Caspar David Friedrich E-Book

Barbara Hess

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: A - Z Reihe
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 58

Beschreibung

One of his generation's most popular artists, German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich is known for his allegorical landscapes that convey a deep sense of contemplation and melancholy. 2024 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of this outstanding artist, whose paintings continue to gain in topicality–hardly a discussion on climate change without one of his iconic paintings, such as The Sea of Ice, being invoked as a silent witness. Barbara Hess examines the painter's work and his life, from its lasting poignancy to the great themes of Romanticism and drawing. In the playful format of an A–Z book, the author takes us on a timely journey, showing how new views and perspectives can be gained from what has long been thought familiar. CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840) is the most important artist of the German Romantic period. Born in Greifswald, then part of the Kingdom of Sweden, he studied drawing at the Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, before settling in Dresden in 1798. His compositions are visualizations of emotional landscapes that create an instant of sublimity. His works elude lucidity and have therefore continuously been open to new interpretations.  Art historian BARBARA HESS (*1964) has published works on avant-garde galleries, Abstract Expressionism, the documenta, Lucio Fontana and Jasper Johns, among others. Most recently, she has co-edited the diary of the German post-war avant-garde artist HP Zimmer, published this spring by Hatje Cantz.

Leseprobe

Caspar David Friedrich

A–Z

Caspar David Friedrich

A–Z

Barbara Hess

A → A Solitary Tree

B → Bride

C → Chasseur

D → Dresden

E → Eternity

F → Fog

G → Greifswald

H → Harbor

I → Inwardness

J → Jeers

K → Kersting

L → Last Generation

M → Moon

N → Northwest Passage

O → Owl

P → Politics

Q → Quistorp

R → Rearview Figure

S → Sepia

T → Transparent

U → Under Construction

V → View

W → Wanderer

X → Xylography

Y → Young’s Night-Thoughts

Z → Zittau Mountains

A → A Solitary Tree

In her writings, the American philosopher Donna Haraway appeals to us to “make kin,” that is, to make ourselves related with other lifeforms beyond the confines of our own species. This could lead to relationships across species that are not based on exploitation and destruction. Perhaps Friedrich already had such relationships in mind. In any case, a letter of the Russian poet Vasily Zhukovsky from June 1821 seems to suggest this. He reports that Friedrich’s “favorite subject” in conversations was nature, “which he treated like a family member.”1

In Friedrich’s Village Landscape in the Morning Light (Solitary Tree) from 1822, the focus of the composition is on a monumental oak tree. The two usual working titles do not originate from the artist himself, but rather from a later period. It thus remains open whether this is in fact the representation of a morning mood. The central tree also need not be perceived as “solitary”; several congeners stand to the left and right of it, and the tiny figure of the shepherd leaning against the trunk appears to nearly merge with the tree.

Friedrich’s contemporaries would often have read the painting with national and religious aspects in mind. For the Protestant pastor and poet Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who Friedrich knew through his drawing teacher Quistorp,→ Quistorp the oak was the “Tree of God” due to its permanence.2 The oak has also been a German national symbol for centuries, which is today found, for example, in the motif of the oak branch on the copper-clad German euro cent coins. Oak leaves also play a role in many, not only German, crests and military honors. Most conspicuous about Friedrich’s composition is how subordinated those pictorial elements are that refer to human existence. The roofs of the houses in the village settlement, with their trails of smoke and the church spires that protrude over the border of the green valley, are literally marginal manifestations in the landscape.

Village Landscape in the Morning Light (Solitary Tree) 1822

Oil on canvas 55 × 71 cm

Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

B → Bride

Traugott Pochmann

Portrait of Caroline Friedrich ca. 1824

Oil on canvas

Private Collection

It appears to have surprised the artist’s circle of friends when Caspar David Friedrich and Caroline Bommer exchanged vows in January 1818 in Dresden.→ Dresden Helene von Kügelgen, who, together with her husband, Gerhard von Kügelgen, were among Friedrich’s confidantes, referred to him as “the most un-couplish of all un-couplish people.” Several of the most familiar paintings of Friedrich—such as Chalk Cliffs on Rügen→ p. 13 and Woman before the Setting (or: Rising) Sun→ p. 83—are linked with this reversal. In the summer of 1818, the couple traveled to Greifswald to Friedrich’s family and to Rügen, where Friedrich had already previously drawn during his hikes and had gathered motifs like Cape Arkona → p. 86 for his compositions.

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen is often seen as a wedding painting but presents puzzles. This is because it doesn’t show, as might be expected, a couple, but rather three figures that have arrived at a precipice. The woman is holding onto tree roots and points into the depths, while a male figure in old German costume at the right edge of the painting defies the dizzying situation and gazes assuredly out to sea, where two small boats are sailing—most likely symbols of the journey of life. A second male figure is lying on the ground in the middle. He has put aside his hat and staff and gropes his way to the edge of the steep coast on his belly—as if he feared falling. At the top edge of the painting, the branches of two trees interlock as if in an embrace and form a heart shape in the foreground with the tree trunks and the grassy plateau. The scenery is not a topographically precise reproduction of the famous chalk cliffs on Rügen, but is instead composed by Friedrich, just as the two trees are his addition.

Friedrich did not date and title his oil paintings, which expands space for interpretation. The Woman before the Setting (or: Rising) Sun is a good example of this.3 The painting, approximately as large as a DIN A4 sheet of paper, is usually dated with 1818 and seen as a painting of Friedrich’s wife, who might have been pregnant with the couple’s first child at this time; the woman represented welcomes the coming day, which could also stand metaphorically for new life, with a gesture of reverence or adoration. However, the back-figure remains anonymous and thus a projection surface that invites further interpretations—for example, the painting was already produced several years prior to the wedding and the woman represented is an early love of Friedrich, Juliane Stoye.4 What is unmistakable, however, is that Friedrich did not designate the central female figure either as wife or expecting mother, but instead focuses exclusively on a landscape experience as such.

Chalk Cliffs on Rügen 1818

Oil on canvas 90.8 × 70.6 cm

Kunst Museum Winterthur/

Reinhart am Stadtgarten

C → Chasseur

The description that Heinrich von Kleist had found for Monk by the Sea suits Chasseur inthe Forest: he is “the lonely center point in the lonely circle.”→ Young’s Night-Thoughts At the same time, he is a lonely exception among the many “back-figures,” the figures with their backs turned to the viewer, for which Friedrich is famous. This is because the Chasseur is literally an image of the enemy. His uniform identifies him as a French soldier. The French troops had conquered and occupied large parts of Europe in the Napoleonic Wars since 1800, including Friedrich’s home region of Swedish Pomerania. They had been decisively defeated at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. Friedrich himself did not fight in the wars of liberation from 1813 to 1815, but participated financially in the outfitting of his friend Georg Friedrich Kersting.5 → Kersting

The Chasseur