ABSTRACT
Young was developing a national reputation and building a career in New York-versed in contemporary art trends, he was the ideal choice for representing Mormonism as having emerged as a modern church from the turmoil of the previous century. Within a decade, it was joined just a short walk away by the Seagull Monument-the next stop in the church's carefully staged presentation of a new, modern Mormonism that had moved past its radical origins in order to affiliate itself with "mainstream" American values. As twentieth-century artists reimagined nineteenth-century Mormons as venerable "pioneers", they were not departing from the strategic use of images Latter-day Saints developed during the territorial era; they were contributing a new manifestation of politically driven self-representation meant to harness the narrative of Mormonism's past, present, and future. Concurrently, many Latter-day Saints have argued against this focus on tight, illusionistic rendering, claiming that expressive, concept-driven, or non-representational modes offer alternate means of eliciting emotive or even spiritual resonance.
