"face In The Hat Translation" - New Pictures In An Lds Book!

[nealr]

Nevo and others making a fuss about the face not being directly in the hat:

I have the book, and would recommend you get it and read through it before making a fuss. Here are a few things I can tell you:

1. There is a picture of Joseph with his face fully buried in the hat. It is one of his water color sketches.So calm down.

2. There is a really good essay as an appendix from the artist (Anthony Sweat) explaining both his reasons for doing the final painting as he did, and tackling the relationship between art and history more generally (spoiler alert: artists are, and have been so since pretty much forever, more interested in communicating what an event means to them than they are in producing a historically accurate image).

3. Turns out the Church has, in the past, tried to get artists to portray the image of Joseph with the hat, but every time the commissioned artist gave up because they couldn't figure out an aesthetic that expressed the message they wanted to send. Most of the time it just looked like someone barfing into a hat.

4. Art as a medium has different aims and goals than history. (See #2) Thus it sometimes takes adaptation in order to achieve those goals. This is the same reason why movies sometimes change what is in the book: as a different medium, sometimes what's in the book didn't send the right message in an audio visual format. You can find scores of director's interviews talking about this.

I hope this helps. But seriously, go buy and read the book, especially the appendix.

[Calm]

Thanks for showing up, Neal...always better for a firsthand report.

 

PS:  Neal and one other friend are the sources I was stealing from.  

Edited April 28, 2015 by calmoriah

[Calm]

Most of the time it just looked like someone barfing into a hat.

 

Got to admit that if I didn't know the story, it would look that way to me this time around too.

[Calm]

Another update...there are a total of four pictures, one has Joseph standing with the hat in his arm and the stone in his other hand and looking off to the side, no scribe but table with covered plates on it and quill and maybe paper showing; one with his face in the hat with the hat resting on the table with Martin Harris as scribe; another with Oliver Cowdrey as scribe and Joseph leaning over the table lifting the hat to his face and last the scribe with the plates covered on the corner of the table, Joseph with his arms braced on his legs, holding the hat in his two hands with his face about a foot above it....

Edited April 28, 2015 by calmoriah

[canard78]

If the plates were not somewhere nearby how would we know that it was Joseph Smith and that it was the Book of Mormon being translated?

What... Apart from the fact that it's published in a book about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon? That wouldn't do it?

Edited April 28, 2015 by canard78

[nealr]

What... Apart from the fact that it's published in a book about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon? That wouldn't do it?

I take it you are not much of an artist, canard? ;-)

Artists usually like their work to speak to viewers with as little explanatory text as possible. None, in fact, is the ideal. So just because a piece of art appears in a book on a topic doesn't mean an artist is going to bank on the text providing the context or meaning they hope to convey with their image. So if the artist thinks having the plates present is important to what they are trying to communicate, then they will put them there. And there are historical accounts which mention the covered plates sitting on the table during translation.

[ALarson]

nealr,

 

Thank you for posting more information about this!

 

Can you tell me where this book will be sold?  Is it available at Deseret Books?

[nealr]

nealr,

Thank you for posting more information about this!

Can you tell me where this book will be sold? Is it available at Deseret Books?

Yes, it is, though I had to ask for it at the DB I went to because they had them in the back. They then put some out on display along with getting my copy. But I would guess that this is because it is brand new, and technically not released yet (RSC has it set for a release in May), and not some grand cover up. ;-)

[pogi]

None, except that one conforms to the eyewitness descriptions and the other doesn't. If historical accuracy isn't important to you, then it's not a big deal.

 

I'm not too fussy when it comes to historical accuracy and art most of the time.  If I was, I wouldn't hang any paintings of Christ in my house.  As Nealr said, "art as a medium has different aims and goals than history".

[ALarson]

Maybe this has been mentioned, but something else about these depictions is the spectacles and breast plate are missing (when compared to some other depictions of the translation).  That may throw some members too when they first see this art.   They may wonder where the Urim and Thummim is.

[theplains]

I'm not too fussy when it comes to historical accuracy and art most of the time.

 

The church's depiction in the Book of Mormon illustrations section of what appears to be

the Mayan temples would give the viewer the impression Jesus visited the Nephites there.  

This art is either deceiving people or telling them to believe it as truth.  I don't think anyone

could see that picture and think anything other than the Yucatan Peninsula.  I haven't seen

the Manti Pageant play but I would hazard a guess that the same depiction is given there

too.

 

Regards,

Jim

[pogi]

The church's depiction in the Book of Mormon illustrations section of what appears to be

the Mayan temples would give the viewer the impression Jesus visited the Nephites there.  

