I’ve been intrigued by an aspirational phrase I keep coming across in my research. For half a century, folks with an interest in Latter-day Saint art have been awaiting what they describe as a “Mormon Michelangelo.” The concept references a 1967 speech by Spencer W. Kimball, then a member of the LDS Church’s Quorum of Twelve Apostles who would go on to become the church’s twelfth president in 1973. He delivered the address, “Education for Eternity,” to the faculty of Brigham Young University, and a decade later, he repurposed the last section of the speech for an article in the church’s Ensign magazine in 1977 titled “The Gospel Vision of the Arts.” As one of the most extensive discussions of art by a leading authority of the church, it had an outsized impact on Mormon artists. It has been quoted by numerous creators, theorists, and critics within the Latter-day Saint tradition; as recently as 2017, the Mormon Arts Center (now the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts) took Kimball’s remarks as the starting point for a book of essays by fifteen LDS artists and scholars.
Kimball never used the exact phrasing “Mormon Michelangelo,” but the concept captures the essence of his argument: if people outside the “restored gospel” have succeeded in creating works of great beauty and meaning, Latter-day Saints should be able to go even further, bringing the light of restored truth and moral living to their creative pursuits. Kimball wasn’t just focused on the visual arts—he listed, in addition to Michelangelo, more than twenty examples including composers and performers, writers, playwrights, and others whose work was exceptional, but could nonetheless be surpassed, he believed, by committed Latter-day Saints. “Take a da Vinci or a Michelangelo or a Shakespeare,” he argued, “give him a total knowledge of the plan of salvation of God and personal revelation and cleanse him, and then take a look at the statues he will carve and the murals he will paint and the masterpieces he will produce.”
Why Michelangelo?
I want to explore an aspect of this discourse that has largely gone unaddressed. Why Michelangelo? I admit that what initially intrigued me about the idea of a “Mormon Michelangelo” was that it seemed like an absurd oxymoron. I know something about Michelangelo, and I know something about the artistic patronage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the second half of the twentieth century, and I can attest that there is zero chance that either would have had any interest in working with the other. Michelangelo created complex, divisive work that pushed contemporary audiences beyond the comfortable realm of what was then accepted as traditional. His unwillingness to compromise his personal vision legendarily frustrated more than one religious leader. Yet “innovative,” “challenging,” and “individualistic” are not terms that I would associate with the visual culture of mid-twentieth-century Mormonism, when church-sponsored art tended toward illustrational representations in traditional modes, carefully directed by the institution through intensive editorial oversight.
The concept of a “Mormon Michelangelo” has nonetheless retained salience among Kimball’s audience. One path toward understanding why and what’s at stake is to step outside the discourse that has explored the topic so far by “queering” the conversation. I’m using the term in both the broad sense of “reorienting” the scholarly focus from an oblique perspective (see Sara Ahmed’s conception of queer phenomenology), but also in the specific sense of focusing on the dynamics of sexuality. Following the playfully contrarian approach of queer studies, I read Kimball against the grain. Plenty of other observers have investigated the nuances of his language as it offers advice for Mormon artists, but I’m curious about the unspoken context that didn’t make it into the speech—but that might nonetheless offer surprising insight about what art meant to Latter-day Saints in the mid-twentieth century.
Fame as a Virtue
To restate my central question: why celebrate Michelangelo when the artist’s work was antithetical to the kind of art that the church was patronizing at the time? Michelangelo wasn’t the only artist that Kimball mentioned—he also included Leonardo, Raphael, Rembrandt, and the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen in his list of luminaries—but he devoted more attention to Michelangelo than any of the others, listing several of his works by name and referring to him twice as an iconic example later in his text.
I suspect Kimball thought of Michelangelo as the single most famous artist in history, in part owing to his experience a few years prior at the New York World’s Fair, where the LDS Church had invested in a pavilion. One of the key attractions at the fair was Michelangelo’s Pietà, lent by the Vatican in an exceptionally rare opportunity to see one of the artist’s signature works in the United States. But Michelangelo’s fame was not incidental to Kimball’s argument—fame, in fact, was the primary virtue that Kimball identified as defining greatness in a work of art. Considering the impact that his remarks had on Mormon artists, it’s surprising to realize how little guidance Kimball’s speech offers about the aesthetic or conceptual challenges that great art might aspire to address. Kimball described artworks and performances as exhibiting beauty, power, and greatness, but never explained what any of those terms constitute, how they intersect with purity or godliness from a Mormon perspective, or how exactly a knowledge of the “restored gospel” could propel artists to greater heights. He offered some suggestions for uniquely Mormon subjects—a cantata about Christ’s visit to the Nephites to rival Handel’s Messiah, for example—but he limited any discussion of a theology of aesthetics mostly to generalized platitudes.
