Trevor Southey: Reconciliation

Salt Lake Tribune, Frank McEntire "Prodigal Son," a large trip-tych painted 1974 by Trevor Southey, was featured on the cover of the spring 1993 issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought. Readers' reactions caught editors Martha Bradley and Allen Roberts off guard. Bradley said the painting "spoke to the key issues published in that volume." This was of little consequence to many people who were offended by it. The image, which contains male nudity, challenged some readers' sense of propriety; more so than the controversial treatises on LDS intellectuals, church leadership, dissent among church members, and spiritual abuse. "I first saw `Prodigal Son' in a Park City exhibit," Bradley recalled. "Its gesture of supplication so moved me, I began to weep." She said it made a profound statement about spiritual life. "The reactions of some [readers] who thought it suggested homosexuality or were offended by the nudity astonished me. It's an incredibly moving piece about something all believers in Christ share—the need to come to him in humility and ask for help." Like the Dialogue cover and his "Flight Aspirations" mural that was removed from the Salt Lake International Airport, Southey's current exhibit at the Salt Lake Art Center is controversial. The Jordan School District canceled tours to "Trevor Southey: Reconciliation" because the show features nudity. At least one other school from a different district declined to schedule a tour after inquiring about the nature of the work. The Salt Lake Art Center is one of the few arts institutions in the West dedicated solely to contemporary art. As such, it is a purveyor of ideas in today's visual arts, including new aesthetic approaches and works of challenging moral, political, religious and sociological content. Director Ric Collier should be commended for bringing back to Utah one of its foremost artists and for presenting a selection of his major works in the impressive "Reconciliation" exhibit. "Reconciliation," curated by Collier, is a visual treatise on the human figure. Like the ancient Greek sculptors, Michelangelo, Rodin, and many others in western art history, Southey expresses himself through the nude. The exhibit includes 27 paintings, three sculptures, 13 drawings and six etchings. The earliest work, a self-portrait, was done in 1959. The most recent, a portrait of his daughter Mary Anna, was completed last year. The exhibit could have been a busy hodgepodge of hundreds of works by one of the most prolific and internationally respected artists associated with Utah. The selection and installation of these works is commendably restrained. Not represented are Southey's spectacular floral still lifes and samples of his sketch books and loose drawings that fill volumes. A glimpse of his drawing ability is provided with a series of 12 small, tightly composed images in ink. Even the soon-to-be-released coffee table-sized art book, Trevor Southey: Reconciliation, does not address his forte as a sketch artist. The book will, however, provide a sense of his expansive oeuvre. Southey was born in 1940 in Gatooma, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His first arts education was in the late 1950s at the Brighton College of Art in Sussex, England, and the Natal Technical College in Durban, South Africa. While in Durban, he met Mormon missionaries and joined the LDS Church. After serving a church mission, he moved to the United States in 1965 to study at Brigham Young University, where he eventually joined its art faculty. Some of Southey's strongest work was produced when he lived in the rural community of Alpine for 15 years with his former wife, Elaine, and their four children. "Apricot," a small painting, is a perfect, inwardly glowing representation of his domestic aspirations. As the years passed, Southey became less willing to suppress his sexual orientation, a concern that began to affect his family life and his art. In hindsight, Southey said he views "Prodigal Son" as a subtle public acknowledgement of his homosexuality. After his subsequent divorce and excommunication from the LDS Church, his Utah audience, and his faith community, lost one of their most creative citizens when he moved to California. This audience was the primary constituency at the time for emerging contemporary Mormon-related art, introduced in part by Southey's drawings on the covers of books by Provo poet Carol Lynn Pearson, and exhibits on the Brigham Young campus. "When Southey arrived in Utah," wrote Collier in his statement about the exhibit, "he became an organizer and participant in what was dubbed the "Art and Belief" movement, which sought to humanize the artistic approach to distinctly spiritual and religious subject matter." Although now a resident of the Bay Area, Southey's influence is still evident in Utah, especially among past and present Brigham Young University art faculty and students. "Southey has created a niche for himself in the history of Utah art and is one of our state's most respected and successful artists," Collier said. "Reconciliation" presents a generous sample of Southey's best-known works produced during the past 30 years. By placing them together, the