Westfall, “Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art” (Reviewed by Conor Hilton)

Review

Title: Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art
Author: Chase Westfall
Publisher: Center for Latter-day Saint Art
Genre: Nonfiction, Art Criticism
Year Published: 2021
Number of Pages: 133
Binding: Paper
ISBN: 978-0-578-91791-7
Price:

Reviewed by Conor Hilton for the Association of Mormon Letters

Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art is the inaugural exhibition at the Center Gallery in NYC. It is also the name of the accompanying exhibition catalog by Chase Westfall. Westfall’s catalog features insightful analyses, contextualizations, and interpretations of the pieces in the exhibition, as well as full-color reproductions of the artworks themselves. I have not seen the exhibition (though if I were near NYC, I would absolutely be making time for it after reading Westfall’s insights).

The book thoughtfully and critically engages with the artworks on display in the exhibition. I have never read anything else like Great Awakening. Westfall’s book opened my eyes to new ways of engaging with specific works of art in it, as well as with LDS works of art more broadly. I think the way that Westfall engages with the art offers a useful model for how Latter-day Saints of all varieties can engage with art more deeply. The theoretical framework that Westfall uses (as the subtitle of the book and exhibition suggest, one of ‘synthesis’), strikes me as productive for LDS artists of all varieties, not just visual artists.

In the opening essay to the book, Westfall argues that “it stands to reason that the lived project of the gospel (i.e., discipleship) will be revealed in the disciple’s true art just as it is in their authentic behavior” (23). This is one of the core tenets of Westfall’s theoretical engagement with the various works of art and one of the most provocative and portable ideas he raises. Essentially, Westfall argues that art is a form of discipleship, which builds to his reading of an insight from Merrill Bradshaw concerning the “‘tendency of Mormon thought to reconcile opposites so that they can exist within the same system’” (26). Art becomes one way of reconciling these opposites, a way to engage with the many paradoxes of existence and find ways forward.

I hope that Latter-day Saints interested in thinking about a theory of Mormon art take a look at the ideas that Westfall offers here, by way of the wonderful art in this exhibition. I am excited to see what else Center Gallery and the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts continue to do for Mormon art and what others make of the theoretical framework Westfall uses here.

https://www.centerforlatterdaysaintarts.org/