One constant in his description of artistic excellence, however, is the assertion that great art achieves renown. His vision, as he described in “The Gospel Vision of the Arts,” was not of artworks, but artists. Rather than seeing the potential for works of great beauty or meaning, he saw Latter-day Saints competing with the world’s “brilliant stars” in all creative disciplines, “greatly increasing their already strong positions of excellence till the eyes of all the world will be upon us.” He quoted John Taylor, a church leader from the previous century, declaring that Latter-day Saints would “become the praise and glory of the whole earth, so that kings hearing of her fame will come and gaze upon her glory.” In his list of artists and performers, he focused more on the accolades they had achieved than on the specifics of what made their work praiseworthy. He commended Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, for example, not for its ennobling vision of the connection between humanity and deity, its incisive visual exposition of scripture, nor its expressive use of color, line, and form, but simply because it “is said to be the most important piece of mural painting of the modern world.”
Partly, no doubt, this is because Kimball’s professional expertise was in banking and insurance, not art criticism. But that is not to suggest that Kimball was overlooking the “gospel vision” as he considered the power of art. To the contrary, his emphasis on public acceptance and cultural impact resonates with a central aim of Latter-day Saint art since the early history of the church. As I explore in Mormon Visual Culture and the American West, Latter-day Saints had already been promoting their accomplishments in the fine arts for more than a century as evidence of their respectability and social-fitness within the American republic. In an era when polygamous Mormons were castigated as barbaric sensualists who threatened American civility, Latter-day Saints showcased their achievements in visual art, music, theater, and other cultural arenas as powerful counter-arguments. Although this discourse had mellowed by the mid-twentieth century, Latter-day Saints still faced hostility from religious critics who asserted that Mormonism was incompatible with Christianity. Additionally, Latter-day Saints in the mid-1960s were facing a new wave of public objection to their social practices, this time focused on their entrenched racial discrimination. The decade between the two published versions of Kimball’s speech, in fact, bracketed the most contentious period in this struggle—Kimball ended the church’s prohibition on priesthood ordination and temple worship for Black members the year following “The Gospel Vision of the Arts”’ publication in the Ensign.
This context helps elucidate the theological perspective underlying Kimball’s focus on fame as a measure of greatness. The existence of Mormon artists of renown would testify of the truth of the restoration while advancing the cause of the gospel by uplifting Latter-day Saints in the eyes of the world. Success in elevated cultural arenas would help Latter-day Saints counter critics who saw them as backward, regressive, or deviant, whether from conservative religious positions or progressive social standpoints. From Kimball’s perspective, the irony involved in squaring Michelangelo’s contentious, passionate, and supremely individual art with the LDS Church’s demand for anodyne, institutionally-vetted images was irrelevant. The “Mormon Michelangelo” needn’t make art that had any connection to Michelangelo at all so long as they succeeded in achieving universal recognition and enhancing the Mormon public image.
Artists and Perverts
While accomplishing renown was one essential characteristic for a Mormon Michelangelo in Kimball’s vision, he also asserted that they must be morally “clean.” That would give them an advantage over many historical artists, who, he noted, were said to be “perverts or moral degenerates.” If morally impure people could make great art, “what could be the result if discovery were made of equal talent in men who were clean and free from the vices and thus entitled to revelations?” Even in his litany of creators worthy of emulating, Kimball interjected critical observations when he had reason to doubt an artist’s moral probity. He hoped that a composer might emerge from Brigham Young University who would be the equal of Wagner, but “less eccentric and more spiritual.” Tempering his observation of Rembrandt’s brilliant originality, he noted that “his morals have also been subject to criticism.”
Kimball also offered a critical take on Michelangelo. Although he devoted more attention to him than any other visual artist, even quoting him twice to demonstrate his commitment to “hard work and patience and long-suffering,” he also saw Michelangelo as starkly outside his own religious world. He quoted Habakkuk to capture his sense of awe that someone so far from the gospel (as he understood it) could be capable of creating such magnificence: “behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.” It’s one thing to be called a “gentile” from a Mormon perspective, but “heathen” seems a bit overstated. Certainly, Michelangelo would have been shocked to see himself considered such if we consider the depth of his conviction to Christianity as revealed through his art and poetry.