viewer can assess works, become familiar with their evolution and observe common characteristics. Excluding his portraits, Southey seldom adds personality behind the generic gaze of his idyllic male and female figures. This tendency could be a subconscious indication of what Southey said is his "fear of the painfulness of reality." Yet, the predictable gentleness of his soaring figures, garnished with geometric designs and symbols, such as a rose, feather, or leaf, makes them accessible, even lovely. Their archetypal sameness is, however somewhat masked by Southey's superb draftsmanship, clever use of graffiti and seductive application of underpaint, glazes and translucent surfaces. Audiences hungry for painterly craftsmanship and poetic figuration welcome Southey's neoclassical art and its philosophical aspirations for a peaceful life. Like his paintings of tulips on dark backgrounds, Southey's nudes need not say anything to be beautiful. But they generally have something to say. For example, his best Christian works, such as "Jesus and Mary, The Moment After" and "Intercession at Gethsemane," poignantly retell old stories of redemption, resurrection, and intimacy for a modern audience. His more enigmatic works, like "Ode to Ideology" and "The Meeting," leave viewers free to discover for themselves the artist's intent. "Flying is a deeply felt human hunger," said Southey. He attempts to capture with paint, and to a lesser extent with bronze, that aspiration of flight but gives little attention to the space occupied by his soaring figures. With few exceptions, Southey's painted figures are ungrounded and adrift without a sense of place. Despite this awkward design element, his paintings are spiked with sensuality and occasional sexual innuendo. Southey's sculpture, however, does not suffer from indifference to space like his paintings. Gravity and the anchoring physicality of a well-rendered figure in cast bronze are contributing factors to his sculptural success. During the Renaissance, nudity in art was classified into four categories—nuditas naturalis(natural state at the time of birth), nuditas temporalis (poverty and the lack of possessions), nuditas virtualis (purity and innocence), and nuditas criminalis (lust and the absence of virtue). In Utah, public display of art work containing nudity often is labeled criminalis—pornographic—no matter the artist's intent. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, shaped by his or her culture. Those who visit "Reconciliation" may need to look carefully at Trevor Southey's work to see that the beauty of nuditas is more than skin deep, especially those works that challenge their religious, moral, or aesthetic assumptions. Salt Lake Tribune, Lisa Johnson There's only one man who could gather prominent members of the gay community, Mormon Church officials and savvy art patrons, all in one dazzling room, to chat, sip soda or champagne, and fawn over paintings of nudes. If you haven't already guessed, that one man would be Trevor Southey, one of the most versatile, widely acclaimed and accomplished artists to ever live in Utah. You have seen his work. You might even have been caught up in the controversy that always seems to surround it. Southey was the one who created "Flight Aspiration," a mural featuring "classically idealized human figures" (read "bold" and "bare") and other symbols romanticizing the idea of flight. It was installed in the Salt Lake International Airport in 1981, and removed, in response to public protest, in 1985. Southey had the last laugh on that one. He bought the mural back from the airport for the same price he sold it, around $4,500. In the meantime, his reputation as an artist had taken flight, and he turned around and sold the mural to an appreciative investor. "Let's just say for a substantial profit," he says. "Flight Aspiration" later was donated to the University of Utah, and is now safely stored in the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, displayed occasionally in collection shows. "Maybe someday, when the poetic and the prurient are no longer confused, it will go on extended loan to the airport and find vindication at the very site of its vilification," says Will South, curator of the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, in his comments about the painting in Southey's new book. It was the launching of Southey's book that brought this mixed group to the mountainside home of art collector Jim Debakis. Debakis himself is a force in both the international art scene, and the international philanthropic scene. "Jim saved the art of Russia from the Soviets," said Springville art curator Vern Swanson, who is also quoted in Southey's book. "The regime didn't permit emotion in their paintings, and Jim was instrumental in creating a market for their impressionistic art, and getting it out before it could be hurriedly destroyed." Debakis also saved countless Russians from being destroyed by hunger, poverty and disease. He brings many to the United States for medical treatment, and provides jobs and education for many more. Although he is a popular AM radio talk-show host currently doing an afternoon stint on KWUN when he's in the country, Debakis is not one to blow his