A guest post from Jacob Taylor, originally posted at the Alive & Intelligent substack.
In a salt marsh outcropping on the rim of America’s Great Basin sits a town by the name of Delta, Utah. Somewhere in its grid of streets is a house, and in this house hides something precious to me. The treasure hidden within is a memory, perhaps even a work of art, trapped like a piece of dragonfly wing in the ancient amber of cheap silicon.
The hidden treasure is an audio file, locked in an aging flash drive, and it was recorded in the middle of June, 2016. The summer heat hung still in our 6th story Lisbon apartment. After a night with the windows open, our bodies were covered in mosquito bites, but at least our skin was not salty from sweating all night. One of the other Elders, I think it was Elder Thomas, asked us to sing a song with him. We split into parts (if you can call it that) and we sang God Bless the USA into the microphone of our Nokia brick phone. Lee Greenwood would be proud.
Everyday for the next six weeks that song was our 7AM alarm. Hearing it made me smile instead of squinting with anger, which was a welcomed change of pace. Elder Bennett’s overly-sentimental performance combined with Elder Thomas emphatically stating “Where I’m Free!” and “He Gave To Me!” created a comical but heartfelt expression of our longing for a piece of America in the Portuguese suburbs.
Now, with the passing of this year’s Independence Day celebration, I can hear that little alarm song running through my head. The memory fills me with a strange but potent mixture of nostalgia and gratitude. It amazes me how a song can stick with you over so many years, like a key to access a locked box of images and emotions.
It is not just songs that can do this of course, for all works of art have the potential to strike at the human heart. Poetry, literature, dance, the visual arts and film are all in their own ways a unique way of communicating with the felt, intuitive, even spiritual side of human nature, something the neural imaging specialist Iain McGilchrist links to the right cerebral hemisphere.
The question of how our eternal spirit and the nervous system might interface is something I must reserve for another day. However, after dwelling on this long-lost recording and its power to bring back feelings and memories with such intensity, I am struck with an unusual question: Is it possible to convey any of the felt elements of life without using some means of artistic expression?
Perhaps “any” makes the question a bit too extreme, since there is at the very least basic sense data which any functional language can convey quickly and clearly. In fact, these immediate sensations form the basic foundation for language itself. For example, you cannot describe to someone what the color blue is like if they have not seen it for themselves. Thus, even for someone who otherwise speaks fluent English, they will not understand the concept of “blue” since they do not have a personal experience seeing the color blue. At the simplest of words and categories, there has to be an actual sense perception beneath the word for it to have semantic value.
From there, words can be abstracted and compounded, like the emotion of being “blue” which carries an intuitive connection between the “cool” tones of blue and gray colors compared to the “warm” tones of reds and yellows. Being red-hot with anger follows this sort of abstract connection between the way we feel, what we see, and the language symbols that bridge these imaginary gaps.
Art is not quite like this. In a mysterious fashion, truly meaningful art punctures straight into the human soul and generates experiences that have never been felt by that person before. The proud are brought to humility, the hard-hearted are given empathy, and even the most nihilistic soul is presented with an opportunity to perceive the beauty of the world, a beauty which is worthy of struggle. In a way, great art is like saying the word “blue” in just such a way that a formerly blind person can suddenly see that color, and from that moment on never fully un-see it again.
Appreciating a piece of art is always a subjective experience. Its value is always subject to the interpretation of the person engaging with it. For example, I am certain that no one but us three former Portuguese Elders would listen fondly to our low fidelity recording. That is fine by me, since it was never meant to appeal to a universal audience. But is this what makes a piece of art great then: simple mass appeal?
Without a doubt universality is an element of great art. Michaelangelo’s David is universally awe-inspiring. But it is not awe-inspiring because it is universal. David makes no attempt to placate the average viewer. It is precise and specific in its form as a kingly, masculine figure borne out of 17 feet of marble. And millions of people come to Florence, Italy from around the world to view David for this reason: because it is unapologetically great.
