What a great campaign character for the LDS Church's next worldwide ad blitz.
We're talking about John Gutzon Borglum, creator of Mount Rushmore.
You know, the Mormon guy.
Here's his picture:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ug97/stone/images/sm_p7.jpg_____
Speaking of Mount Mormon Rushmore and pictures, on a LDS-friendly blog is displayed a photograph of four ranking, LDS patriarchal leaders, taken at a Church Regional Conference in New York City in September 1986, Three of the men in the photograph are General Authorities: First Presidency Counselor in the Ezra Taft Benson regime, Gordon B. Hinckley; Quorum of the Twelve Apostle, Neal A. Maxwell; and First Quorum of the Seventy member, Derek A. Cuthbert (the latter who, by the way, died during the 1991 Mormon General Conference). The remaining person in the photograph was initially identified on the site only as "the current stake president of the New York, New York Stake at the time. I cannot remember his name, but might if given enough time" (That man was subsequently identified by a helpful site reader as Michael K. Young).
Here's the kicker: The Mormon Church member posting the photograph dubbed it, "Mount Rushmore of the East, 1986."
("Mount Rushmore of the East, 1986," posted by Ardis E. Parshall, 24 May 2010, at:
http://www.keepapitchinin.org/2012/05/24/mount-rushmore-of-the-east-1986/)
Since Mormons appear eager to associate their priesthood power-brokers with the presiding national heads carved atop Mount Rushmore, they may be interested in knowing that the person who sculpted that edifice--John Gutzon Borglum (Gutzon Borglum, for short)--was born into a Mormon polygamous family.
Faithful Mormons may also be interested to learn that, in addition to being born in the covenant, Borglum joined the Ku Klux Klan; designed a monument honoring Confederate war heroes (which inspired him in his design of Mount Rushmore); was an anti-Semite and was divorced.
OK, brothers and sisters, everybody lean in close around Brother Borglum and smile for the picture!
For those here who may not be all that familiar with the man behind the mountain, below is some life history on Brother Borglum (quoted from various sources, referenced and linked at the end).
_____
--Borglum's Mormon Roots Through His Polygamy-Practicing Pop
As a Danish Mormon immigrant, Borglum’s father had two wives. As a child raised in a over-crowded household by his step-mother (due to his father having eventually abandoned Borglum’s birth mother in favor of his second wife), Borglum had an unpleasant childhood:
“John Gutzon Borglum . . . was born March 25, 1867, into a Mormon family which practiced polygamy. His father had two wives but when he decided to not be a Mormon anymore, he discarded Gutzon's mother and the boy was raised, along with eight other children in the family, by his step-mother. He had an unhappy childhood and tried to run away numerous times.”
To be more specific, Borglum was born into a home where his father was actually married to two women at the same time--who also happened to be in-line family sisters:
“According to his own 1921 account, . . . Borglum was born ‘west of Bear Lake, up in the mountains’ [in the Idaoho Territory], the son of the second of two sisters who married a Danish Mormon woodcarver. He was still a child when his family departed [the] Idaho Territory, first for Utah, then Nebraska."
No doubt, this bizarre Mormon-bred life had some kind of life-long influence on the boy:
“ . . . Borglum’s father . . . was married to Borglum’s mother and her sister. Their life in Idaho and Utah was accommodating, but when they moved to Nebraska, Borglum’s dad decided to restructure his family to fit in better. He divorced Borglum’s mom but stayed married to his aunt. It’s hard to know how this influenced the young man, but as an adult he was very independent with an ego as big as a mountain."
That makes sense. The Mormon Church ego is bigger than Kolob.
It should not be surprising that Borglum reworked his family tree lineage in his favor (just like he reworked the Black Hills to the Native Americans's disfavor), but the following probably represents an accurate summation of his early years:
“. . . Borglum liked to tinker with his own legend, subtracting a few years from his age, changing the story of his parentage. The best archival research has revealed that he was born in 1867 to one of the wives of a Danish Mormon bigamist. When his father decided to conform to societal norms that were pressing westward with the pioneers, he abandoned Gutzon's mother and remained married to his first wife, her sister."
