Modern Art and the Life of a Culture

• Christianity Today's 2017 Book of the Year Award of Merit - Culture and the Arts

For many Christians, engaging with modern art raises several questions: Is the Christian faith at odds with modern art? Does modernism contain religious themes? What is the place of Christian artists in the landscape of modern art? Nearly fifty years ago, Dutch art historian and theologian Hans Rookmaaker offered his answers to these questions when he published his groundbreaking work, Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, which was characterized by both misgivings and hopefulness. While appreciating Rookmaaker's invaluable contribution to the study of theology and the arts, this volume--coauthored by an artist and a theologian--responds to his work and offers its own answers to these questions by arguing that there were actually strong religious impulses that positively shaped modern visual art. Instead of affirming a pattern of decline and growing antipathy towards faith, the authors contend that theological engagement and inquiry can be perceived across a wide range of modern art--French, British, German, Dutch, Russian and North American--and through particular works by artists such as Gauguin, Picasso, David Jones, Caspar David Friedrich, van Gogh, Kandinsky, Warhol and many others. This book, the first in IVP Academic's new Studies in Theology and the Arts series, brings together the disciplines of art history and theology and points to the signs of life in modern art in order to help Christians navigate these difficult waters.
In 1970, Hans Rookmaaker published Modern Art and the Death of a Culture, a groundbreaking work that considered the role of the Christian artist in society. This volume responds to his work by bringing together a practicing artist and a theologian, who argue that modernist art is underwritten by deeply religious concerns.
"Essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between biblical revelation and modern art."--David McKay, The Covenanter Witness, February 2018
"In this compelling collaboration between an artist and a theologian, Jonathan A. Anderson and William A. Dyrness begin a conversation about how Christian artists, critics, enthusiasts and theologians can reclaim and rediscover modern art, identifying and celebrating its religious and spiritual impulses."--Jon J. Marlow, Transpositions, Spring 2017
"This book is highly recommended as a valuable resource for both theology and art libraries, and as advanced reading for those engaged in similar conversations."--Ryan Stander, Horizons
"While the treatment of Rookmaaker will be of particular interest to Protestant readers, the reassessment of modern arts' perceived secularity extends its relevancy across the church and into art history as well. Thus, this book is highly recommended as a valuable resource for both theology and art libraries, and as advanced reading for those engaged in similar conversations."--Ryan Stander, Horizons, June 2017
"Just what should Christians think of modern art? Is it void of all religious impulses and persuasions? Or is there a deeper vision often left unexplored? Rather than writing off the last century and a half of visual art as purely secular, Anderson and Dyrness meticulously detail the patterns of piety and spirituality that both influenced and empowered artists like van Gogh, Gauguin, Kandinsky, and Warhol."--Wade Bearden, Christianity Today, The 2017 Book Awards
"This book signals an important mid-course correction in evangelical scholarship about modern art and it should become a staple textbook in college and seminary classes."--Gregory Wolfe, Image Journal, October 2016