Heavenly Bodies: Mormon Male Homoerotics in the Sacred Art of Arnold Friberg

Sacred and devotional art turns the invisible of religious devotion and doctrine into material reality, reflecting both the theological and cultural ideals of a religious community. The art of Arnold Friberg has been used by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to craft an idealized Muscular Mormon Man. The carved physiques of Friberg’s subjects highlight a fascination with the male form, celebrating hypermasculinity by exaggerating sexual difference: hard versus soft, active versus passive, and male versus female. Friberg created male figures which not only adhered to but superseded western standards of male beauty and virility, homoerotic in their careful and loving detailing of the male body. His work gained prominence in the mid-Twentieth Century at a time when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was making efforts to assimilate into mainstream American culture and provided a template for creating idealized Muscular Mormon Men.