_____
--Discarding Mormon Baggage in Pursuit of Freedom and Marriage
Young Borglum’s unhappy home life drove him to separate from his family, which also led to his first marriage to--and eventual divorce from--a divorcee who was nearly two decades ahead of him in age. His relationship with this woman, who was regarded as as “accomplished" artist in her own right, quickly “turned personal and they were married in 1889 when Borglum was 22 years old.”
But the union was headed for the rocks as professional competition between the two became an increasing problem:
“In 1884, when Gutzon was 16, [his] family moved to Los Angeles. His father, unhappy in California, soon returned to Nebraska but Gutzon stayed behind. He studied art and met Elizabeth Jaynes Putnam, a painter and divorcee 18 years his senior. . . . The Borglums traveled to Paris to work and study, and there Gutzon met sculptor Auguste Rodin. . . . Gutzon's talent was immediately apparent and he found a few commissions . . . . At the same time, Gutzon's marriage was falling apart.”
The reason given for the widening rift was that “[a]s Borglum’s career started to out shine, his wife’s, the marriage suffered.” A second marriage followed: “He left Paris alone in 1901 and aboard ship met Mary Montgomery, an American who had just completed her doctorate at the University of Berlin,” and who, in fact, “was one of the first two women to ever earn a doctorate in Berlin and had mastered six languages.” She also happened to be “a younger woman” who was likewise returning stateside. “[Borglum] respected her intelligence and passion and the balance she brought to his life. Finally, in 1909, Putnam granted Borglum a divorce and he and Montgomery were married.” They settled in Connecticut, where “[t]hey bought a house and farm . . . and named it ‘Borgland.’" Within a few years, their son, Lincoln, was born, “followed by a daughter, Mary Ellis.”
_____
--Member and Friend of the Ku Klux Klan
Decades after his death, a controversy erupted in Borglum’s home state of Idaho when a local civic group in Boise decided to induct him into their state “Hall of Fame.” When Borglum’s promoters were informed that he had once belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, the response was as follows: 1) nobody’s perfect; 2) he probably had good reason to don the hood and, 3) Mount Rushmore rakes in revenue.
The press reported the flap thusly;
“. . . A private group. . . has elevated Mount Rushmore sculptor and one-time Ku Klux Klan member, Gutzon Borglum, to its 2010 class of honorees.
“Borglum, born in Idaho Territory in 1867, chiseled the monumental heads of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt in the granite of South Dakota's Black Hills.
“In the mid-1920s, Borglum was also in the Klan.
“Some historians speculate that Borglum--by most accounts a complex, ambitious and difficult figure--joined the KKK to secure financing for a Confederate monument at Georgia's Stone Mountain that he never completed. Others say he was a ‘prairie populist’ with anti-Semitic tendencies who hoped the KKK would help advance his political aspirations.
“Dallas Cox, Idaho Hall of Fame president, said she knew only that Borglum was the man whose labors in South Dakota today draw 2,000,000 visitors annually. . . . ‘Oh my gosh, you're kidding?’ Cox told the ‘Associated Press’ upon learning of Borglum's KKK ties. ‘Well, I'll bet if we sat down and took every one of the inductees since 1995, you could find something on every one of them. That's not our goal. It's to be able to recognize the person for their accomplishments.’ . . .
“Still, honoring a former Ku Klux Klan member in Idaho--until 2001 home to the Aryan Nations white supremacist group--might raise a few eyebrows. . . .
“[Museum historians] Howard and Audrey Shaff . . . detailed Borglum's Klan ties in ‘Six Wars at a Time'--their 1985 book about the artist--including a passage highlighting his attendance at a Klan strategy meeting in 1923 in Washington, D.C., and friendship with Grand Dragon, D.C. Stephenson, a convicted murderer. . . .
