Romanticism: Caspar David Friedrich and the Sublime Ruin

See images:

‘The Polar Sea’. 1824. Oil on canvas

‘Ruins in the Riesengebirge’, 1830-4. Oil on canvas

Continuing considering connections between Romanticism and ideas of the sublime with my own approach to ruins at Skaw.

One of the most well-known Romantics, his works are synonymous with a grand vision of the sublime in nature. Simon Morley in his essay ‘The Friedrich Factor’ (Contemporary Visual Arts 19, 1998) describes how he “…pictures the liminal state - the individual poised on the boundary between finite and infinite…”. Morley goes on to define the sublime:

“…of being placed at the boundary of consciousness, far from the security of the ordinary and utilitarian world…in experiencing a [sublime] work of art one is brought to the limits of the self and made to look into the beyond”.

These ideas of limits of self-hood can be seen in ‘The Polar Sea’ (top) which depicts the dramatic wrecking of a ship in frozen sea. What first strikes the eye however is the ice itself. Its colossal shapes slice through the composition, their awe-inspiring size dwarfing the wrecked ship on the right. Friedrich has used a very subdued colour pallet of blues greys and yellows, but this misty ethereal colours only add to a sense of the visionary and the sublime. With little sense of time of day and non of the features usually seen in images of landscape (land, trees, rocks and mountains) this is an other-worldly, outside-of-time place. In this world there is only ice, its destructive yet compelling power revealing nature’s ultimate sublime authority.

‘Eldena Ruin’ shows the grand remains of an abbey, bringing to mind the grandeur and complexity of Piranesi’s ‘Grotteschi’. There’s a sense of the huge scale of the ruins in the clear, upward reaching lines of the architecture ascending through tangles of leaves, despite the “downward dragging” (Simmel, ‘The Ruin’) forces of nature - here the struggle between human spirit and nature’s decay can still be seen.

The final image of ruins here is silent, still and tranquil. Friedrich has used warm colour throughout to evoke the soft light of dawn. This subtly eerie vision has many similarities with the picturesque visions of Claude Lorraine - here also the ruin and its connotations of the conflict between man and nature pose little sense of threat. The ‘sublime’ here is tranquil and serene.

“The Abbey in the Oak-Wood”. 1809-10

“A Walk in the Mountains / A Walk at Dusk”.

“Ruins of the Oybin Monastry (The Dreamer)”. 1835-40.

Here ‘The Abbey…’ shows a barren tortured landscape, the Gothic ruin surrounded by contorted figure-like trees clawing the sky - very different from the picturesque ruins of Eldena in my last post. In the foreground, a funeral procession makes its solemn progress whilst a newly dug grave can seen in the barren earth. There is a complete absence of colour apart from the sinister tone of brown/greys across the whole painting - we are faced with a desolate vision of the ruin.

In my research into Romanticism and the sublime so far its becoming clear that a key aspect of the sublime was not only to contemplate the outer forces of nature (both beautiful as in Friedrich’s ‘Eldena Ruin’, and terrifying as in ‘The Abbey…’, pictured above), but also to contemplate the self. In ‘A Walk in the Mountains’, Friedrich paints an alone, melancholy figure (walking near a megalithic tomb, known as a ‘dolmen’). With a bowed head, he seems to contemplate his own place in time next to this ancient reminder of mortality. An experience of the sublime ruin is also something through which we can contemplate, in Simon Morley’s words “…the limits of the self” (see ‘The Friedrich Factor’, Contemporary Visual Arts 19, 1998) . Continuing this, we see in ‘The Dreamer’ a lone, heroic male figure, posed in the window of the ruin, looking out onto visionary nature beyond, contemplating the beauty and the sublimity from the serene, picturesque atmosphere of the ruin. Although the ruin leads the viewer to feel mortality and the “…downward dragging forces of nature” (Georg Simmel), it is also strangely empowering. As Morley goes on to discuss, Friedrich and other Romantics through their depictions of ruins led the viewer to the edge of themselves - just for a moment, drawing on ideas of utopian aspiration:

“It signals a universal desire to escape the linearity and finitude of history, to escape time and place, to transcend to limits of self-hood”.

However, in the wars of the 20th century, the notions of idealogical and ‘utopian’ took on much more disastrous and sinister meanings. Morley:

“…because German [i.e. German Romantic] idealism pointed to a linear directionality to history - through which man was seen as climbing ever nearer to union with pure spirit - this secularisation led to the emergence of political utopian movements like Fascism and Communism…Friedrich was one of Hitler’s favourite artists…”.

‘The Dreamer’ of Friedrich’s work, in his contemplation, feels himself at the limits of his self-hood, on the limits of transcendence - and so is able to sense his own power, almost able to assert his will and spirit over all nature and its forces of decay and mortality. These thoughts on the Romantic sublime are key in my own work with the site of Skaw I think. At Skaw lay relics of a war caused by utopian aspiration. In contemplating these in their ruinous state, sublime yet sinister, you also contemplate notions of aspirational progress, where, in our constant striving for the future, we are led to see time as linear, leading to one truth, a single perfect state, a single almost divine utopia ideal.

Aimee LabourneSeptember 9, 2014