Lecture and Exhibition of his Paintings for
the motion picture The Ten Commandments
by Rose Datoc Dall
World-renowned painter and
illustrator of western heritage and epic historical themes, Arnold Friberg,
made a rare appearance on July 14th as lecturer and exhibiting
artist at the Ellen Eccles Theatre in Logan, Utah. This event was sponsored
by the Paint Utah Art School and concurred with the Utah Festival Opera’s
Classic Film Festival in downtown Logan.
The main topic for this
one-time event was his series of paintings commissioned by Cecil B. DeMille
to be the visual basis for the movie, The
Ten Commandments. The series of 15 paintings were also part of DeMille’s
worldwide touring exhibition in 1957-1958 honoring the 100th year
of Hollywood. Mr. Friberg’s work on the film earned him an Academy Award
nomination.
Mr. Friberg is well known
for his Book of Mormon paintings,
and other religious depictions, The Prayer at Valley Forge, and scores of
works dedicated to the Canadian Mounties and intercollegiate football.
In addition, Mr. Friberg received the distinguished appointment by Prince
Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, into the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), even though
an American. Later Mr. Friberg obtained the commissions to paint the royal
equestrian portraits of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles.
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| Standing before The Parting of the Red Sea, one of his 15 paintings commissioned
by Cecil B. DeMille for the epic film, artist
Arnold Friberg poses holding the actual robe used by Charleton
Heston for the role of Moses in the movie The
Ten Commandments. |
In an unexpected tribute,
July 14th was declared “Arnold Friberg Day” by the city of Logan,
and he was made an honorary citizen of the city. The state of Utah, in particular, regards Mr. Friberg as one its
most preeminent artists and by the warm reception of the very generous
crowd, it was obvious to observe their love and respect for him.
The gentlemanly Mr. Friberg,
a wonderful orator at the age of 90, delighted a full house of attentive
listeners, fans and fellow artists with his reflections while working on The Ten Commandments, which remains one
of Mr. Friberg’s most beloved projects. Mr.
Friberg has kept the series intact in his own studio for that reason.
click to enlarge
 |
| Mr.
Friberg has been told that his work resembles a scene out of Cecil
B. DeMille movie, when, indeed, it was the other way around. |
From his witty ruminations,
we discovered that while so often people have told Mr. Friberg that his
work resembles a scene out of a DeMille movie, it indeed was the other
way around. In 1953, Cecil B. DeMille conducted a worldwide search for
a biblical artist who could capture the look, the scale and the feel of
his movie, The Ten Commandments then in its early
stages of production. Mr. DeMille saw prints of some of Mr. Friberg’s work
commissioned for The Children’s Friend magazine,
by Adele Cannon Howells, General Primary President of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. The series, which was at that time incomplete,
would later be included as illustrations for the Book of Mormon. DeMille had finally found
his man. He particularly loved Friberg’s The Finger of the Lord, a depiction of the brother of Jared who beheld
the Lord touching the sixteen stones to illuminate their sea-faring vessels.
DeMille loved that image so much that requested that Friberg design something
very similar for the image of Moses
and the Burning Bush.
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Moses and the Burning Bush was modeled
after Friberg’s Book of Mormon painting
The Finger of the Lord (depicting
the brother of Jared beholding the Lord touching the sixteen stones
to illuminate their sea-faring vessels) at the request of DeMille. |
What
DeMille was asking Friberg to do was, in that day, quite revolutionary.
At that time, Hollywood was only using designs on
the scale of production sketches, and nothing on the scale of DeMille’s
project. In addition to character and costume sketches, Friberg then painted
full-scale scenes for the movie that DeMille and the production team could
use for all the design elements. Friberg would spend more than the next
three years in Hollywood working on the epic production. He later adapted
them to fit the format of a children’s picture book, a collector’s item
today.