own horn. You have to pry philanthropic stories from his friends, or meet his frequent Russian house guests. You'll see remarkable Russian artwork in Debakis' house, which is also one of the few places in Utah to experience a concentration of some of Southey's finest artwork. Unlike many LDS Church institutions, which removed Southey's work from prominent display, Debakis has not been embarrassed by Southey, since he "came out of the closet." Back in the 1960's and 70's, when Southey was living in Alpine with his wife and four children and teaching at BYU, he was considered one of the Mormon Church's greatest artists. His works, many with figures he was obliged to "drape" after they had been painted nude, were displayed prominently at BYU, in church offices, even in visitors centers. His paintings were used extensively in LDS Church manuals and publications. It was Southey's conversion to the LDS Church that brought him to Utah in the first place. He was born and raised in what was then known as Rhodesia, studied art in England, then returned to Africa and met Mormon missionaries in Durban. He converted, decided to move to Utah, where he was encouraged to continue depicting the joys of earth life, and to show humans as direct descendants of God. He just wasn't supposed to show too much of them. Many of those same church leaders who enjoyed Southey's art told him that the best way for him to "overcome" his homosexual feelings would be to marry and have children. While Southey freely admits that marriage and fatherhood were two of the most essential and influential experiences of his life, that advice about "curing" him wasn't the most reliable. Neither was the support of many church leaders. When Southey decided he could no longer suppress what he felt was his true nature, he filed for divorce and was excommunicated. His name disappeared from the records of the church, and many of his works disappeared from LDS institutions. "I don't know what the big deal is," says Lynn Nilsen, who has followed Southey's career since their mutual BYU days. "It's common knowledge that the sculptor who created the big white statue of Christ in the Visitors Center on Temple Square is gay. As a matter of fact, you can see the original in Copenhagen, where you can also see his remarkable collection of phalluses, which had been whacked off classical statues by less-appreciative conquering cultures." Less-appreciative cultures have not kept Southey from being successful. He lives in the Bay area, has an intimidating number of commissions, and is free to explore different genres and mediums. Not all works deal with human anatomy. Some of his most striking paintings are of simple animals or fruits. His latest project is this book. The 198-page volume, entitled Reconciliation, depicts his life and his journey this far, in words and pictures. Because of a sense of reconciliation, Southey feels comfortable returning to Utah to attend book signings, to lecture, to visit with friends. "I love the LDS Church, I still do to this day," he says. "But it no longer made me feel welcome. I claim to be an atheist, or at least agnostic, yet my work tells me I believe in God. I believe in a sense of godliness. I paint from my heart." Lisa's List Southey's book, Reconciliation, which contains beautiful writing, poetry, and reproductions of his most important works, is not inexpensive. At $95, it's more of a collector's item than a simple addition to the family library. There are even three special, limited editions that include etchings, ranging in price from $650 to $2,000. A bit pricey and esoteric for most mainstream bookstores, you can still find it in certain places around the Wasatch Front. Utah, in fact, is the only place to find Reconciliation until October, when it will officially be released and Southey begins his national tour. Salt Lake Observer, Will South No artist who has lived and worked in Utah is as closely associated with controversy as Trevor Southey. Most recently, his 1997 retrospective exhibition at the Salt Lake Art Center raised eyebrows and provoked the cancellation of school tours, while across town and up the hill, a painting of his on view inside the University of Utah's Union Gallery was causing a minor uproar. The most memorable public outcry regarding a Southey painting, however, remains the 1982 protest over his mural, entitled "Flight Aspiration," installed, and subsequently de-installed, at the Salt Lake International Airport. The great irony of Mr. Southey's infamy is that few other Utah artists have created a body of work so consistently restrained, refined and rarefied as his—a body of work that bespeaks biography and belief, a collective output so remarkable for its sometimes shy, sometimes strident, evocation of spirituality. Trevor Southey: Reconciliation, a new book privately published by the artist, gives us the opportunity to evaluate his life and work by virtue of copious illustrations and commentary provided by six essayists, including Mr. Southey. It also gives us the chance to assess the role his unabashedly sensual art plays in the politically insulated and aesthetically challenged community in which we live. This handsome volume, designed locally by Adriane Pulfer, contains