Махони МакИнтош Янг: Американдық мүсінші және суретшінің өмірі мен шығармашылығы

American sculptor

Mahonri Mackintosh Young (August 9, 1877 – November 2, 1957) was an American social realist sculptor and artist. During his lengthy career, he created more than 320 sculptures, 590 oil paintings, 5,500 watercolors, 2,600 prints, and thousands of drawings. However, he is primarily recognized for his sculpture. His work includes landscapes, portraits, busts, life size sculptures, monuments, and engravings. Regardless of his medium of choice, his work is characterized by spontaneity; he often preferred to prepare his work with quick sketches on the scene. He felt this made his work more natural as compared to using a model in the studio. He was fairly commercially successful during his life, though he did not find success until his mid 30s. Large commissions for sculptures from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (LDS Church) were particularly lucrative for him. Born into a family of rich Mormon pioneer heritage, Young was the grandson of the second President of the LDS Church and first Governor of Utah, Brigham Young. Young was introduced to art by his father at an early age. He quit school at seventeen years old and worked engraving and portrait making jobs at various newspapers in Salt Lake City to make money for art lessons and for art school in New York and later, Paris. He lived most of his life in New York City where he became associated with "The Eight" and the Ashcan School. He ignited his commercial success in New York; however, arguably two of his most famous works, the This Is The Place Monument and the Seagull Monument are featured prominently in Salt Lake City, Utah. One of his other well known works is a statue of Brigham Young which resides at the Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D. C. At various times during his career, Young taught at the Art Students League. Most of Young's work resides at Brigham Young University.

Mahonri Mackintosh Young was born on August 9, 1877, in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. He was the oldest child of Mahonri Moriancumer Young, owner of Deseret Woolen Mill which he had inherited from his father Brigham Young, and Agnes Mackintosh. Young enjoyed the time he spent living in rural Utah at the factory; he considered this his "golden age" in Utah. Young was given the name of his father, named after the character Mahonri Moriancumer from the Book of Mormon, widely known as the "Brother of Jared". Moriancumer was omitted due to its peculiarity and was, instead, replaced by Mackintosh, his mother's maiden name. His grandfather, Brigham Young, was the second president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints (LDS Church), governor of Utah territory in 1851, and director of the Mormon pioneers to Utah. Mahonri Mackintosh was likely the last grandchild born before the death of Brigham Young on August 29 and the last to receive a blessing from him. Young's mother came from a polygamist marriage in the Midwestern United States. Though she did not meet her father, Daniel Mackintosh until she was older than one, he died when she was three years old and her mother raised her alone. Young's parents had attended the University of Deseret (now University of Utah) together. They married in October 1876 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. After their marriage, Agnes's mother Ellen moved into their home. Young's twin brothers, Winfield Scott (Winnie) and Waldemar (Wally) were born on July 1, 1880; they grew to be successful, a newspaperman and a screenwriter respectively. While ill with appendicitis, his father introduced Young to sculpture by carving objects for him out of wood. For his safety, his father gave him clay to model animals, sparking his interest in art at a young age. At a young age, Young found formal education to be a waste of time. Young said that the only thing he learned that was of any value to him was that he should look at the point where a line would end rather than the point of the pencil. However, despite his disinterest in formal education, he read avidly with favorite authors being Ralph Waldo Emerson and Montaigne. Early influences from the Mormon families around him led him to be disinterested in maintaining LDS Church activity. Examples of these influences included abuse of the law of plural marriage and excessive piety among church members. Young was athletic and participated in baseball and football teams. However, after an injury during a football game, he broke his left arm and after it was incorrectly reset and then rebroken to be properly set, his left arm remained slightly smaller than his right for the entirety of his life. His early interest in athletics influenced the subject of his art, as he often sculpted and depicted athletes competing in various sports, the most prominent sport being boxing. He also developed his interest in nature and bird watching which further influenced themes and subjects of his art. His uncle introduced Young to ranch life, in which he became extremely interested. His mother was adamant that he pursue a different career. Although Young did not become a rancher, themes of ranching and the American West were frequent in his art. Young learned about the art style of Jean François Millet from reading magazines, which taught him about form, space, light, and movement in art. An article about Millet convinced Young to quit school, get a job, and take art lessons. Determined to become a sculptor, Young realized that he had not sculpted since he was five years old, so he decided he may have better luck being an illustrator.

Rather than attend ninth grade, Young chose to pursue an artistic education under local artist James Taylor Harwood, John Hafen, and Edwin Evans. He had initially applied to the University of Utah, but his application was denied because he had not graduated high school. Instead, Young worked in a curio shop and a stationery shop to make money for lessons with Harwood. Following the Seagull contract, Young was offered a contract to create art for a Hopi Indian exhibition for the American Museum of Natural History. He visited Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah to get inspiration and then returned to New York to complete the project with his colleague Howard MacCormick. Young was offered some commission to create dioramas for Navajo and Apache tribes as well. The Seagull Monument was unveiled and dedicated on Temple Square on October 1, 1913. A member of the Association of American Painters and Sculptors Young's Apache sculptures were unveiled at the American Museum of Natural History in 1916. Cecelia Sharp died of cancer in 1917 after which Young returned to Paris to continue studying art. Young first met Weir at 1921 at a dinner to discuss plans for the Phillips Memorial Gallery, one of the books for the gallery was intended to be dedicated to Weir's father. When Young returned to Paris to teach and work on his art from 1925 to 1927, they were reacquainted and became friends. After returning to New York, Young proposed marriage to Weir a few times, but she hesitated having never been married and feeling responsibility to care for her aging stepmother. In 1932, Young competed in the Art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics with eight boxing statues. The Knockdown, which he had sculpted in the 1920s in Paris, won the gold medal for sculpture. In 1934, he began teaching at the Art Students League. The same year, his etching Pont Neuf was featured in Fine Prints of the Year, 1933. In 1941 Life magazine called him "the George Bellows of American sculpture." "Industry" and "Agriculture", a statue of factory worker with tools and a statue of a farmer sharpening his blade, were displayed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. These large sculptures stood at the fair's entrance.

