When I was a young boy, I eagerly anticipated the Ensign magazine arriving each month in the family mailbox.
Unfortunately, it was not to read the articles. Instead, I visually devoured the paintings. They fascinated and inspired me. Minerva Teichert showed me the First Vision. Del Parson placed me in the Pennsylvania woods to watch the Aaronic priesthood be restored. Liz Lemon Swindle took me to Liberty Jail with the Prophet Joseph. I trekked west with C.C.A. Christensen and the pioneers.
Artistic imagery was one of my first and most potent teachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ. That has also been true for many religious learners, particularly in Christianity, where beautiful stained-glass windows and statues and murals have adorned chapels and cathedrals for centuries. Today, religious paintings are found abundantly in Latter-day Saint classrooms, foyers and hallways; in Church curriculum and teaching; and hung on walls in members’ living spaces around the globe. Religious artwork is everywhere.
As an artist and Church history scholar, I have researched and published on the use of artwork in learning Church history and doctrine. As a painter, I have also contributed my own imagery to the corpus of Restoration artwork. My artwork tries to combine the scholarly and the painterly, focusing often on underdepicted but important aspects of Latter-day Saint history and teachings, such as teenage Joseph finding his brown seer stone, Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon with the white hat, ordaining Black men to the priesthood during Joseph Smith’s time, the reported first baptism for the dead and pioneer women performing healing blessings of faith, among many other images.
Researching, painting, writing and teaching about these images has led me to share the following five suggestions about using artwork to aid as you study the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history this year.
1. Seek and use artwork
Visual art is one of the fundamental, shared human languages. It crosses barriers and cultures and time. It can speak about things in ways that foster understanding and inspiration.
Take advantage of the great images provided with the “Come, Follow Me” manual. Show them in your families and classes. There’s a reason for the colloquial phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words,” because our brains process visual information more rapidly and at higher rates than sound or even touch (See Isaac Lidsky, “What Reality Are You Creating for Yourself?” TEDSummit, June 2016).
As a Church teaching manual stated, “Art ... can help engage learners — especially visual learners — and make scriptural accounts more memorable. The art you use should be more than decoration; it should help learners understand gospel doctrines. The Gospel Art Book and the Media Library on ChurchofJesusChrist.org ... contain many images and videos that can help learners visualize concepts or events” (“Teaching in the Savior’s Way,” Part 3: Teach the Doctrine, 2016).
2. Don’t be afraid of challenging art
Don’t be afraid of art that represents challenging aspects of mortality and history.
What makes art three dimensional is its use of highlights, midtones and shadows. Without all three, things would be flat. Yet, sometimes in art, Church history and life, we only want highlights — the successes and triumphs of the faith. But mortality is not always glorious, can at times be mundane and has episodes of tragedy and failure.
The Restoration is similar. It has highlights, midtones and shadows. We are at a pivotal point regarding how Church history is approached by the institutional Church. Efforts like the narrative Church history “Saints,” the Church’s Gospel Topics Essays and the Joseph Smith Papers are reflective of an open, nuanced approach to Church history that doesn’t shy away from more difficult subjects. And our use of artwork can follow that lead.
President Spencer W. Kimball’s landmark talk on “The Gospel Vision of the Arts” called for artists to paint “the story of the Restoration” and “the reestablishment of the kingdom of God on earth” but also to paint images that depict “the struggles and frustrations; the apostasies and inner revolutions and counter-revolutions of those first decades.”
Resurrection imagery means so much because of Gethsemane and Calvary. There are Missouri revelations in the midst of extermination. The highlight of the First Vision is shadowed by the murders at Carthage. We should celebrate teachings on eternal marriage but not hide from the confounds of plural marriage in Nauvoo, Illinois. Temple endowments precede pioneer burials. As we embrace artwork that depicts the highlights, midtones and shadows of the Restoration, we can more fully see God at work in our history — in the highs and lows — and similarly with us.
3. Let artwork inspire and scripture/history inform
We can sometimes have what is called “source amnesia” when it comes to where/how we learned things. For example, if I ask, “In the millennial reign the enmity of beasts will cease, and ‘the ____ also shall dwell with the lamb,’” what automatically popped into your head? It likely isn’t the correct answer, and it’s probably because of art that caused you to think “lion” instead of “wolf” (see Isaiah 11:6; 65:25).
Some get upset because artwork often isn’t entirely scripturally or historically accurate. But perfect historical accuracy is an impossible — and even an undesirable — ideal. Start painting the First Vision, for example. How do you know what God looks like, or that He wore that clothing that way? Is that how Joseph posed, for sure? Remember, art and history speak different languages. History wants facts; art wants meaning. History wants to validate sources; art wants to evoke emotion. History is more substance; art is more style. History wants accuracy; art wants aesthetics. While we should use art to aid learning, we should center our learning of history and doctrine in reliable sources (scriptures, words of prophets, research) and let art do its work of beauty and inspiration.
4. Try to read and interpret art
Rather than being critical that Harry Anderson painted Jesus in a white and not a red robe in his classic painting “The Second Coming,” instead ask what message the painting is seeking to communicate.
Art speaks through how it uses principles and elements of design and its use of icons or symbols. Analyze compositional mediums like shape, color, texture, value, form, proportion, contrast, etc. For example, suppose a piece of art painted God 10 times larger than a typical person. What could that be trying to say? Why do we usually paint Jesus wearing long flowing white robes (when He most likely did not dress that way in mortality)?
In my view, art is not to be interpreted as official doctrine nor historical reality. Art is symbolic and interpretive visual expression, not literal representation. Thus, let us listen with our eyes as art conveys concepts, ideas, emotions. Let’s let art help us start conversations through interpreting and analyzing its principles and elements.
5. Embrace various aesthetic forms of art
Realism and tightly detailed paintings are technically impressive and can be powerful, bringing the past almost literally to life. But some are accustomed to thinking that the best art is the most photorealistic art. Sometimes, however, “abstraction” (the distortion away from realistic representation) is desirable because it leaves out distracting details, invites the viewer to participate and complete the image mentally, and clearly sends the message, “This isn’t history; it’s art.”
Abstraction can also speak more broadly by being less specific. Find art related to the Church and its teachings that speak individually to you. It doesn’t matter if others like them, you do. Some may be moved by more realistic illustrations, others by more dramatic classical paintings, others by bright-colored imagery, and some by impressionistic, or geometric, symbolic, conceptual or abstract art.
If the Restoration gathers all things in one, it should be no surprise that over time we as a people gather and use all different styles of art in the process also.
Blessed to live in a visual time
I believe we are blessed to live in an artistically abundant visual time and to have a Church that embraces the arts to facilitate gospel learning and inspiration of its people. Our great Creator Himself made things functionally “for the benefit and the use of man” but also lovingly to “please the eye and to gladden the heart” (Doctrine and Covenants 59:18). Those dual purposes of function and form, insight and inspiration, seem to also apply in our use of artistic imagery as we visualize the Restoration this year in our study of the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history.
— Anthony Sweat is a professor of Church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University.
