The BYU Museum of Art

For class this last week, we went to visit the Museum of Art's exhibit Types and Shadows: Intimations of Divinity. As a little background, art in general doesn't do much for me. It's not all that touching. While there is some I like, I don't care for a lot of it, and I especially dislike the ridiculous amount of thought and interpretation that someone who does it will do. If I don't like the painting at first glance, I don't want to study it usually.

That said, there were two of the paintings there I remember and that I really liked. The first was a still life painting in triptych form. It was a about the prodigal son. It was very clearly supposed to be incredibly indirect and symbolic, and my one complaint is in regards to that. There were pigs in the middle part, but since the middle part was blurry, I at first thought them grapes or apples or something else since they didn't stick out. So, good symbolism. But on the last part, there was a very clear cow, a reference to the slaughtered calf. Because that frame is clearly painted, it sticks out, and is too different from the rest of the painting to really add to it. It instead detracts. Other than that, I loved it. There is a blue cloth hanging over the entire thing, representing the spirit of God, and the best part was that while the entire picture was blurry in the second frame, the cloth was not, representing God's constant care over us, no matter what we do.

The other is a painting of Christ carrying his own cross. The painting is so photorealistic, it's amazing. The grain of the wood is clear and real. Christ's anatomy is perfectly correct and everything. It's quite stunning, partly because it is NOT a photo. But there is something that I at first didn't like about it. For how heavy a cross that size would have to be, he is standing far too straight. But after I thought about it, I figured that that could represent how Christ is all powerful. Or how, despite the cross, he was unbeaten at that point. Or, how, since he is unhurt, though he should be at this point in the narrative, that his spirit was unhurt and strong at this point. In any case, a stunning painting.

Over all, I enjoyed it, though there were certainly a number of them I didn't care for, including most of the ones the guide decided to stop at.