Perhaps Michelangelo’s Catholicism made him enough of an “other” to put him in the category of “heathen” from Kimball’s perspective? Kimball added several additional points of criticism that hint at his recognition of another kind of difference. “Could we not find an embodied talent” like Michelangelo, he asked, “but with a soul that was free from immorality and sensuality and intolerance?” Those three accusations seem carefully considered. The last point might be the most obscure. How was Michelangelo “intolerant”? I suspect Kimball did not intend the term to express its common contemporary connotation of “bigoted” or “prejudicial,” but was alluding instead to the artist’s famous unwillingness to accept criticism or accede to the needs or desires of others. “Sensuality” seems clearer: surely Kimball couldn’t imagine an artist with a true “gospel vision” focusing so intently on the idealized nude as a subject.
“Immorality,” though. At first glance, one might assume that this meant the same thing as “sensuality”—that the nudity pervading Michelangelo’s work could stir embodied passions in a manner that might elicit sexual desire. I think there is a meaningful difference between the two terms in Kimball’s perspective, however. His criticism of Michelangelo as “immoral” suggests a fault not in the artist’s work, but in his life. The other artist that Kimball described as “immoral,” Rembrandt, is not nearly as associated with the nude as a subject. Instead, the “immorality” that bothered Kimball is evident in biographical accounts detailing Rembrandt’s complicated relationships, marital and otherwise, which even provoked an embarrassing legal proceeding during the artist’s lifetime.
The immorality for which Kimball criticized Michelangelo is less clearly defined in the artist’s biography, but reflects a commonly-assumed aspect of his character, even in Kimball’s era. People have speculated about Michelangelo’s sexuality since his own lifetime. The artist told his biographer that despite rumors and accusations, his interest in the male body was based solely on an appreciation of beauty, not sexuality. Yet the details of his biography, correspondence, visual art and poetry seemed—even to his contemporaries—to suggest something more. Following his death, his oeuvre was “whitewashed,” as James Saslow has described, especially when his nephew published an edition of his poetry, changing numerous gender pronouns to obscure the homoeroticism obvious in the originals. I am careful to remind my classes that even though it is tempting for us to make assumptions based on the modern categories we use to understand sexuality in the present, doing so can lead to misunderstanding since those categories did not exist in the past. Anyone who is interested in learning more about how Michelangelo experienced sexuality and how that experience shaped his art should look into the voluminous scholarship on that topic—Saslow’s work is a great place to start—but I will set those questions aside in exploring what Spencer W. Kimball may have thought.
It would surprise me if Kimball had delved into this topic in any detail, but I think it is very likely that he had come across references suggesting that Michelangelo was attracted to men. It might be surprising to learn that public awareness of this issue isn’t at all new, but started building as early as the mid-nineteenth century, largely through the work of John Addington Symonds. In 1878, he published a new translation of Michelangelo’s poetry that restored the original gender pronouns. His 1893 biography of Michelangelo was circumspect about Michelangelo’s sexuality, reflecting the Victorian-era public morality of his readers, but it still hinted quite explicitly, for the period, asserting that the artist was “obeying some deep instinct of his nature” as he represented female figures with bodies “scarcely distinguishable from the adolescent male.” Michelangelo’s images of women lack conviction, Symonds claimed, because “Michelangelo never loved, nor admired, nor yielded to the female sex.” Symond’s motive was not to slander Michelangelo, but to elevate the idea of love between men as an integral part of human experience with a long and sometimes even illustrious history in Western culture. His work was instrumental in inventing the concept of “homosexuality” near the turn of the century, contributing to the emerging corpus of scholarship that sought to define homosexuality as an identity while arguing for decriminalization and destigmatization. Continuing throughout the twentieth century, proponents of this perspective claimed Michelangelo as an example of an illustrious and accomplished homosexual.