But what about Sabrina Carpenter’s hit song Espresso? Is this great art? It certainly has mass appeal. The music video for this song has over 400 million views as of the publishing of this essay, with millions more listens on Spotify and other licensing distributions across the media landscape. The song is whimsical, crass, fun—a sort of contemporary nod to Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
If you hum the hook of Espresso nearly anywhere in the developed world, I would bet good hard cash that someone nearby will recognize it and start humming with you. And in a way, it really is a great song. It’s not easy to make something so catchy that takes the world by storm like Espresso did. A creative work is not suddenly out of the running for being great simply because it is popular or new. John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway were once rejected as popular authors having nothing in common with the truly great authors of the past, as were essentially every upstart artist, musician, artist, and even scientist reaching back to the dawn of recorded history.
The next generation’s classics must be made at some point, thus that which is made today may be esteemed as truly great tomorrow. But there’s that pesky question again: is Espresso, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, or any of the works deemed popular in entertainment (or even high art) truly great as an art piece? What does it mean to produce or to observe great art?
Let us return to Michaelangelo for some insight into this question. David is universal in its greatness because it says something specific, something human, something felt in the depths of the onlooker no matter where they come from. The statue itself is an expression of Michaelangelo’s neoplatonism, his humanism, and the Christian world from whence that love of human kind’s potential arose. Put succinctly, David is much more than an art object: it represents a particular way of seeing man, and through man the entire world.
How does the song Espresso in turn present the world? What values are implied by the song’s creators? It suggests the importance of freedom in romance, along with the power of female allure to seduce money, power and attention from the men around her. Like so much of popular media, Espresso assumes a shallow sort of hedonism that reduces life down to the pleasure principle.
The dude part of me says, “Don’t overthink it, man, it’s just fun!” But then the other part of me thinks, “No, this is quite serious. Art is powerful. Not everything has to be classically inspired or overtly philosophical, but when done well, that kind of art hits hard and sticks with us for the rest of our lives.”
And I am not against fun, especially not in music. I love putting on fun pop music to lighten my mood and bob my head—perhaps not Sabrina Carpenter, but definitely Magdalena Bay (a band worth looking up). I am, however, of the opinion that what makes great art is a firm grounding in a philosophy, and ultimately a theology. Hedonism, nihilism and shallow market incentives do not create art of the same caliber as that made by someone with deeply held beliefs. Those beliefs shape the way in which we perceive the world, and a great artist can transmute those insights into their medium of choice.
I am not the only one who has thought that way either. Michelangelo spoke of “liberating” the sculpture from the stone, a clear homage to his deeply Neoplatonic understanding of the world. For Plato and his philosophical descendants, a world of Forms exists separately from our day-to-day perception where the perfected versions of everything reside. That’s a brutish summary of Platonic forms, but Michelangelo’s intent was that the statue David would be a physical manifestation of this idealized Form of Man. Beyond this still, Michelangelo was not just sculpting a man. He specifically sculpted David, and as far as masculine Biblical figures go, the young David is a good contender for the most idealized in terms of physical strength mixed with spiritual acuity.
The statue David is just one of a virtually infinite supply of truly remarkable works of art inspired by Christian stories and ethics. One such piece which I had the honor of seeing in person is another statue, this one entitled The First Funeral by Louis Ernest Barrias. It depicts Adam and Eve carrying their slain son Abel, the first man laid to rest in the ground. The emotion in their faces still haunts me to this day; and that is the power of great art.
Of course, Christians do not have a monopoly on great art—a cursory glance at the artistic and architectural traditions of just India, China and the Islamic world are enough to demonstrate that—but simply due to the relatively narrow audience of this publication (you can read English and have subscribed to this publication), you like myself are much more aware of the nuances and symbolism of Christian art than anything outside our general culture.
And that’s alright. Greatness in art is always a bit of a dialectic, a sort of tug and pull between the art object and the observer, each set within their own unique time, place, cultural context, and personal tastes. Value itself is a slippery concept to pin down, since it is always relational (valuable for what and for whom), let alone the concept of greatness of art and what that actually means. There is an entirely separate eternal debate about what art even is to begin with. The boundaries are fuzzy, but I think they are still distinct enough to be worth discussing.