“’There was much about the KKK that appealed to [Borglum] and much he did not like but, above all, he saw a malleable organization that could be turned into a powerful political force strong enough to make national policy,’ [the Shaffs] wrote.
“ . . . [E]mployees at the [Mount Rushmore] visitors center who weren't authorized to speak publicly said they get queries about Borglum's Ku Klux Klan ties only ‘once in a blue moon.’ . . .
“Cox, of the Idaho Hall of Fame, says knowing Borglum was once in the KKK doesn't sway her from adding his name to her group's list of notable Idahoans.
"’We can focus on the negative all day,’ Cox said. ‘As far as I'm concerned, we're focusing on the accomplishments.’”
_____
--Sculptor of Monuments to Slavery-Defending Confederate War Heroes
Borglum’s rise to ultimate Rushmore reverence came, in its beginnings, to help from another civic organization--the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
From media reports:
“[Historians Howard and Audrey Shaff] . . . wrote that Borglum's immediate concern during the 1920s was securing several million dollars he needed for the Confederate monument at Stone Mountain near Atlanta. It was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy--‘and the KKK was offering to help raise the money,’ the Shaffs wrote.”
Borglum’s connections to 20th-century Confederate sympathizers, however, appears to be an inconvenient truth that the U.S. government doesn’t feel a need to address:
“His education included studying with sculptor Auguste Rodin in Paris; [and] some of his works were displayed at Windsor Castle for Queen Victoria, according to a National Park Service that mentions his successes, though not his KKK ties. . . .
“Though he never finished the monument of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis on Georgia's Stone Mountain where he joined the Klan, historians say that experience eventually resulted in Borglum winning the job at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota starting in 1927.” (Note: Borglum also did not see Mount Rushmore finished, dying in Chicago in 1941).
Ironically, what caught the attention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in Borglum's behalf, was his work--which included his famous bust of the notorious Confederacy-buster, Abraham Lincoln.
As one biography notes:
“Borglum's major work included a bust of Abraham Lincoln, which he was able to exhibit in Theodore Roosevelt's White House." Another source reports that during this time, "Borglum [was growing] increasingly famous as he developed his own style of 'American' art” and that his Lincoln bust brought him "[h]is greatest notoriety" to date. That bust is currently on display in the rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.
Indeed, Borglum’s bust of Abe enabled him to design his Stone Mountain monument to the Confederacy:
"It was Borglum’s bust of Lincoln that led to his first mountain carving. He was invited by the Daughters of the Confederacy to carve a bust of Robert E. Lee in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Upon visiting the site, he declared that doing just the head of Lee would be as impressive as a postage stamp on a barn door. Instead, he created a design of a more appropriate scale that incorporated Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson on horseback in front of a row of soldiers. He started carving the piece in 1923 with chisels and jackhammers until he learned the art of using dynamite for detail work from a Belgian engineer.”
It was during the creation of his stone sacrament to Southern slavery that Borglum was initiated into the ranks of the Klan. While a member of the KKK working on his Stone Mountain monument, he learned techniques of the trade (such as using dynamite) that served him well in sculpting the White Men on Rushmore.
Efforts by apologists to minimize Borglum's association with the KKK have been persistent over the years.
An example:
“Borglum joined the Ku Klux Klan while he was developing this [Confederate monument] project. It’s not clear if he did it as an expression of his core beliefs or to patronize the backers. He was known to shun anyone who could not directly help him through money or influence. Borglum’s artistic temperament clashed with the patrons and he was kicked off the job. Another artist was hired to complete the monument and ultimately none of Borglum’s work survived. He did benefit from the work he did, however, by developing techniques he used on later projects [like for Rushmore]."