How would Spencer W. Kimball have come across any of this? Possibly directly from Symonds, whose Life of Michelangelo is cited in the published version of his 1967 speech. Even more likely, he was familiar with the perspective from his engagement with literature about homosexuality. As Gregory Prince has described, one of Kimball’s assignments as an apostle beginning in 1947 was to “review cases of fornication, adultery, or homosexuality” that came before church leadership—in 1959 he was assigned, along with Mark E. Peterson, to “counsel homosexuals.” Kimball not only counseled in private, but published publicly, categorically denouncing the practice or acceptance of homosexuality in a book titled The Miracle of Forgiveness and in a series of pamphlets. In his research for counseling and writing, Kimball would very likely have come across references to Michelangelo’s alleged homosexuality. The artist was named in numerous volumes published in the era—claimed as a positive example by gay rights activists, “rescued” by apologists who asserted his heterosexuality, referenced by psychologists and psychoanalysts from a variety of perspectives about sexuality, and even occasionally denounced as an immoral influence by homophobes.
My guess is that Kimball would have been skeptical of claims about Michelangelo’s homosexuality. He continually denounced anyone who promoted acceptance or even tolerance—and it seems likely that he would have interpreted their claim to the artist as a ploy for normalizing what he considered sexual deviance. The intensity of Kimball’s revulsion toward same-sex love makes me doubt that he would have included Michelangelo as a positive example in “Education for Eternity” if he were convinced he was truly homosexual in the modern sense, even with the caveats about immorality and sensuality. Yet the language Kimball employed suggests he may have at least considered the possibility and taken such claims seriously. The wording in his note that “it has been said that many of the great artists were perverts or moral degenerates” is significant: in his other writings, Kimball used the term “pervert” primarily as a synonym for “homosexual.” In The Miracle of Forgiveness, for example, he employed the terms “pervert” and “perversion” almost exclusively as references to gay men. Beyond his awareness of Michelangelo’s contested sexuality, his warning about “pervert” artists might reflect the commonplace suspicion in the era that art was an especially attractive field for homosexuals, perhaps most famously expressed in the painter Thomas Hart Benton’s homophobic assessment of midcentury American art. Although creative genius was associated almost entirely with men (as Jana Reiss notes in her essay in “The Kimball Challenge at Fifty,” Kimball only named five women—no artists, one scientist, and four musicians, all performers rather than composers), the emotionally expressive aspect of artmaking did not accord with popular conceptions of masculinity in postwar America. Although it’s impossible to precisely excavate Kimball’s perspective, something about Michelangelo struck him as “queer.” Even though he did not directly question Michelangelo’s sexuality in his text, his assertion of the artist’s “immorality” and “sensuality” in the context of his wider warning about “pervert” artists ensure that we interpret his criticism of Michelangelo through the lens of sexuality. For Kimball, Michelangelo’s apparent queerness (no matter how vaguely defined) held him back from creating masterpieces on an even greater level that he might have had he been “cleansed.” There would be nothing queer about the Mormon Michelangelo in Kimball’s vision.
In Kimball’s description, the Mormon Michelangelo will exhibit two essential characteristics, one very much like the original Michelangelo and the other very different. Like the original, they will achieve world-wide renown. Their art will fulfill John Taylor’s prophecy by propelling “Zion to become the praise and glory of the whole earth…” Simultaneously, however, they will be emphatically not-queer—cleansed from eccentricity, immorality, and sensuality. I find myself wondering, though, if Michelangelo’s queerness was not an obstacle, but an essential element in the lasting impact of his art? Even if it is impossible for us to fully understand Michelangelo’s inner experience or to know exactly how he navigated the sexual and religious worlds in which he lived, could it be that his oblique perspective gave him insight he could not have arrived at otherwise? Maybe his challenge in confronting the tension between the ideal world projected by his faith and the world as he actually experienced it gave him a voice that was much more profound and broader-reaching than the clear-cut moral directives of a self-assured institution.
Kimball’s desire for a Mormon artist who was at once entirely exceptional and completely normal seems fitting for the era in which he lived, when Latter-day Saints struggled to balance their desire for acceptance with their yearning for transcendence. Mormons had fought for decades to frame themselves as ordinary Americans—had they, in the process, as some Latter-day Saints feared, given up the distinctive practices and beliefs that had set them apart from the world? This was an especially urgent question as Latter-day Saints debated how their church would respond to the civil rights movement and other social questions that would impact their alignment with broader American culture. As a model for aspiring Mormon artists, Kimball’s vision of a Mormon Michelangelo offers a potentially frustrating paradox. But queering the conversation to explore that paradox illuminates how Latter-day Saints understood art through the complex social tensions animating the world of mid-twentieth century Mormonism.