doesn't give a care about artistic integrity. And they sure are worried that people are getting their doctrine from art work. Since this is the case, the COB has no excuse to continue publishing the misleading pictures of the Book of Mormon translation. They either need to commission new works of art to reflect reality or it's time to edit in Joseph's face in a hat in all of the existing LDS artwork depicting the translation process.
ETA: I found the pdf of the original Ensign article to see for yourself, it's on page 54:
http://media.ldscdn.org/pdf/lds-magazin ... st-eng.pdfETA 2: I just found something else interesting. In the first page of the above pdf article there is another photoshopped image. They composited two Bloch paintings. On the next page, this is the attribution given:
Ensign wrote:Composite Image of The Crucifixion and The Resurrection by Carl Heinrich Bloch. Images of paintings used by permission of the National Historic Museum at Frederiksborg in Hillerod
OK, so they are saying basically, "We Photoshopped these two together."
Now look at the attribution for the image of the resurrection on page 54:
Ensign wrote:The Resurrection by Carl Heinrich Bloch; Used by permission of the National Historic Museum at Frederiksborg in Hillerod
No indication given that they photoshopped anything. Why admit to photshopping the composite image, but no indication that they photoshopped the second?