The fact remains, however, that official support and assistance for Borglum’s monument-building efforts from the United Daughters of the Confederacy served to pave the way for his introduction to the KKK, as well as grease the skids for his eventual rise to Rushmore:
"The Lincoln portrait and other much-admired works gave Borglum a national reputation and he was invited by Helen Plane of the United Daughters of the Confederacy to carve a bust of Robert E. Lee on Stone Mountain in Georgia. Borglum's conception was bigger than Plane's and Stone Mountain became his first mountain-carving project--and where Borglum developed some of the techniques that would later be used on Rushmore.
“While at Stone Mountain, Borglum became associated with the newly-reborn Ku Klux Klan. Whether this accorded with a racist world view or if it was simply one way to bond with some of his patrons on the Stone Mountain project, is unclear.”
There's that "unclear" word again. Below is further effort to rationalize Borglum’s unsettling ties to a pro-Confederacy organization for whom he began a major piece of work glorifying the cause of the Civil-War South:
“Frankly, Borglum had little time for anyone--White or Black--who was not a Congressman or millionaire, or happened to be in his way. There is no indication, for example, that he treated his long-suffering Black chauffeur Charlie Johnson any differently than any White employee--he owed him back pay just like everyone else. Stone Mountain was not finished by Borglum, but it inspired his next job: Mount Rushmore.”
The record is nonetheless clear that Borglum’s work for Confederacy boosters in Georgia put him on the map for his biggest project of them all in South Dakota:
"While Borglum was working on Stone Mountain, the state historian from South Dakota [Doane Robinson] tempted him with the idea of creating a sculpture in the mountains of the Black Hills.
“When [Robinson] read about Stone Mountain, he invited Borglum out to the Black Hills of South Dakota to create a monument there. Borglum, perhaps realizing that Stone Mountain had only regional support, immediately suggested a national subject for Rushmore: Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson were added to the program soon afterward. Borglum had met and campaigned for Roosevelt and by invoking that president's acquisition of the Panama Canal and Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, the Rushmore monument became a story of the expansion of the United States, the embodiment of Manifest Destiny."
So, in pursuit of his own destiny, Borglum headed for the Black Hills, where the rest became White Mountain Man history:
“[Seeing] the potential for more national recognition than the Georgia project afforded him, . . . he agreed to the challenge and uprooted his family, moving them to Keystone, South Dakota. . . . Borglum began carving the mountain in 1927 when he was 60 years old. . . . . . [He was] responsible for creating the model and picking the site for the carving."
_____
--A Curious Anti-Semite Who Hated Hitler, Yet Claimed Jewish Friends While Looking to the KKK for National Political Support
Borglum’s life was a confusing construction of conflicts, as noted by scholars who have chronicled it:
“Martin Luschei, professor emeritus of English at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California, who wrote about Borglum in his 2007 book, 'The Black Hills and the Indians,’ concluded the sculptor was a man of contradictions--nn anti-Semite with powerful Jewish friends, a former Klan member who blasted Adolf Hitler after the Nazi leader came to power in the 1930s.
"’Borglum denounced Hitler, to the point where Hitler destroyed a statute of Borglum's (of Woodrow Wilson) in Poland,’ Luschei told the 'Associated Press.'
"’You can't categorize him simply,’ Luschei said. ‘He also had this political power drive. He was sort of a “prairie populist.” He thought the Jews were controlling the situation and I think he thought the Klan would give him power that he might even have been able to use to get to the presidency.’"
_____
--Invader of Native American Territory; Destroyer of Native American Heritage
For all the acclaim Borglum has received over the years for his mountain-sized White American fantasy at the expense of Native American dignity, not everyone has been impressed. As one reader noted in response to a selectively-presented Borglum biography:
“Sad to learn that Gutzon Borglum . . . invaded Sioux territory to blast granite to sculpt the most spectacular wonder-monument on Mount Rushmore--which [was] part of the Black Hills, stolen from Mother Nature. A White hypocrisy message for all to see. That is what I see.”
