Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Father Paul Dobberstein
American, German; 20th-century
West Bend, IA: 208 1st Avenue NW
87%
Grotto of Redemption. 1912-1954
If sublimity is experiencing one’s mind clawing at and failing to grasp the immense entirety of one big object, then Dobberstein’s structure is about as sublime as it gets. Whether or not it’s good art is tough to say, because it’s pretty much in an idiom of its own — it’s the biggest grotto in the world, and the German expat priest spent about 50 years quarrying and rockhounding and designing and masoning to build it. (Construction continued after his death in ’54.) What suggests that, besides being impressive, it might also be great, is the pervasive fineness of its detail, surprising given its enormity. Apart from being an eccentric, Dobberstein was evidently a colorist, positioning his pinks and yellows and quartzy whites with what seems to have been enormous care, whether to tee off a spandrel or accent a facade. (2024)