You'll notice in the center, as the soldiers are climbing the steps to get Samuel, the modern OSHA-approved metal safety rail preventing anyone from falling off.
elderolddog Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Looking at that picture reminded me of a song no > one has written yet: > > "Steel swords and wooden staffs" > > ...with no bar chords, okay?
Steel swords, steel swords ... & wood - den staffs!
(Tune: "Big Bad John" written by Roy Acuff and Jimmy Dean)
Because what's the point of making propaganda about your religion if the subjects don't look like their names were "SLAB BULKHEAD" "BUTCH DEADLIFT" "BIG McLARGEHUGE" "SLAB SQUATHRUST" "BOB JOHNSON. . .oh wait."
If you don't get these references, go watch the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode "Space Mutiny."
A large number of those paintings were done by Arnold Friberg who did the heroic paintings for Cecil B.Demille's movies. He was a member of the elder's quorum I was once in. I barely met him but I admire his paintings
"The guys who wiped the mats with all those Nephite carcasses must have really been truly awesome", said ElderOlddog while flexing for in front of the medicine cabinet mirror.
As a young gay mormon, I really enjoyed Friberg's paintings, especially the family on the boat. The young man (Sam?) looked a lot like an older boy I had a crush on in the ward.
that Friberg was commissioned by Church leaders to produce depictions of scenes from early Church history as well. However, these paintings have all been hidden away in the Church vault, purportedly for turning any young men who looked at Joseph Smith's swollen pectorals and Wilford Woodruff's bulging arms instantly gay.
Spencer Kimball finally had the paintings scrubbed from all Church materials, and kept the originals in an undisclosed location for, um, "personal" viewing until turning them over to the archives department in 1976.
I always thought the pictures within the BoM didn't help it, only made it look more like fiction. That's what I thought as a member and I usually didn't pick up giant pictures from the library as a primary teacher.
As an artist, before I was Mormon and while I was Mormon, I always compared the Arnold Freiberg paintings of Book of MORmON heroes to Michealangelo's renderings. Anatomically they were amazing.