Borglum’s Mount Rushmore came at an historical cost to both broader justice and personal reputation:
“. . . [L]ike so many episodes in the saga of the American West, what began as a personal dream had to be bailed out by the federal government, a compromise that nearly drove Borglum mad. Nor in the end could he control how his masterpiece would be received. Nor its devastating impact on the Lakota Sioux and the remote Black Hills of South Dakota."
_____
--An Ego to Rival Rushmore Ended Up Biting the Hand That Fed Him
Borglum was a man full of both enormous creative energy and self-defeating faults. His vigorous yet volatile nature has been depicted as follows:
“Work on the ['Rushmore'] mountain was not constantly supervised by Borglum. When he was at Rushmore, Borglum would be climbing all over the mountain and all over the hills to determine the best angle for each feature, and advising the carvers on how to create the nuanced details that might not even be visible from below.“ Borglum's demanding eye for detail meant that “[d]uring the sculpting he was often more supervisory than hands-on.” Note eas also made that “[w]hen he returned to the Dakotas, a rock might have been roughly blasted into an egg shape and he would be back to looking over every detail.” Experience demonsrated that his return always meant “he would resume micromanaging the workers.“
Borglum’s perfectionistic impulse ended up creating problems with those on whom he depended for support in his Rushmore enterprise:
“John Boland was chairman of the Mount Rushmore executive committee and responsible for all the finances on the project. He was both a friend and nemesis to Borglum. When money became tight for the artist, it was Boland who guaranteed bank loans so he could keep his home. On occasion, the businessman even kept Borglum afloat with a personal loan. But Borglum didn’t like being beholden to anyone. He fired some of the best workers and frequently butted heads with Boland, always insisting on doing things his way. These clashes led to a rift in their relationship. Eventually, however, their wives intervened and conspired to effect a successful reconciliation between the two men."
As noted, however, efforts to patch things up didn’t always work, given Borglum’s massive sense of self-importance:
“Borglum's stubborn insistence on having things done his way led to numerous confrontations with . . . Boland . . . . His temper and perfectionism caused him to fire his best workmen (who then had to be hired back by Borglum's son, Lincoln). Borglum's ambition and hubris motivated him to recreate a landscape in his image (a tableau of prominent White men) rather than for the Native Americans who held the Black Hills sacred. Borglum was stubborn, insistent, temperamental, perfectionist, high-reaching and proud--but these were also the characteristics that were required to carve a mountain. Big, brash, almost larger than life, only a man like Gutzon Borglum could have conceived of and created the monument on Mount Rushmore.”
On other occasions, Borglum would suddenly make himself scarce as he dove for extended periods into other endeavors that consumed him:
". . . [A]fter creating the [Rushmore] models, siting the sculpture and developing methods for transferring the image to the mountain and carving the rock, there were long periods during which Borglum's presence was not required. He would often leave his assistants, including his son Lincoln, to supervise the work and then travel.
“He would go to Washington, D.C., to lobby for more money . . . . or to Europe to work on other commissioned projects.” Some of these projects included a molding “a Thomas Paine (for Paris) and a Woodrow Wilson (for Poland), and meeting politicians and celebrities such as Helen Keller.' Meeting notables like the visually-impaired Keller fed Borglum’s insatiable ego:
“Helping her feel pieces by his old friend Rodin, he recalled her comment: ‘Meeting you is like a visit from the gods.’ He sometimes felt the same way about himself, writing in his journal: ‘I must see, think, feel and draw in Thor's dimension’).”
