(haroldextra.com 2-18-17)
In his home studio in Holladay, famed Latter-day Saint painter Arnold Friberg had a handmade advertisement of sorts. The sign invites people to buy a portrait from Friberg, described as “The most confused, abused, misunderstood, and underfed Genius in Seven Counties!”
That sign now hangs in the Springville Museum of Art as part of its newest exhibition, “From the Studio of Arnold Friberg.” Alongside it are enormous illustrations — some as large as 7x14 feet — that Friberg sketched on his studio walls.
Yes, these aren’t canvases, but literally huge chunks of Friberg’s own walls.
Keep in mind, these walls are now on the second floor of the museum. And the museum doesn’t have a freight elevator. The exhibition’s largest piece, which depicts Joseph Smith being visited by God and Jesus Christ, weighs more than 600 pounds, according to Emily Larsen, the museum’s assistant curator and registrar.
“And I tried to do all the geometry and the math to say, ‘Can we get it in at an angle? Can we tabletop it somehow?’ And there was no way it was going to fit through,” Larsen said, standing atop the narrow staircase through which it was somehow transported.
“And it was nail-biting to watch it come up,” she continued. “We had probably 10 different people, four big guys, and all the interns and volunteers we could scramble. It was really stressful. But it worked, and it was so exciting.”
Within LDS circles, Friberg is most known for his illustrations of Book of Mormon scenes that he completed in the 1950s. These illustrations became an unexpected success after they were included in the church’s official distributed copies of the Book of Mormon — Friberg became the art director for Cecil B. Demille’s 1956 epic “The Ten Commandments” as a result. Friberg fans, be they Mormon or not, are used to seeing his works rendered in grand, dynamically painted color schemes. This new exhibition, though, turns these associations on their head: Instead of direct, colorful statements, the exhibit’s pieces are ethereal, somewhat vague black-and-white pencil sketches.
“It all feels more personal,” said Ali Royal-Pack, the museum’s educator. “I’ve grown up seeing those images from the Book of Mormon, and I love the idea of seeing kind of the raw, behind-the-scenes quality of some of these works. And it feels a little more personal to get a glimpse into his process.”
The museum worked with Micah Christensen, a specialist at Anthony’s Fine Art & Antiques in Salt Lake City, on the exhibition. Christensen got to know Friberg before Friberg’s death in 2010. Friberg, he said, was so much more than a hero of Mormon art. His paintings were revered around the world, particularly in England, where he had been commissioned to paint portraits of the royal family.
“The problem with Arnold Friberg … is we’re too familiar with him. Just like Van Gogh,” Christensen said. “We think we understand them because we’re familiar with them. And the thing that I think surprises people when they see Arnold Friberg’s sketches is how skilled he was as an artist. On a technical level, he had an enormous arsenal.”
Friberg was also a contemporary of Norman Rockwell. The two men went against the grain of their own artistic time period, focusing on realism when the era’s biggest visual artists — people like Pollock, Warhol and Lichtenstein — focused on surrealism and postmodernism. And yet, Rockwell and Friberg succeeded. When the LDS Church became more directly involved with Friberg, it had never courted an artist so highly regarded.
“Well, Arnold Friberg was a powerful force to be reckoned with as an individual,” Christensen said. “He had very strong opinions, and he had no problem going toe to toe with apostles and prophets when it came to his work — and he often did.”
These toe-to-toe interactions aren’t commonly known among Latter-day Saints, but are made manifest in much of Friberg’s religious art. David O. McKay, president of the LDS Church from 1951-1970, wanted church-sanctioned art to avoid literal, physical depictions of God and Christ — he wanted to avoid the iconography so rampant in other Christian faiths. In this, Christensen said, Friberg was vehemently opposed.
“So when you see the First Vision depiction that he did, that’s on the wall at Springville, it was a somewhat rebellious act by him,” Christensen explained. (That piece features an embodied God and Christ.)
Drawing on one’s own walls, Christensen said, is pretty atypical for artists. But it certainly conveys the boldness and matter-of-factness with which Friberg seemed to live his life. Friberg, Christensen said, was prolific, drawing on whatever kinds of surfaces he could find, be it his enormous studio walls or otherwise.
Added Christensen, “He was a big fish who happened to paint Mormons.”
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http://www.heraldextra.com/entertainment/arts-and-theater/visual/rare-arnold-friberg-sketches-come-to-springville-museum-of-art/article_0044e729-523c-550b-84a5-67cab026575f.html
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