Overview

Why is the publication of these writings so important? What does Rookmaaker's legacy have to offer us in the new millennium? First, his books and essays stand as a monument to the importance of rigorous Christian art-historical scholarship. For many years Professor of Art History at the Free University of Amsterdam, Rookmaaker was a fastidious scholar. Today, when a postmodern fascination with all things 'aesthetic' and 'spiritual' can easily engender scholarly carelessness and an ignorance of specific artworks, Roomaaker reminds us that Christian commitment must never be used to avoid the kind of precise, intellectual engagement which is so evident in his written words, a painstaking attentiveness to the details of particular pieces of art, and to the particularities of society and culture in which they are embedded. Second, we are reminded of the importance of breadth as well as depth. Rookmaaker's interests ranged far beyond the visual arts. He had a fascinated interest, for instance, in music (especially the spirituals and jazz), and in broader cultural concerns (youth culture, scientific discovery, and much more). In an age of increasing specialization and blinkered vision, Rookmaaker shows us that it is quite possible to be a specialist and to be alert to the links between these specialisms and much wider issues. Third, Rookmaaker sets the arts in the midst of a rich and full-blooded Christian world view. For him it was not good enough to claim that the arts are important for the Christian, and then justify this with a few verses carelessly plucked from Scripture. We need to demonstrate carefully what place the arts have in the grand and sweeping purposes of God for history, and it was to Rookmaaker's immense credit that for thousands he made this breathtakingly clear. In a climate when the contribution of a distinctively Christian perspective on the arts is so often ruthlessly marginalized, often to the point of extinction, Rookmaaker's voice is one we sorely need to hear. Fourth, nourished by the Dutch Neo-Calvinist philosophy of Dooyeweerd and his followers, Rookmaaker provides a vision of the arts that does justice both to their irreducible integrity and to their interrelatedness with other aspects of God's world. Western post modernity relishes in the 'aestheticization' of culture, sometimes to the point that the aesthetic threatens to swallow up everything else in a wash of images. In his own day Rookmaaker saw that a proper refusal to isolate or downplay the arts must not be countered by a Neo-Romantic exaltation of the aesthetic. He knew there was another much more fruitful option, implicit in the Christian faith. We need to find it and celebrate it more than ever today. It is a wonderful thought that this man's rare wisdom, which so radically changed the lives of those who knew him, can now find its way to a wider audience in the pages that follow. Rookmaaker's is a timely wisdom, and it will inspire thousands for decades to come.

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9781909281806

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Reviews

Rookmaaker sets the arts in the midst of a rich and fullblooded Christian worldview ... It is a wonderful thought that this man's rare wisdom, which so radically changed the lives of those who knew him, can now find its way to a wider audience in the pages which follow. Jeremy Begbie, Professor in Theology and the Arts at Cambridge University, UK and Duke Divinity School, USA

Author Information

Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker is editor-in-chief of ArtWay, www.artway.eu, an online service and resource in Dutch and English about the visual arts and faith for individuals and congregations. She did her studies in musicology at the University of Amsterdam, complemented with minors in art history and liturgical studies at the Free University in Amsterdam. For many years she has worked as a freelance editor, translator and writer. She edited the Complete Works of her father, art historian Hans Rookmaaker, contributed to books, and wrote articles about popular music, liturgy, and the visual arts. She was editor of a Dutch book of visual meditations for Lent (2012) and co-authored a Dutch handbook for art in the church (2015). In 2019 she co-curated the Art Stations of the cross in Amsterdam. She lives in Langbroek in the Netherlands.

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