Rolf Toman has worked as an independent art publisher for various international publishing houses for several decades. He authored and edited many acclaimed publications on art history and spirituality.
"this hand bound treasure demonstrates publisher H.F. Ullmann's
prowess in the art world."
Book Review: Baroque: Theatrum Mundi. The World as a Work of
Art
This magnificent companion volume to Gothic exhibits the same
precise, lovingly reproduced photography of Achim Bednorz along
with the knowledgeable text by art historian Barbara Borngasser.
Long discounted, the Baroque period extended over the two hundred
fifty years between the Counter-Reformation and the French
Revolution at a time when the Catholic Church was widening their
powerbase over the known world and the world itself was seen as an
exquisite piece of artwork, indeed a stage.
From the stunning ceiling frescos of S. Ignazio and Gran Salone to
the massive Dome des Invalides and the amazing pulpit altar housed
within Germany's St. Pankratius, it is clear the church was a vital
driving force behind the art movement. Cutting edge digital
photographic technology has allowed Bednorz to bring to the printed
page a sense of the grandeur of these works as never before.
Fountains, furniture, paintings, sculptures and indeed entire city
blocks are presented in all their glory in this sixteen pound, five
hundred sixty eight page book that is certain to provide many happy
hours of browsing. Whether you are an art student or historian, an
armchair traveler or just have an appreciation for the arts, this
hand bound treasure demonstrates publisher H.F. Ullmann's prowess
in the art world.
Book review by Sandy Amazeen, Nov 20, 2012, Monsters and Critics,
www.monstersandcritics.com
"Rolf Toman is the editor of both volumes, and succeeds with his
team in presenting not only some superlative works of art, but in
presenting the vision -- an emphatically Christian vision -- that
animated works of such surpassing ambition that they would be
impossible to conceive of today, in a world of technological genius
but narrow horizons... The history of art can be spiritual reading,
and Ullmann's bold project achieves something of that.
Gothic
ISBN-10: 3848000407
Baroque
ISBN-10: 3848000393
Art and the beauty of faith
One of my favourite insights from Joseph Ratzinger's long life in
theology is that the Church does not convincingly propose the faith
by the work of theology alone. Before his election as Pope he wrote
that in the end the Church only has two compelling "arguments" for
her faith being true. The first is the saints who have lived the
Gospel fully and who the Church proposes as models of Christian
witness. The second is the art that she has nurtured in her midst,
her faith expressed in beauty, whether in painting, sculpture,
architecture or music. Theology is necessary, but it is holiness
and beauty that persuades.
The Church's faith provides to the world this gift, the gift of
beauty. We do not live in a very beautiful world. To our world the
Church continues to offer from her patrimony the service of beauty.
The Church offers to our common life that which is beautiful. Not
just art, but beautiful lives, lives of saintly people from every
time and place. The role of faith in our common life is to give our
contemporaries reasons to look up, to raise the eyes of a
disenchanted culture above the daily grime to that which is
beautiful. That is the role of the Christian in ugly time, to make
present that which is beautiful. Like the biblical steward we bring
out our treasures old and new, beauty from our history and from our
current circumstance.
I discovered recently a marvelous publishing project which does
precisely that, brings out the treasures of art from Christian
history. A few years back the German publisher, h.f. Ullmann, which
specializes in high-end art books, the lavishly illustrated tomes
about cars, homes, couture, geography, architecture and the like
that you might find on the coffee tables of great mansions, decided
on a bold experiment. They would produce a mammoth book -- 800
pages, 1,100 photographs, 11 kilograms -- on the entire history of
Christian art. Entitled Ars Sacra, it was not a coffee-table book,
but a kitchen table book.
It was a most pleasant publishing surprise, that it the age of the
Internet a book heavier than a set of twins could sell, and sell
well. So last fall, h.f. Ullmann launched an even more ambitious
project, a series on the different epochs of art. The first two
volumes deal with major periods in Christian art history: Gothic:
Visual Art of the Middle Ages 1150-1500 and Baroque: Theatrum
Mundi. The World as a Work of Art.
Compared to Ars Sacra, and only relative to that behemoth, are
these volumes smaller: 600 illustrations on 600 pages, seven
kilograms. These two are to be read at the desk. The publisher
sells them for $150, but they can also be ordered online at
two-thirds of that price. And, remarkably, both in terms of cost
and heft, they are more than good value.
Rolf Toman is the editor of both volumes, and succeeds with his
team in presenting not only some superlative works of art, but in
presenting the vision -- an emphatically Christian vision -- that
animated works of such surpassing ambition that they would be
impossible to conceive of today, in a world of technological genius
but narrow horizons.
The Gothic volume highlights the magnificent French cathedrals --
Chartres taking pride of place -- whose influence is seen in so
many places in Canada. The Baroque volume offers one sacred
exemplar -- St. Peter's Basilica -- and one profane -- the Palace
of Versailles. In all cases, we see the marvels of what human
ingenuity can achieve when it is unconstrained. And the great works
of the gothic and the baroque -- even the secular ones -- required
a spirit sustained by the transcendent. Otherwise, why build a
cathedral or palace that you would never live to see finished, or
why decorate exquisitely an obscure part of a ceiling that no one,
save for God, would ever see?
