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Why is it that we have so little art? So little creativity? so few koans and satori? Am I off base here? It really seems to me that the church is a tether for our “artistic brothers and sisters.” Carol Lynn Pearson talked about this in her MS interview…and about her days at BYU in the arts department, how tough it was to get any type of original screenplay through the department…and the editing that went on so it could be “church approved.”
I mean, even our temples and buildings, which were awesome in the 1800’s, have been “correlated” …which is why we have those monstrosities in Provo by the MTC and other places.
Does the church correlated structure discourage creative art and talent? Are artistic people pushed out of the church? Or there talents buried by the bureaucracy?
If I am wrong, can someone point it out to me?
Quote:Why is it that we have so little art? So little creativity?
As I see it…
Like the Soviet Union, all art has to be approved by committees with very old fashioned attitudes. They also prefer realistic interpretations (if they can be called that) to abstract notions.
We also have no networks outside Mormon belt for distributing non-approved Mormon culture. Although the internet may help with this.
Art and books approved by the church invariably involve anonymity.
Sometimes in the front of Ensign they have some great art by members, I’ve seen some wonderful pictures based on the Tree of Life.
I’ll post more on this.
Quote:so few koans and satori?
The church has already been so criticized for its weirdness that it feels the need to be overly “normal”? It doesn’t like surprises.
Quote:Does the church correlated structure discourage creative art and talent?
Yes, although see comment on Ensign which does occasionally have pretty good new art in it.
Quote:Are artistic people pushed out of the church? Or there talents buried by the bureaucracy?
Yes, and yes. All about approval. They don’t like to promote certain individuals too much in case they apostatize.
Artistic people are also a bit different. I’m already known in the ward by some people as “the writer”. I’m not a serious writer yet, but have been published in various magazines. I’m helping out with a play just now.
The artistic world is full of gays etc, drink and drugs and all kinds of other things church doesn’t approve of. And working on Sundays.
Tension and conflict are at the heart of all great works of art. Tension doesn’t have to only imply negativity. I am talking about yearnings and deeply passionate desires — the exploration of differences, of surprises, and of thinking about the world in ways that are not status quo. To put it bluntly, people who devote their life to their art are a little bit crazy, at least all the ones that end up producing works we later consider “great.” Name me a single great artist that lived a boring life, or didn’t have some idea stuck in their soul that they felt compelled to explore with obsessive compulsion.
Mormon culture abhors tension and conflict.
It wasn’t always that way, mostly just the direction it has taken over the past several decades. The dominant theme has been Correlation — the standardization and homogenization of LDS Mormonism. McDonald’s doesn’t deliver you excitingly innovative and dramatic cuisine. They serve you the same thing, with the same flavor, with no deviation in quality or properties all over the world. If you eat a cheeseburger in Taiwan, it will taste just like a cheeseburger in Pocatello Idaho, every time.
It’s purposely not exciting. It’s dependable and consistent. It’s not artistic.
You really do have to be just a little “off center” to be a great artist. (Even many actors are at least slightly nuts, and relatively few of them actually create great original art.) Modern medicine has lowered that inclination in lots of people, which has lessened the tendency for truly great original art overall in our society at large, and our religious culture doesn’t celebrate weirdness and non-conformity. Iow, what Brian said – with the addition that the decline in truly great original art goes beyond our church setting.
Old-Timer wrote:Modern medicine has lowered that inclination in lots of people, which has lessened the tendency for truly great original art overall in our society at large, and our religious culture doesn’t celebrate weirdness and non-conformity.
I think it’s also the media and advertizing. I get really annoyed when I read several newspapers and find that they have the same stories in them even the same phrases in some cases… it annoys me because I know that there are other stories out there and they are just stealing from press agencies and pleasing their employers.
With advertizing, a lot of original artistic ideas are prostituted and used to make money. Surrealism and punk, for example, once both highly subversive have been completely co-opted by advertizing.
Our Jesus is too clean really. We don’t see him on the cross. He has a beard, but he’s washed, and relatively dirt free. In some Mormon portrayals we have a “bleached Christ”… particularly the Christus statue. All the color has been drained from him,
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