This art is either deceiving people or telling them to believe it as truth.  I don't think anyone

could see that picture and think anything other than the Yucatan Peninsula.  I haven't seen

the Manti Pageant play but I would hazard a guess that the same depiction is given there

too.

 

Regards,

Jim

 

Do you know what the Nephite temple looked like?  How do you know that the Mayan temples were not inspired by the Nephite temples?  If you don't know what something looked like in history, you paint what you are familiar with.  No deception by the artist.  What we have here are literalists who don't know how to appreciate art for what it is. 

 

Again, you have to separate art from history, or you would believe that Jesus was a long-haired white guy with blue eyes.  

Edited April 28, 2015 by pogi

[theplains]

Do you know what the Nephite temple looked like?  How do you know that the Mayan temples were not inspired by the Nephite temples?.  

 

Some would say its purely speculation that the Nephites and Lamanites ever existed.  So

before one could say the Mayans were inspired by the Nephites, you would have to show

that the Nephites first existed.  That would be like saying the Egyptians were inspired to

build pyramids by the people who lived there before.

 

Regards,

Jim

[Nevo]

Nevo and others making a fuss about the face not being directly in the hat:

I have the book, and would recommend you get it and read through it before making a fuss. Here are a few things I can tell you:

1. There is a picture of Joseph with his face fully buried in the hat. It is one of his water color sketches.So calm down.

 

This is welcome news. I feel calmer already. Obviously, I could have saved myself some embarrassment by examining the actual book. I was wrong to assume that Stephen Smoot's blog post showed all of the illustrations that appear the book.

 

4. Art as a medium has different aims and goals than history. (See #2) Thus it sometimes takes adaptation in order to achieve those goals. This is the same reason why movies sometimes change what is in the book: as a different medium, sometimes what's in the book didn't send the right message in an audio visual format. You can find scores of director's interviews talking about this.

 

This explanation would sit better with me if Sweat's paintings had appeared in a different context; say, in a church art exhibition or in a coffee table book or something. If I were contemplating them in an art gallery, I wouldn't much care about the lack of historical accuracy (just as I'm happy to make allowance for artistic license in a Ridley Scott period piece).

 

But I confess I wasn't looking at Sweat's paintings as art for art's sake but as illustrations. Given that they appear to have been specially commissioned to illustrate a book intended to describe, as carefully and as accurately as possible, the method of translation of the Book of Mormon, I had the expectation that they would not be an artist's free renderings but would be constrained by historical descriptions of the translation. Just as if I were looking at a Boeing maintenance manual, I would expect the illustrations to correspond closely to the descriptions in the main text.

Edited April 29, 2015 by Nevo

[nealr]

The church's depiction in the Book of Mormon illustrations section of what appears to be

the Mayan temples would give the viewer the impression Jesus visited the Nephites there.  

This art is either deceiving people or telling them to believe it as truth.  I don't think anyone

could see that picture and think anything other than the Yucatan Peninsula.  I haven't seen

the Manti Pageant play but I would hazard a guess that the same depiction is given there

too.

 

Regards,

Jim

 

I wonder if you would say the same thing about medieval and renaissance art that depicts biblical stories in medieval and renaissance Europe? Where these paintings--often the only way illiterate peasants came to know these stories at all--deceiving people or telling them that the bible stories all happened in medieval Europe?

 

Any illustration of the Nephites and Christ's visit to them has to include some kind of setting, and there is no such thing as a neutral one. All architecture is cultural, all clothing is cultural, etc. So if they are going to visually portray it, they have to attach it to some sort of culture. Why not indigenous American cultures? A recent Church video uses architecture and clothing that is more akin to the Ohio River Valley. I really don't care which ones they choose (though I do think the events happened in Mesoamerica), because I understand it is art and is meant to communicate something to me far more important that where the Book of Mormon events took place.  

[Gervin]

... to present the scene differently due to feedback from those he showed his work to that they were confused by the picture. 

 

What's so confusing about a man with his hat pulled tight around his head while dictating an ancient written language with the help of a rock?  

[Calm]

Read the book and find out.

[nealr]

 

 

This explanation would sit better with me if Sweat's paintings had appeared in a different context; say, in a church art exhibition or in a coffee table book or something. If I were contemplating them in an art gallery, I wouldn't much care about the lack of historical accuracy (just as I'm happy to make allowance for artistic license in a Ridley Scott period piece). But I confess I wasn't looking at Sweat's paintings as art for art's sake but merely as illustrations. Given that they appear to have been specially commissioned to illustrate a book intended to describe, as carefully and as accurately as possible, the method of translation of the Book of Mormon, I had the expectation—wholly unreasonable it turns out—that they would not be an artist's free renderings, but rather would be constrained by historical descriptions of the translation process.