a genuinely eclectic mix of subject matter—animals, faces, bodies and symbolist dramas—that addresses a host of themes from love, family and church to birth growth and regeneration, themes widely espoused by a Utah audience historically willing and ready to vilify Southey. Quite a paradox. And it is paradox, this book demonstrates, that is the defining pain and predicate of Southey's career. In the opening biographical sketch of Mr. Southey, author K. Mitchell Snow discusses the artist's upbringing as a British colonialist in Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia. Sickly as a child, the young Southey made sketches of flying figures while recovering in bed from bouts with rheumatic fever and thus discovered his metier. His decision to become an artist was supported and encouraged by his parents, who helped him get to England at age 17 to pursue academic training. While there, he was deeply influenced by the swirling romanticism of the English Pre-Raphaelite painters, especially Dante Gabriel Rosetti's dreamy "Ophelia," a painting the artist says is as "masterful as almost any masterpiece in the history of art." Continued health problems forced Mr. Southey back to the drier African climate, where he continued his art education at Durban on the East Coast of South Africa and where he first encountered the religious doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Mormon missionaries. He was receptive to the ideas of pre-existence and perfection and, though uncomfortable with the church's exclusion of black's from the priesthood (a policy reversed in 1978), Southey converted. He found in Mormonism a structure in which to explore his own burgeoning religiosity, and left Africa for the land of Zion. On his way to Utah in 1965, Southey passed through New York City and visited the World's Fair where he saw Michelangelo's "Pieta" in the pavilion of the Catholic Church. He also saw the art featured in the LDS Church pavilion, some of it painted by a Seventh-day Adventist, and was struck, well, appalled actually, at the gulf between the expressive majesty of Michelangelo (a life-long influence on the artist) and the utter paucity of the Mormon art. To compare the artistic achievements of the Italian Renaissance with official LDS-sponsored art of the late 1950s, of course, requires mathematical terms that define abstract distances in light years. Rather than despair over this contrast, Mr. Southey was inspired to elevate artistic standards in his new-found church. Then paradox. Mr. Southey garnered a position in the art department at Brigham Young University, and pursued his vision of bringing passionate, muscular Michelangelesque figures and Pre-Raphaelite poetry into the visual vocabulary of the church discourse by way of a personal synthesis of those influences. He found instead that it would behoove him to become a master of drapery painting where the human figure was concerned. Given the opportunity to paint Joseph Smith's first vision, Mr. Southey was not only prevented from representing the prophet as a farm boy, but rather it was dictated to him to show Mr. Smith in a smart Sunday outfit. Bureaucratic art is an oxymoron second in potency only to military intelligence, and Mr. Southey suffocated within its strictures. The greatest paradox, though, was within the artist himself. He longed to remain in an idyllic embrace with both his church and his wife and children, but his identity as a homosexual, combined with his irrepressible urge toward honest expression—in life as well as art—cost him both. Divorce and excommunication came in the 1980s. Then came relocation to San Francisco in an era of increasing awareness of the AIDS epidemic, and where his romantic, tradition-oriented art was at odds with current trends. Without the support of family, church or a receptive art community, Trevor Southey faced the prospect of reinventing himself, alone. What his new book asserts, however, is that reinvention was not the answer: reconciliation was. Divorced from his wife, he still loves her and his children, and admits he "could not imagine life without them." After all, "there are so many kinds of love." Excommunicated from his church, he remained, if not doctrinal, intensely spiritual. In terms of career, he works now in a critical atmosphere where figuration is once again respected for the valid form of expression it is. Nothing of his past life need be repudiated or rejected—to the contrary, his relationships and beliefs need only to be reconciled to his own nature. His art exists as an eloquent record of the struggle to do just that. Trevor Southey: Reconciliation is not an overtly moralizing or didactic book, yet there is a lesson in its reading: Living an artistic life calls for constant self-examination and creative reformulation, skills valuable to any individual or, indeed, to any community. The final, and most tragic paradox is that Utah, where Trevor Southey lived and worked so long, will continue to see his success as anomalous and his message as only partially acceptable. All the more reason why, in a land where same-sex marriages may be banned and guns carried into church, we need artists like him to unveil the angelic nature of our better selves.