This disturbing but illuminating classic is a brilliant perspective on the cultural turmoil of the radical sixties and its impact on today's world, especially as reflected in the art of the time. Rookmaaker's enduring analysis looks at modern art in a broad historical, social, and philosophical context, laying bare the despair and nihilism that pervade our era. He also shows the role Christian artists can play in proclaiming truth through their work.
Rookmaaker's brilliant articulation of faith and scholarship is insightful and inspiring. The book moves freely and with a sense of urgency between the worlds of high culture, popular art and music, and Christian faith.
This reissue makes his foundational work available to a new generation.
Author(s): Hans Rookmaaker
Publisher: Crossway Books
Year: 1994
Language: English
Pages: 260
City: Wheaton
Introduction 9
1 The message in the medium 11
The icon/Beyond history/Painting is more than art alone/Two landscapes/Two world-views
2 The roots of contemporary culture 29
Christianity and culture/Gnosticism and mysticism/A dualism of nature and grace/The Reformation attitude/Before the
Enlightenment/Science/The Age of Reason/Man in the box
3 The first step to modern art 50
Nothing but the facts/Landscape and reality/The death of themes/ Naturalistic reality/Another initial step to modern art/Idealized escapism/Christian art?/The new naturalism and the bourgeois attitude/Reactions to realism
4 The second step to modern art 82
On from impressionism/The quest for reality/The quest for a synthesis/A mystic-romantic reaction
5 The last steps to modern art 102
Expressionism/Developments in Germany/Abstraction/Cubism/ The quest for absolutes/The decisive step/Four reactions
6 Into the new era 131
A new art for new needs/A new art with a new message/The irrationality of the rational/The surrealist protest/Surreality and Christian reality/The real and the horrible/A different twentieth century response
7 Modern art and the twentieth-century revolt 160
Abstract expressionism/The skeleton of Achilles/Two British artists/ Pop and op/Happenings and hippies/Jazz, blues and beat
8 Protest, revolution and the Christian response 191
The search for humanity /Plastic people/Beyond the material/ Drugs—and religion/What is normal?/The tragic protest/The
permissive society/Apocalypse/Toward a renewal of the church
9 Faith and art 225
Christianity in art/The role of art/Questions of aesthetics and morals/Norms and structures in art/The Christian artist/The
Christian in a changing world
Bibliography 253
Index 255