 

I don't think the art was specially commissioned. In the essay, Sweat mentions that when MacKay and Dirkmaat shared with him their manuscript (probably as a fellow historian, not an artist--he is a Church history professor, and only does art part-time on the side), he personally felt impressed to try his hand at illustrating the translation in a more historically accurate way. He explains that he nonetheless felt free to take artistic liberties, and talks about how he didn't feel like he could be true to his artistic trade if he didn't take the kind of liberties that he felt helped him communicate the meaning he gets from thinking about the miracle of translation. He introduces the essay by talking about the tension of his two trades--an artist and a historian--and how these tensions were never more apparent to him than while trying to produce this image. 

 

Seriously, just reading the essay you get a real sense for how much time, thought, and effort he put into to this image, and his desire to be both accurate and moving. And he produced an image that, no doubt, will be used by the Church in forthcoming manuals, etc., helping everyone more accurately visualize the event, while still portraying Joseph with the kind of prayerful dignity that believers have come to see in him (and yes, a looking like "prayerful dignity" probably isn't historically accurate--but it is an aesthetic that tells you what the artist and people who use and revere the image think of the man, and so it is important, and would be even if this were a commissioned piece for illustrations sake). Given all of that, I really don't see much merit in criticizing the work for not showing his face totally buried in the hat or whatever other detail could be quibbled with. Rather, I think he deserves mad props for this.  

[strappinglad]

Two points:

 

1. Are we now saying that Joseph never ONCE used the U&T ( spectacles) to translate ?

 

2. Please get a large hat. Put your i-phone in it with a suitable font size and put a text on the phone to read. Put your head in the hat and draw the brim up around your face. Now read the text aloud and have a scribe record what you say. Do that for an hour and then look at what was recorded. Reveal the results to all of us .

[Nevo]

I don't think the art was specially commissioned. In the essay, Sweat mentions that when MacKay and Dirkmaat shared with him their manuscript (probably as a fellow historian, not an artist--he is a Church history professor, and only does art part-time on the side), he personally felt impressed to try his hand at illustrating the translation in a more historically accurate way. He explains that he nonetheless felt free to take artistic liberties, and talks about how he didn't feel like he could be true to his artistic trade if he didn't take the kind of liberties that he felt helped him communicate the meaning he gets from thinking about the miracle of translation.

 

Fair enough. I came to the artwork with unrealistic expectations I guess. Looking at Sweat's background I can see why artistic considerations prevailed over historical ones.

[Scott Lloyd]

Descriptions of what? The preparation or the translation? Surely you can understand that it would be inaccurate to describe this picture as "Moses engaging in the game of stick-pulling." Granted, he could be preparing for such a game, but he's not doing it yet.

 

You've quite missed my point.

 

For him to have pressed his face into the hat, there had to have been a moment in time when he had taken the hat in his hands and was moving it toward his face. It is not inconsistent with history or accuracy to artistically depict that moment, so long as it is made clear what is being depicted.

 

I don't understand why it is being viewed as some egregious, deceptive, unpardonable offense to do so for the sake of visual appeal, even as one makes clear how the translation process reportedly transpired.

 

Suppose you had been a photographer on the scene and had chosen to snap the picture just before the face disappeared into the hat because you wanted to show what his face looked like, and a photo with his face in the picture would be much more visually appealing to readers than an ugly one with the face buried in the hat.

[CCRW]

2. Please get a large hat. Put your i-phone in it with a suitable font size and put a text on the phone to read. Put your head in the hat and draw the brim up around your face. Now read the text aloud and have a scribe record what you say. Do that for an hour and then look at what was recorded. Reveal the results to all of us .

I don't get it? What are you suggesting?

Edited April 29, 2015 by CCRW

[nealr]

I don't get it? What are you suggesting?

 

I think what strappinglad is suggesting is that to dictate the text to scribes, Joseph probably brought his face out of the hat. Otherwise, the sound would have been muffled and hard to hear and his scribe would have made all kinds of errors. 

[readstoomuch]

Nice to see the illustrations.  I get the impression that it was the way to concentrate.  Maybe seeing it in his mind`s eye required it.  

 

It seems a little like the Church History Essays, not every one is going to like the product the Church puts forward.  Thus, the darned if they do and darned if they don`t.  Good for us as a Church for trying to do 

[carbon dioxide]

If a person has a problem with Joseph having his face in a hat and believes Joseph Smith authored the Book of Mormon, have them put their face in a hat and dictate from memory several chapters of Isaiah almost perfectly from the KJV.  Let see how they do.