We read the lives of the saints so that their holiness might
attract us. The Ullmann books are analogous to that, works that
move us by presenting the beauty that is born from the faith.
Spiritual reading for Lent usually emphasizes the ascetical life. A
lavish art book may therefore seem incongruous in Lent, but many of
the pages in these books are worthy of meditation on the love of
God that can make this sinful world beautiful. The history of art
can be spiritual reading, and Ullmann's bold project achieves
something of that.
The Catholic Register coverageWednesday, 06 February 2013 16:20
Written by Fr. Raymond J. de Souza
Baroque: Theatrum Mundi, The World as Work of Art
text by Barbara Borngasser, photos by Achim Bednorz
It doesn't seem that long ago that Baroque art was treated with
something approaching disparagement. In a critical environment that
favored the cleaner and simpler lines of Classicism, it seemed
cluttered. It was overly ornate. It was pretentious.
In recent years that view has changed and the art of the Baroque
has undergone something of a renaissance. What had been seen as
bombast is now looked on as a kind of visual rhetoric aimed at
fostering a set of values about the nature of the world.
Beginning in Italy in the late 16th century as part of the Counter
Reformation, Baroque art had its roots in the church and religion.
Religious art was asked to reach into the viewer's deepest soul and
evoke a sense of the divinity. The glorious churches, architectural
wonders without and within were monuments to the glory of the
creator, and if in the process they shed a bit of that glory on the
nobles and churchmen who commissioned them, and even the artists
who built them, well that was simply a little gravy.
Over the course of the next century and into the 18th, Baroque art
spread through Europe and over those areas of the world the
Europeans colonized. The Baroque aesthetic spread from the church
to the secular world. The elaborate cathedrals begat gorgeous
palaces. If art could inspire awe in the Creator, it could
certainly do as much for his secular regents, the kings and nobles,
and if the kings and nobles, why not the merchant kings and in the
end whoever had enough money or clout to commission the artist. For
good or ill, the idea of Baroque was to shape the 17th century.
Baroque: Theatrum Mundi, The World as Work of Art, one of the first
two volumes now available in publisher H. F. Ullman's new series
The Collection of Art Epochs, is a massive attempt to illustrate
and explain the scope and variety of the Baroque in all of its many
iterations. Architecture, sculpture, painting, decorative art, it
looks at it all. If the attempt is massive, the book is no less
massive. Its hand-bound 568 pages in a 15 x 11-inch format is not
the kind of book you will want to hold on your lap. It is the kind
of book that belongs on an ornate table in a Baroque library. In
many respects it is itself a work of art.
The series editor, Rolf Toman, explains that the aim of the new
volumes is to look at broader contexts than the intensive
encyclopedic studies of specialized bits typical of past studies.
The intention is to cut a wide swath through the whole period, to
look at representative examples from many countries. It is not
meant to be a comprehensive history of everything Baroque; it is a
selection. "It was important," he tells readers in a brochure that
comes with the book, "for us not only to present the objects
particularly esteemed as significant by art historians, but also to
show in depth such artworks whose special aesthetic quality makes
them worthy of rediscovery."
While the book doesn't ignore the established Baroque icons -- St.
Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London, the Palace at Versailles,
the Winter Palace in St. Petersberg, it makes an effort to take the
reader on an intensive tour, three or four pages of text and photos
a variety of lesser known artwork as well. For example, there are
four pages and seven photos -- exterior, interior, and details --
of the Palacio Fonteira in Lisbon, emphasizing the "perfect harmony
of palace and gardens, the bravura of the staircase and the complex
and self-glorifying, cosmological pictorial program." It explains
the historical context of the Portuguese espousal of the Baroque as
an attempt by nobles to demonstrate their new power when Portugal
managed to get out from under Spanish domination. It gives a
technical explanation of the use of azulagos, the decorative tiles
used in Portugal instead of the usual frescoes because to the
dampness of its Atlantic climate.
On the other hand after a short outline of the characteristics of
Baroque sculpture, it looks at a view of Bernini's "Pluto and
Proserpina" and a full page detail and posits that he is the
"epitome" of Roman Baroque sculpture. Indeed the whole discussion
of sculpture outside of its appearances in architectural settings
is quite limited. Painting is treated more extensively, but it is
architecture that gets the most emphasis. Justly so, one would
expect.
The photography which is the glory of the book is by Achim Bednorz.
There are fantastic photos of church exteriors and interiors often
complete with full or double page details of ceiling frescoes,
pulpit carvings, or decorative alters. There are even a couple of
four panel fold outs. Color, due in part to the technical
opportunities provided by digital photography, is stunning.
The text by Barbara Borngasser is fine, but not quite as
impressive. At times it seemed a bit too technical for the lay
reader, using specialized terminology that wasn't always defined.
Although there is a glossary provided for the novice. On the other
hand, sometimes it spent a lot of time calling attention to things
that would have more than likely common knowledge for the
initiated. I'm not sure that given the series' stated intention,
the text shouldn't be focused more precisely on a target
audience.
On the other hand, text aside, the photography alone is worth the
price of the book. A companion volume, Gothic: Visual Art of the
Middle Ages is also currently available, and books on the
Romanesque and Art Nouveau are in preparation: truly something to
look forward to.
By Blogcritics syndicated review"
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