Art Needs No Justification

Artists often agonize over their work, even to the point of despair, in the modern world. This booklet by one of the twentieth century’s most incisive art historians and cultural critics is a prophetic call to artists-craftsmen, musicians, visual artists and others-in all walks of life to “weep, pray, think and work.” Hans R. Rookmaaker (1922-1977), founder of the art history department and professor of the history of art at the Free University of Amsterdam, made a significant contribution to the Christian understanding of art and is well known as the author of Modern Art and the Death of a Culture (1970). The Complete Works of Hans Rookmaaker (6 vols.) was published in 2003.