However, this raises a question concerning Latter-day Saint specific art. Latter-day Saints are Christian, yes, but also something else. We have a different story, a newer story, an older story, and a story not yet taken up by its own Renaissance of artistic expression. Can art tell the story of the restored gospel from heart to heart? Is there a tradition of great Latter-day Saint artists, and how can that lineage evolve and progress?
Terryl Givens has already given this topic a thorough address in his masterpiece People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture. I cannot recommend this book enough, but for those who have not read it, Terryl first lays out four key paradoxes within LDS theology: authority contra freedom and agency; searching for answers contra certainty in revealed truth; the sacred contra the banal; and delighting in being a chosen people contra the loneliness of cultural exile. He then demonstrates how each of these paradoxes have been the well-spring for any number of Latter-day Saint artists throughout the years, including authors, painters, musicians, and filmmakers.
There is so much fertile intellectual soil within the Latter-day Saint tradition for great art to blossom forth. There is so much worth saying which has not yet been said. Many phenomenal works have been made, but even more have yet to be created. The Church itself once sent art missionaries abroad to Paris to learn from the classical masters. What is the modern day equivalent of this zeal, both by the young adults who left and the institution who sent them?
Certainly this zeal is still in our bones, both as members and as an institution. In a fervent First Presidency message, Spencer W. Kimball wrote,
“Our writers, our motion picture specialists, with the inspiration of heaven, should tomorrow be able to produce a masterpiece which would live forever. Our own talent, obsessed with dynamism from a worthy goal, could put into such a story life and heartbeats and emotions and love and pathos, drama, suffering, fear, courage; and they could put into it the great leader, the mighty modern Moses who led a people farther than from Egypt to Jericho, who knew miracles as great as the stream from the rock at Horeb, manna in the desert, giant grapes, rain when needed, battles won against great odds.” – “The Gospel Vision of the Arts“, Ensign, July 1977.
And many have taken up this call over the decades since. For a recent example, take the work of Caleb Williams. Better known online as Godwin, his visual art takes inspiration from elaborate Catholic or Orthodox iconography, and is a decidedly classical approach to religious art. Godwin regularly visits cathedrals across the world, and particularly Europe, for inspiration. And yet, while his work emulates an ancient stained-glass Christendom, it is brimming with Latter-day Saint specific symbols. Keep an eye out for his work in the up and coming physical edition of the independent BYU student newspaper The Cougar Chronicle. Everything Godwin makes is visually striking and demands further reflection.
Godwin’s work is unapologetic. Unlike the work of the Arch-Hive or most of what you might regularly find at The Compass Gallery, there is not a hint of irony or self awareness. Godwin also does not take at times questionable social values and paint them into a scene from the gospels. Instead, this instinct seems very intentionally inverted — Godwin pulls his visual inspiration from the greats, constantly expanding the complexity and richness of his technique, and then fuses it with rich Latter-day Saint ideology, cosmology, and doctrine. This process makes his art irresistibly eye-catching.
Take his piece KOLOB the GREAT ONE, for example. Clearly a love letter to the Book of Abraham, it feels like a return to an older Latter-day Saint art style, one filled with doctrinal confidence and mystery. In it, Joseph Smith and Abraham stare into the stars through their respective urim and thummims. At the center of the piece is an unabashed map of the Latter-day Saint cosmos as described in the Pearl of Great Price. It reads like a medieval graph of Dante’s levels of Paradise, or a painting of Ptolemy’s geocentric model of the Universe. It almost feels deserved, to the point that I compulsively nod my head and think, “Finally, we have an art piece that celebrates our cosmology in a sophisticated way.” The perceived extremity of including, by name, the celestial bodies — Shinehah, Olea, Obliblish, countless Kokobeam, all surrounding the central Eye of God — this only feels extreme because it’s so rarely done.
