Roger Lipsey

Roger Lipsey does an outstanding job of revealing the values that informed the work of Dag Hammarskjöld while Secretary-General of the United Nations. Hammarskjöld’s voice comes through in Lipsey’s selection of quotes and passages. Much can be learned from the words of this incredible diplomat. Hammarskjöld was a man of deep intellect, integrity, and spirituality. He embodied the application of mindfulness to politics. He was a true statesman. The world today is in sore need of leaders like Hammarskjöld. Leaders in politics and in other arenas would do well to read this book. It would be fruitful for all citizens to digest the lessons within the book’s pages. Perhaps then citizens would be better informed of the kind of leaders we need to elect and follow.… (more)

Lipsey describes the social and political scene that surrounded each of the major styles in art that emerged in the twentieth century and describes the art forms and thinking of many of the well-known artists within each movement—Cézanne's relentless pursuit of the essence of nature, Kandinsky's definitions of the spiritual quality of color and form, the poetry of structure in Cubism, Dada and Duchamp in reaction to World War I, the Russian Avant-Garde and Malevich's Suprematism as integral to the Revolution of 1917, and the domination of abstract art after World War II. Lipsey's theme is that "Twentieth-century art embodied a stronger and wiser spirituality than we have fully acknowledged" (p. 5), and his choice of artists is governed not by the degree of their fame, but by the degree to which they succeeded in embodying a contemporary spirituality. Modern art is a statement of philosophy that differs from previous eras, Lipsey posits, in part because "twentieth-century artists have for the most part worked individually and without formal adherence to religious or spiritual traditions" (p. 11). Lipsey's careful and thoughtful exploration of the spiritual in twentieth-century art has enormously enlarged my ability to see abstract art and benefit from the experience.… (more)