Mahonri Young had a unique relationship with the LDS Church. Since his teenage years, he did not attend church, follow the Word of Wisdom, or pay tithing to the LDS Church. However, he did admire several LDS Church leaders and was proud of his pioneer heritage. Despite his lack of activity in the LDS Church, he lobbied heavily to work on several projects for the church. Largely considered to be his most important artistic work, Young was especially proud of This Is The Place Monument located at This Is the Place Heritage Park in the foothills of Salt Lake City. The most artistically significant relief on the monument depicts the Donner Party. The monument was intended to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Brigham Young and the Mormons' arrival in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As early as 1935, a committee had been chosen to consider artists' proposals of the monument. Young did extensive research and sketching for the project, confident he would be awarded the chance to create the monument. After lobbying the committee for almost five months, he returned to New York, frustrated that he had not yet secured the project. He decided to lobby U. S. senators from Utah to gained federal funding for the project which offended committee member John D. Giles. Giles told Young that he could not give him a contract because they were waiting on funding from the LDS Church; however, Giles was actually stalling time to find a different artist to complete the project. The committee decided to make the monument proposal a competition, which worried Young because of his experience with the Pioneer Woman Competition. John Fairbanks, a younger artist, had already completed prominent statues and memorials for the LDS Church; he was Young's fiercest competition. LDS President Heber J. Grant chose Young's design in 1939, because it highlighted prominent figures Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Wilford Woodruff rather than a covered wagon, as in the Fairbanks design. Young was awarded $50,000 to build the monument in 1939 when he was 62 years old. After he was granted the contract, many of the artistic qualities sought by Young were vetoed by representatives from Utah state government, the LDS Church, and descendants of pioneers. For example, Young wanted pioneer leaders in realistic clothing like they would have worn when entering the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. However, Young's vision of leaders like Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball in suspenders and bloomers was deemed undignified. Instead, pioneer leaders were portrayed in heavy formal overcoats. Young worked on the statues at Weir farm, assisted by Spero Anargyros. It is the largest sculpted monument in Utah. Even though Young was paid $50,000 for the monument, he believed that he was owed $11,000 extra according to the terms of the contract. He was angry when he was denied the money and eventually became frustrated enough to write to the president of the LDS Church George A. Smith directly. George Q. Morris of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles severely reprimanded Young for contacting Smith and Young was never paid the extra $11,000. Young resented this alleged contract breach for the rest of his life. In 1947, Young was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. During a visit to Utah in the same year, he was made an honorary member of the Sons of Utah Pioneers Club. In 1955, Young participated in the Armory Show Commemorative Exhibition in New York City. In January 1957, Young had a serious stroke and in October 1957, he had an ulcer attack. Young died in Norwalk, Connecticut, on November 2, 1957, from the result of bleeding ulcers complicated by pneumonia; he was eighty years old. He was buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery at the Young family plot, next to Cecelia Young.

Although Mahonri Young was taught the classical style which prevailed in the French art institutes of the time, and was surrounded by colleagues who sought to reject the classical style with impressionistic and post impressionistic styles, Young was disinterested in depicting idyllic or naturalistic images and was more concerned with depicting the realities of life that surrounded him. Consequently, Young's work is often associated with social realism, as his work depicted laborers, immigrants, minorities, the West, and man's interaction with nature. At the time, Young felt isolated by his traditionalist instructors and colleagues who penned Young's work as "dishonest". The size of his work ranged from larger monuments to small sculptures which he typically did in the social realist style. Though Young vehemently denied it, some critics accused Young of imitating Millet's work. Young's work, particularly his earlier pieces, was also heavily influenced by Auguste Rodin. Young's sculpture of fighting boxers, Right to the Jaw is characteristic of Rodin's style with its curves and opposing diagonal movements. Young's experience as a sketch artist for the Salt Lake Tribune gave him a spontaneous style that he believed benefited his art. Young excelled in "depicting figures in motion" and "the psychological nuances of gesture". Rather than emphasize light, appearance, and technical skill as had prevailed in traditionalist art, Young preferred to emphasize rhythm, balance, movement, form, and design.

Mahonri Young's career lasted more than fifty years with his works displayed in over fifty museums and galleries in the United States and Europe. Upon his death, his estate constituted 320 pieces of sculpture, 590 oil paintings, 5,500 watercolors, 2,600 prints, and thousands of drawings. Young was the first Utah artist to have his work displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Moreover, Young received nearly every award offered to artists in Utah. The Springville Museum of Art called Young "Utah's most famous New York based artist". According to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, Young gained a national reputation for his sculpture and graphic art. Guy Pène du Bois said, "Mahonri Young belongs among those who of the strain of Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, Goya, Renoir, and Millet he is a rare sculptor in America". Young was a member of the American Watercolor Society. In 1940, the Addison Gallery of American Art hosted a retrospective exhibit of Young's various works. In 1999, the Brigham Young University Museum of Art in Provo, Utah opened a year long exhibition of Mahonri Young's work called "Mahonri: A Song of Joys". The Young family donated over 7,000 various works of Young to Brigham Young University. Additionally, the BYU Museum of Art held an exhibition of Young's work during summer 2019.