The practice of using accomplished illustrators as chief
designers for film is used today in current visual masterpieces. Examples
would be the modern and stylized conceptual designs by artist Eyvind Earle
for the animated Disney Classic Sleeping
Beauty, and the fantastical conceptual designs of Middle-earth by illustrators,
Alan Lee and John Howe for the 2001 release of the Peter Jackson film, Lord
of the Rings and The Fellowship of the Ring to only name
a couple.
|
Arnold
Friberg’s
depiction of The Parting
of the Red Sea. |
Apart
from DeMille himself, as chief artist, Friberg was the first and the last
word on the design elements on the film. In
one of Friberg’s more amusing stories, he tells of Charleton Heston’s reaction
after viewing some of his designs
for the young Prince Moses, which were rendered in the standard Fribergesque
style (broad and robustly muscular). Heston felt a little intimated by
the pumped image of the character that he was to play and was sent packing
for the gym, so to speak.
From
costume to props, all had to look and to feel authentic. DeMille was adamant
that the costume designs not have the look of “Hollywood
costume design.” Even water plants from the Nile and truckloads of Egyptian
sand, which has a unique golden color to it, were shipped onto the set
for the sake of authenticity. Friberg even grew a long bushy beard himself
from which he could paint Moses since he could not find anyone in Hollywood
to model that had a biblical-looking beard. With great humor, Friberg remarked
how even DeMille did not recognize Friberg when he walked on set with his
formidable growth of whiskers.
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| Character Sketch and Costume Design for Moses by
Arnold Friberg. To visually express Moses’ Hebrew lineage, red
with black and white, the colors of the tribe of Levi, were chosen
for the colors of his robe. |
click to enlarge
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| Sketch of The Laying on of Hands by Arnold Friberg
depicting Moses bestowing his mantle and authority to Joshua. |
Furthermore, DeMille gave
the task of designing the opening text for the film to Friberg as well,
which needed to be consistent with the look of the film. Friberg, who,
like DeMille, had a for detail, also designed the character inscriptions
for the tablets of the Ten Commandments themselves. The work must have
brought Friberg back to his early beginnings as a 15-year-old apprentice
in the sign business before he studied commercial art. Useful at being
a jack-of-all-traits, Friberg was given full visual artistic authority
on set in almost every stage.
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The Giving of the Law by Arnold Friberg.
Friberg also designed the text used in the opening credits, as
well as the character inscriptions for the tablets with the Ten
Commandments. |
Friberg
was available all the time for what he describes as “distress calls” on set. He was often called to come to the technical
and design rescue at times when things went awry. Costume issues would
arise for example, where perhaps a designer had deviated too far off-center
and it was Mr. Friberg’s job to identify what changes needed to be made
if Mr. DeMille wasn’t pleased, then correct them. By other accounts, DeMille
was known to be a demanding autocrat on set, but nevertheless, seemed to
have implicitly trusted Friberg’s opinions. Both DeMille and Friberg got
along rather well.
The insistence to have an
artist who could keep the holistic integrity of all the design elements
of the film left us an enduring classic of an epic film and an amazing
feast for the eyes. The Ten Commandments received
Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Cinematography (Color),
Best Interior Decoration (Color), Best Costume Design (Color) in addition
to Best Sound, and Best Editing and ultimately won in the category of Best
Special Effects. The Ten Commandments was
also Cecil B. DeMille’s last film. DeMille died only a few years later
in 1959.
It is no wonder that Friberg truly loved working on this
project, the sort of which an artist can only dream. To have worked with a movie great “The Father
of Hollywood,” Cecil B. DeMille, three-time Academy Award nominee and one-time
winner (for his movie The Greatest
Show on Earth) is a rare thing to claim. And to have been given the
opportunity with such a high degree of artistic control with all the access
afforded by the DeMille engine is even more rare indeed. Friberg told with
great zest how his “talents poured out” while working on the film, stimulated
for DeMille. It was well known that DeMille had a habit for surrounding
himself with extremely talented people, as well as fledgling performers
whom he shaped into greats. Some of his protégés include Gloria Swanson,
Gary Cooper, and Charlton Heston to name a few from a long list.
