History of Friends’ Relation to the Arts

Reprint of 1915 article in the Friends Intelligencer. Bye notes “This forgotten event may be the first Quaker conference on the arts ever!”  Explicating the historical rejection of the arts as frivolous, vain, and corrupt, conference participants discussed the potential for the study of the arts to explore beauty, mystery, humanity, and deepen spirituality.  (Be sure to read Fager’s 2002 review of the article, Through Whittier-Colored Glasses; or, Art is like Broccoli, Type & Shadows (#21).

Fager considers the question “What makes a Quaker artist?” as he recounts a visit to a 1998 exhibit in Williamsburg VA of the work of Edward Hicks (1780-1849), an experience with Jack Mongar at FQA’s Lemonade Gallery at the 1999 FGC Gathering in Kalamazoo MI, and a similar encounter with Jennifer Elam at Baltimore Yearly the following month.

Chuck (1998). In Search of Quaker Esthetics, Types & Shadows (#9) Newly-appointed Clerk Fager considers Simplicity in the work of Edward Hicks, Sylvia Judson Shaw, and Henry Taylor.  A great read for those who want to become acquainted with Quaker artists.

Pleased though he was to find Arthur Edwin Bye’s A Friendly Conference on Art in Types & Shadows Issue #21 reprint of a 1915 article from the Friends Intelligencer, Fager ponders the naïve romanticism of those pre-World War I Quaker artists who shrank from “the extravagances of the Futurists or the Cubists.”  He asks if the only purpose of art to show the beautiful, even as the world operates at odds with the Quaker testimonies.  He hungers for Quaker artists whose spirit and creativity can challenge and subvert contemporary reality.