In any event, I do not understand what your problem with him is, even with your perspective of the timing of his Church-commissioned work. Is it that you think he did not give appropriate acknowledgement to the guiding hand of Providence in creating his Mormon-themed paintings? Frankly, I am glad he did not or else we all might have to believe that BoM characters really all did look like American suburban body-builders. What effectively became the de facto canonization of kitsch anyway with Friberg’s strong themes and imagination would have to be acknowledged as actual revelation and the artistic license he took would have to be considered binding on how we all conceive of the events described. So much for Minerva Teichert’s alternative view of how things might have looked in Book of Mormon times.

And if Friberg had gone around saying his artwork had been dictated by God then (unless it were literally true) would that not constitute priestcraft, considering he was painting for a commission — it was his job?

As for whether or not his Book of Mormon illustrations are his only “buff” works, I defy anyone to look at this early Friberg and not think, as one commenter did, “Hen of God”!

Friberg’s paintings have shaped our mental images of so many scriptural events. For that he will be remembered as long as any of us live, and probably beyond.

Reading this morning’s paper, I wonder what the Utah Arts Council has agreed to and how much it is going to cost us Utah Taxpayers to build this “monument.” I am not enthralled.

I also wonder why only his BoM and Christ paintings are so unnaturally “buff”. His other paintings are not so exaggerated and for that matter even the Brother of Jared looks pretty normal.

How large was the Liahona? How did they see the pointers? Did he open the lid? Was it made of open work? What did they do with it when they weren’t using it? Did they let it roll around on the deck of the ship?

[ . . .]

[But] now we come to Mr. Pictures. That’s me! I can’t duck. There is no tube of paint that says, “Don’t know.” I have to come to grips with it. You have to decide if [the Liahona] is going to be this big. Now I don’t know any more than [the next guy], but I have to paint something. I decided on a handy little size that they could hold in their hand, and I made a little tripod stand for it to sit in. Someone will actually demand, . . . “Then how dare you paint it, if you don’t know?” . . . All you can do is research the period as close as you can and picture something that makes sense. You just come up with something that somehow fulfills your idea of what it looked like.

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