And it is clear that Friberg had hit his stride. The Ten Commandments came right in the
middle of his Book of Mormon commission,
which the Church deemed important enough to allow Friberg to interrupt
his work for the Church which would still be there for him to complete
when he returned from Hollywood. Friberg had by then developed a vividly
lush illustrative style in keeping with other contemporary illustrators
of his time, like N.C. Wyeth, Norman Rockwell, and Harvey Dunn, having
studied with the latter two. These artists flourished as book and magazine
publishing was in its heyday and classic American illustration hit its
golden age.
The reason that DeMille chose Friberg is the same reason
that his artwork has such tremendous appeal even until this day. Arnold
Friberg paints in a very cinematic style, which speaks to a cinematic age.
We have, been so conditioned as a pop culture in the language of media,
that his narrative artwork fits very comfortably in the crossover between
illustration and film. That is not to say, however, that his work is photographically
hyper-realistic, but cinematic implies drama in his compositions, with
a keen use of color and lighting as a vehicle, with a high saturation of
color. His images are epic and spectacular and almost fantastical. His
figures, although idealized, seem believable and the viewer is transported
into another time and a real place. Friberg has the ability to say it all
in one frame. There are few multi-figure genre artists alive today who
can approach the technical prowess of Arnold Friberg.
Friberg’s story also gives hope to many young artists
who too find themselves having to make their way in the world by beginning
in illustration. Friberg’s own beginnings were in cartooning and sign making
as a boy and youth who went onto illustration. Friberg stuck with what
he did best, which was figurative, narrative illustration, largely ignoring
the modern trend toward non-representational art. Friberg probably had
little use for the ideologies of strict formalism. He was a master figurist
of both equestrian and human figure in the traditional sense. Those were
the subjects that interested him.
By
doing what he did best, his work thus gained the attention of some powerful
engines like Cecil B. DeMille, The Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints, and British Royalty amongst others. Then somewhere
along the way, Friberg’s more mature work became grouped as a significant
contribution to American historical and American western genre painting.
Arnold Friberg is not only living the American dream, but the dream of
the American artist. All he has ever wanted to do is “tell a story.” And
the way that he describes himself is “the guy down the street who paints
pictures.”
Friberg’s vision, like DeMille’s
was to do justice to the biblical subject in The Ten Commandments. And
perhaps Friberg’s
inclination to pay tribute to whatever subject he was painting appeals
to a society’s sense of idealism, which might also account for his wide
popularity. Referring to the exhibition of the paintings from The Ten
Commandments, DeMille told the press that he had hoped that “someday,
a boy would see these paintings and [be] influenced [by] them.”
I think that it is safe to say that his work has moved
many. I personally remember those vividly colored illustrations with figures
in large Technicolor in my first Book
of Mormon when I received my first copy at the age of 13 before I had
joined the Church. I remember fondly being moved to think “wow, this all
must have really happened. It’s all here in color.” I also remember viewing The Ten Commandments as a child and thinking
the same thoughts, though not realizing who Arnold Friberg was, nor that
he was connected with the Book of
Mormon illustrations.
Yet,
on some level, haven’t we all felt that way about
Mr. Friberg’s artwork? I remember as a child, scrutinizing his illustrations,
which further fed my desire to one day become an artist myself. This inspiration
is shared by many artists like Michael Bingham of the Paint Utah Art School
who invited Mr. Friberg to lecture at this occasion. Bingham remarks how
it was a fulfillment of a personal dream to pay tribute to Mr. Friberg.
With
great charm and moved with emotion to the warm reception of the crowd,
Arnold Friberg summed his remarks with a statement that he
hopes that his artwork would one day be “worthy to put upon the altar of
God.” Moreover, if there was one more reason to love and appreciate this
man, it is his graciousness and humility. In more ways than one is Arnold
Friberg an inspiration to us all.
Mr. Friberg, at age 90, resides in Salt Lake City, Utah
and still continues to paint.
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Arnold Friberg,
with artist and curator Michael Bingham of the Paint Utah Art School. |
To
view more of Arnold Friberg’s paintings, visit www.fribergfineart.com.
