Art History

Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by H.R. Rookmaaker (Crossway, 1994)

This is another classic. It is one of the very few, if not only, book analyzing the worldviews behind visual art movements in history from a Christian interpretation. Rookmaaker was pals with Schaeffer at L’Abri, and his ideas rocked my world because I wasn’t being taught this stuff in college. He shows how every visual art movement, from classicism to pop, from Romanticism to Impressionism, from the Rennaisance to Cubism, are all driven by a philosophy or worldview. It’s much more than painting pretty pictures and trying new styles. He seeks to interpret what those worldviews are and compare them with Christianity. He shows how modern art really followed a progressive course in its philosophy toward the death of culture and annihilation, which is manifested in its styles as expressions of that degeneration. Although it is dated, in only covering the Rennaisance to the 1970s, it is still necessary for a historical grounding. - BG