Godwin is absurdly prolific in his output. Every week he releases a piece to accompany the Come Follow Me Curriculum. In place of pastoral images of Christ, Godwin treats us to magnificent tapestries decorated by His doctrines, parables, and essence, all steeped in the rich identity of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This method works because Godwin isn’t reinventing the wheel. He is simply synthesizing Latter-day Saint ideas with the time-tested classical craftsmanship.
Another surprising example of poignant Latter-day Saint art is Barrett Burgin’s comedy short film, Java Jive. Recently given a glowing review by James Goldberg in Wayfare magazine, it tells the story of a young man who is trying not to drink coffee on a date. He refuses to admit his religious rationale, causing the date to continually worsen the more he tries to get out of it.
I remember watching it for the first time and thinking to myself, “This film has no business being this profound.” It’s a slapstick comedy for Pete’s sake! Why could I not stop thinking about it for weeks on end? I don’t know that I have ever seen anything which so perfectly encapsulates and critiques the experience of faith-based shame that is so part and parcel of growing up as a Latter-day Saint.
This attests to the fact that Java Jive is something entirely distinct from the screwball church comedies of the early 2000s. Its very DNA is different. In Burgin’s own words:
“While there is definitely an established, commendable corpus of “Mormon Comedy”, it has often been noted that these films can get somewhat insular and self-referential, and without any real teeth. The exceptions to this seem to be the films of Jared Hess, which are inspired by the culture, but don’t make overt references to it. I instead wanted to try approaching culture in the style of comedic filmmakers such as Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, or the Safdie Brothers, who have often placed their Jewishness front and center, utilizing constant references to a Jewish identity, while keeping their work authoritative, honest, accessible, and spicy.”
I find this admission more significant than simple cinematic influences. Like Godwin, Barrett is looking to the greats for structural and tonal inspiration rather than the echo chamber of his own community. Who understands comedy and cultural shame better than the Jews? Films like Fiddler on the Roof perfectly balance specificity and accessibility, while also saying something substantive about their own culture. Barrett translated that principle into the setup for Java Jive. Anyone with a dietary restriction which they don’t want to own up to can relate to our pal Ben at the coffee shop. And yet, the film is simultaneously supercharged with Latter-day Saint peculiarity to the point of being painful.
In some ways, Java Jive is a scathing cultural critique of self so Latter-day Saint specific that it feels personal. It hurts and it is funny because it is fully honest, no teddy-bears to comfort the viewer and no walls to hide behind. To borrow a phrase from our Jewish friend Tevye, “…on the other hand,” the film is unashamedly, unapologetically pro-Mormon. Like a brother who only you are allowed to pick on because “he’s family,” Barrett earns his criticisms by owning the identity.
Almost like a self-aware seminary video, the film ruthlessly punishes its protagonist for not claiming the family name, for not having the spine to take a stand on something, for living in awkward shame and trying to serve two worlds. His problems would be solved if he would just admit to himself and others what he actually is and thinks! The movie is full of “other hands” and qualifications—no one is safe in Java Jive—and yet it is somehow wholly consistent and unwavering in what it wants to say. In this way, through both its humor and its perspective, Java Jive is truly shameless. And that makes it great art.
This is to say nothing of Barrett Burgin’s masterpiece of Latter-day Saint history and folklore, a pair of horror pieces set in polygamous southern Utah during the late 1800s. They are named Angel and The Third Wife, a short film and an in-development feature film respectively. I will leave that up to you to find in your own time.
There is great art in the world, but there should be more. It is time to find it, to circumscribe it, and to make more of it. Refine your taste, support great artists as you find them, and let us all strive to make Zion a beautiful place in whatever way we can.
About The Author
Jacob Taylor graduated from BYU with a degree in Genetics, working specifically in horticultural research. After a few years working for Clemson University’s peach breeding program, Jacob and his family moved to Savannah, GA, where he obtained a Master of Arts in Classical Humanities from Ralston College. He now spends his day listening to books and dissertations while working outside as the owner-operator of Halcyon Landscapers. Jacob lives in Grover Beach, CA, with his wife, a two-year-old daughter, and a soon-to-arrive new son.