Caspar David Friedrich's "Metaphysical Dimension"
Though he is considered the most important German painter of his generation, I sense many people are not really all that familiar with the works of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).
No, wait a minute -- that's not quite right. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say most people are familiar with some of Friedrich's famous creations, but are largely unaware of Friedrich himself.
For example, I imagine almost everyone has come across an image of this painting at some point . . .
Der Wanderer Über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog) - circa 1817 . . . but I sense that only a handful of people who have encountered this painting can name the artist.
I know I couldn't when I first saw it . . . and then saw it again . . . and again.
Friedrich was primarily a landscape painter. Even better, he was a Romantic landscape painter, which means his landscapes communicate a subjective and emotional response to the natural scenes he depicted. He was also fond of including human figures in his landscapes, but in a way that, according to Wikipedia, set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension."
The Friedrich landscape that sparks the biggest subjective and emotional response in me is his The Evening Star -- for the simple reason that it so very much resembles the landscape I currently inhabit here in western Hungary, which makes the whole "metaphysical dimension" aspect of the painting easily accessible and comprehensible.
Der Abendstern (The Evening Star) - circa 1830
No, wait a minute -- that's not quite right. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say most people are familiar with some of Friedrich's famous creations, but are largely unaware of Friedrich himself.
For example, I imagine almost everyone has come across an image of this painting at some point . . .
Der Wanderer Über dem Nebelmeer (Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog) - circa 1817 . . . but I sense that only a handful of people who have encountered this painting can name the artist. I know I couldn't when I first saw it . . . and then saw it again . . . and again.
Friedrich was primarily a landscape painter. Even better, he was a Romantic landscape painter, which means his landscapes communicate a subjective and emotional response to the natural scenes he depicted. He was also fond of including human figures in his landscapes, but in a way that, according to Wikipedia, set a human presence in diminished perspective amid expansive landscapes, reducing figures to a scale that, according to the art historian Christopher John Murray, directs "the viewer's gaze towards their metaphysical dimension."
The Friedrich landscape that sparks the biggest subjective and emotional response in me is his The Evening Star -- for the simple reason that it so very much resembles the landscape I currently inhabit here in western Hungary, which makes the whole "metaphysical dimension" aspect of the painting easily accessible and comprehensible.
Der Abendstern (The Evening Star) - circa 1830
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