Caspar David Freidrich (September 5, 1774 – May 7, 1840): the Great 19th Century German Romantic Landscape Painter...
He was born in the Swedish Pomeranian town of Greifswald, where he began his studies in art as a youth. Later, he studied in Copenhagen until 1798, before settling in Dresden. He came of age during a period when, across Europe,
a growing disillusionment with materialistic society was giving rise to a new appreciation of spirituality. This shift in ideals was often expressed through a reevaluation of the natural world, as artists such as Friedrich sought to depict nature as a "
divine creation, to be set against the artifice of human civilization".
He is best known for his mid-period allegorical landscapes which typically feature contemplative figures silhouetted against night skies, morning mists, barren trees or Gothic ruins. His primary interest as an artist was the contemplation of nature, and his often symbolic and anti-classical work seeks to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world.
Friedrich's work characteristically sets the human element in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing the figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension". Friedrich’s work brought him renown early in his career, and contemporaries such as the French sculptor David d'Angers (1788–1856) spoke of him as a man who had discovered "
the tragedy of landscape". Nevertheless, his work fell from favour during his later years, and he died in obscurity, and in the words of the art historian Philip Miller, "half mad".
Friedrich said,
"The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind which one expects to find only the sick or the dead."He often used the landscape to express religious themes. During his time, most of the best-known paintings were viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism
Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests, ruins and crosses bearing witness to the presence of God are frequent elements in Friedrich's landscapes. Though death finds symbolic expression in boats that move away from shore—a Charon-like motif—and in the poplar tree, it is referenced more directly in paintings like The Abbey in the Oakwood (1808–10), in which monks carry a coffin past an open grave, toward a cross, and through the portal of a church in ruins.
As Germany moved towards modernization in the late 19th century, a new sense of urgency characterized its art, and
Friedrich’s contemplative depictions of stillness came to be seen as the products of a bygone age. The early 20th century brought a renewed appreciation of his work, beginning in 1906 with an exhibition of thirty-two of his paintings and sculptures in Berlin.
By the 1920s his paintings had been discovered by the Expressionists, and in the 1930s and early 1940s Surrealists and Existentialists frequently drew ideas from his work. The rise of Nazism in the early 1930s again saw a resurgence in Friedrich's popularity, but this was followed by a sharp decline as his paintings were, by association with the Nazi movement, misinterpreted as having a nationalistic aspect. It was not until the late 1970s that Friedrich regained his reputation as an icon of the German Romantic movement and a painter of international importance.
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The Monk by The Sea (1809)
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The Tree of Crows (1822)
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Fog (1807)
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The Giant Mountains (1830-1835)
a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature.
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View of the Baltic (1820-1825)
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Interior Dictation of Landscape (Tom Clark on Friedrich; from Vanitas Magizine):
He avoided Goethe's invitations to come to Weimar and work together on a collaborationHe was too busy collaborating with certain beingsinside himwhose commands he found so much more compellingthey came aliveduring his solitary strolls into the countryside at dawn or just after moonrisehis favorite timeduring which he often paused to sketcha group of trees a cloud a boulder a row of dunes or a tuft of grassat their urgingEvery true work of art (he wrote) is conceived in a sacred hourand bornfrom an inner impulse of the heartAs he grew older depression distanced him moreand morefrom the world of menI have to beon my ownand I have to know I am on my ownso that I can give myself up to what is around mehe wrotein declining an invitation to tour the Alpswith a Russian poetwho admired his paintingsI have to unite with my clouds and rocksI have to unite with everything around mein order to be what I amWhen the mineral world dissolves into the cosmic fluxthe animal and vegetable worlds will have been long gonebut the beings who existed inside Friedrich and dictated his landscapeswill still be carving vast silences out of elemental gulfsHe had a special interest in the moonHe used to saythat if after death men were transported to another placethen he would prefer one less terrestrial than lunarin order to allow the beings inside him to feel at home
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Vanitas expounded (i.e. What's that latin for?):
In the arts, vanitas is a type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The term vanitas itself refers to the arts, learning and time. The word is Latin, meaning "emptiness" and loosely translated corresponds to the meaninglessness of earthly life and the transient nature of vanity. Ecclesiastes 1:2 from the Bible is often quoted in conjunction with this term. The Vulgate (Latin translation of the Bible) renders the verse as Vanitas vanitatum omnia vanitas. The verse is translated as Vanity of vanities; all is vanity by the King James Version of the Bible, and Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless by the New International Version of the Bible.
Paintings executed in the vanitas style are meant as a reminder of the transience of life, the futility of pleasure, and the certainty of death, encouraging a sombre world view.
Common vanitas symbols include skulls, which are a reminder of the certainty of death; rotten fruit, which symbolizes decay like ageing; bubbles, which symbolize the brevity of life and suddenness of death; smoke, watches, and hourglasses, which symbolize the brevity of life; and musical instruments, which symbolize brevity and the ephemeral nature of life.
Mold Study:
How to become a millionaire in 100 days:
The above piece is comprised of 1,000,000 scraps of hand-cut, colored paper.
