Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition XIV

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840): Landscapes Of The Soul

Before Sunrise, 1830-34

Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden, 1824

The Garden Terrace, 1811-12

Evening, 1824

The Evening Star, 1830-35

Moonrise over the Sea, 1821

By intuition, Mightiest Things
Assert themselves — and not by terms —
"I'm Midnight" — need the Midnight say —
"I'm Sunrise" — Need the Majesty?

Omnipotence — had not a Tongue —
His lisp — is Lightning — and the Sun —
His Conversation — with the Sea —
"How shall you know"?
Consult your Eye!

Emily Dickinson

Musique Du Jour: Symphoniae (Spiritual Songs), Hildegard von Bingen

Six Images In Search Of An Exhibition XIII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)

Picture in Remembrance of Johann Emanuel Bremer, 1817

Griefswald in Moonlight, c. 1817

Northern Sea in the Moonlight, 1823

Swans in the Reeds by Dawn's Early Light, c. 1832

Evening Landscape with Two Men, c. 1830-35

The Nets, c. 1830-35

Art stands as the mediator between nature and humanity. The original is too great and too sublime for the multitude to grasp.

Caspar David Friedrich

Musique Du Jour: String Quartet in C sharp minor, Op.131 - Adagio, Beethoven

Eternity Cries When You Cut It In Half

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Stages of Life, c. 1835


I spin myself a cocoon; let others do the same. Time will tell what comes out of the chrysalis: a bright butterfly or a maggot.

Caspar David Friedrich

Musique du Jour: Eleni Kariandrou, Ulysses' Gaze (Soundtrack)

Addendum VII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Woman Before the Rising/Setting Sun, c. 1818


If you wish to know what beauty is, then ask the gentlemen aestheticians. It could be useful to you at the tea table, but not before the easel. There you must feel what is beautiful.

Caspar David Friedrich

Bonus Track: Robert Moran, Towers of the Moon

The Thinking Person's Icarus

Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840) - Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist, 1818

The higher we soar, the smaller we seem to those who cannot fly.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Verso VII

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Tree of Crows, 1822


'If the artist sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting what he sees before him.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Palimpsest II

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Moonlight Study, 1831


'Close your bodily eye, that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness, that its effect may work back, from without to within.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Addendum III

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Monk by the Sea, c. 1809

'Art may be a game, but it is a serious game.'

Caspar David Friedrich

Eis, Wolken Und Wasser

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Sea of Ice, 1824

Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) - Seascape (Cloudy), 1969

Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945) - Andromeda, 2001


1. 'We are standing at the edge of all the religions which have sprung from Catholicism. The abstractions are declining, everything is airier and lighter than that which has gone before. Everything strives towards landscape, searches for something certain in this uncertainty and does not know how to being. Those who reach back for history are wrong and only confuse themselves. Is then this new art - Landschafterey, if you want to call it that - not capable of reaching a pinnacle which will be even more beautiful than that of the previous art?'

2. 'When above me the sky swarms with with countless stars the wind blusters through the wide space, the wave breaks roaring in the wide night, over the forest the atmosphere reddens, and the sun lights up the world; the valley steams, and I throw myself on the grass sparkling with dewdrops. Every leaf and every blade of grass swarms with life, the earth is alive and stirs beneath me, everything rings in one chord, then the soul rejoices and flies in the immeasurable space around me. There is no up and no down any more, no time, no beginning and no end . . .'

3. 'This perception of the relationship of the whole universe to us; this joyful delight in the most intimate, vivid spirit in our soul; this unifying harmony, which in its buoyancy touches every string in our heart . . . We hold fast to the consummation of these feelings and in this way certain thoughts arise in us.

We express these thoughts in words, tones, or pictures and thus inspire the same feelings in the hearts of men near us.'

4. 'His work should not be for himself and his friends simply a picture, not merely a work of art, but rather should transmit the experience of nature, its processes and laws.'

5. 'The preset situation would lead much more towards the arabesque and hieroglyphs; and it is only from these that landscape must come forth - even as historical compositions also came from them . . .

It is necessary for one who wishes to express a magnificent concept through symbols and hieroglyphs, particularly if one desires to make such expressions public, that one considers the hieroglyphics as mere words which have been understood for some time and that they should be used in a new way, much like a musician who plays his instrument without being conscious of how he holds it. But if one tries to enjoy every individual aspect of the work and explain each note to others, then he will block himself off from the vital energy of the picture.'

Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810)

Spare And Sentimental Geometries Of Feeling

Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) - On the Sailing Boat, 1818-19

'Love is space and time measured by the heart.'

Marcel Proust

Cathedrals In The Air

Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781 - 1841) - Cathedral Towering Over A Town, 1813

Casper David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Ruins at Eldena, c. 1825

'We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.'

Novalis (Baron Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg)

Nature's Unimpeachable Arc

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Moonrise Over The Sea, 1821


To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats

Leprosy Of The Soul

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - The Chasseur in the Forest, 1813


'Let us frankly admit it - for us, the landscape is a stranger and one is frightfully alone among the trees that bloom and the brooks that flow past us. Being alone with a dead person, one feels far and away not so abandoned as being alone with trees. For as mysterious as death may seem, even more mysterious is a life that is not our life, that does not participate in our life and, without giving any notice to us, celebrates its own festivities, which we observe with a certain embarrassment, like guests who have arrived by accident and speak another language.'

Rainer Maria Rilke

Nightfall In The Forest Of Philosophy

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - Evening, 1820-1


'An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.'

Albert Camus

The Heart Is A Lonely Punter

Caspar David Friedrich (1770-1840) - Man and Woman Contemplate the Moon, c. 1824


'We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.'

Orson Welles

At The Crossroads Of Art And Philosophy

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) - A Walk at Dusk, c. 1830-35


'We have art in order not to die of truth.'

Friedrich Nietzsche

'The philosopher creates, he doesn't reflect.'

Gilles Deleuze

'Happiness belongs to those who are sufficient unto themselves. For all external sources of happiness and pleasure are, by their very nature, highly uncertain, precarious, ephemeral and subject to chance. '

Arthur Schopenhauer

Can You Say What I'm Seeing?

Caspar David Friedrich - The Abbey in the Oakwood (1809-10)

This and many other images by Friedrich can be accessed at: http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

'Ideas are refined and multiplied in the commerce of minds. In their splendour, images effect a very simple communion of souls.'

Gaston Bachelard