On top of all this mountainous hubris, Borglum's ego was further fed by the opportunities he had for audience with U.S. presidents. Due, however, to his bulldoggisly belligerent and bulldozer approach, he didn’t always have their ear:
“He was outspoken about his political opinions and tried to wield some celebrity influence by campaigning for [Theodore] Roosevelt’s reelection in 1912. During the Wilson administration, Borglum--in a departure from his usual focus-- investigated malpractices in aircraft manufacture and reported his findings directly to President Wilson. Borglum and the president disagreed about how the artist became involved in such an investigation, and their dispute became public. Borglum was [so] adamant that President Wilson specifically appointed him to the task and published letters in the 'New York Times' defending his involvement. The president, in letters to Borglum and the Secretary of War which the White House also released to the ‘New York Times,’ tried to distance himself from Borglum, appreciating his discoveries but apparently not wanting to be linked too closely to the man.“
Through it all and through his life, Borglum functioned under the grandiose notion that his work was destined to survive the ages (no doubt, the Sioux of the Black Hills had contrary desires):
“. . . [He] . . hoped that 10,000 years from now, when archaeologists came upon the four 60-foot presidential heads carved in the Black Hills of South Dakota, they would have a clear and graphic understanding of American civilization. . . .
“. . . [Borglum] had an almost Ahab-like obsession with Colossalism--a scale that matched his ego and the era. He learned how to be a celebrity from Auguste Rodin; [and] how to be a political bully from Teddy Roosevelt. He ran with the Ku Klux Klan and mingled with the rich and famous from Wall Street to Washington. Mount Rushmore was to be his crowning achievement, the newest wonder of the world, the greatest piece of public art since Phidias carved the Parthenon."
What a monumental piece of work this fellow was.
_____
--Death and Legacy
John Gutzon Borglum was born to a polygamous Mormon father who had two wives that happened to be nuclear-family sisters. His father jettisoned his first wife in favor of his second (who was Borglum’s aunt). Borglum was thereafter raised by this step-mother until age 16, when he fled his dysfunctional family, whereupon he first married a woman 18 years older than himself, eventually divorcing her for a younger woman whose intelligence he admired and whose youth he desired. He studied in Paris under Rodin and achieved fame in the United States with his works that found places of honor in the White House. He held court with American presidents and gave them piece after piece of his mind--then became openly exasperated when they wouldn’t take what he so greatly gave them.
Along the way, Borglum was a member of the Ku Klux Klan; a partner with Confederate sympathizers in fashioning monuments to Southern Civil War generals and later, to White American presidents; a person infected with anti-Semitic views; and the creator of a massive sculpture sitting lands stolen from the Native Americans,
But all grand things must come to an end:
“On March 6, 1941 [at the age of 74], Borglum died, following complications after surgery. His son finished another season at Rushmore but left the monument largely in the state of completion it had reached under his father's direction. . . . [T]he monument basically remained the way his father left it.”
“[His life] proves that the best American stories are not simple; they are complex and contradictory, at times humorous, at other times tragic.”
True enough. Especially the tragic Mormon part.
_____
Sources:
--“Gutzon Borglum: Sculptor, Mount Rushmore, 1867–1941,;” see also "Page Comments," 19 October 2011, at:
http://gardenofpraise.com/ibdborg.htm--Synopsis of John Taliaferro’s “Great White Fathers: The True Story of Gutzon Borglum and His Obsessive Quest to Create the Mount Rushmore National Monument,” at:
http://www.amazon.com/Great-White-Fathers-Obsessive-Rushmore/dp/158648205X--“Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941): Sculptor of Mount Rushmore,” in “Forgotten Newsmakers,” at:
http://forgottennewsmakers.com/2010/08/03/gutzon-borglum-1867-1941-sculptor-of-mount-rushmore/;
--“Mount Rushmore Sculptor's Idaho Award Draws Renewed Look at KKK Ties,” by John Miller, “Associated Press,” 6 July 2010, at:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/mount-rushmore-sculptor-s-idaho-award-draws-renewed-look-at/article_12400dd2-88f5-11df-9ad1-001cc4c03286.html--“Biography: Gutzon Borglum,” in “WGBH American Experience,” Public Broadcasting System, at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/biography/rushmore-borglum/Edited 20 time(s). Last edit at 09/11/2013 01:51PM by steve benson.