What Friedrich Can Teach Us About The Sublime

[Music] [Laughter] what is the sublime we know it's something about greatness power immensity there's something spiritual about it something transcendent some philosophers have tried to define it and to explain it many artists have successfully represented it today i don't want to compare berks and kant's definition of the sublime but i want to look at a very specific artist's representation of it we'll be looking at caspar david friedrich's paintings and what they can tell us about the sublime to do that i want to try to look for the sublime for myself in por daniel quebec where i recently moved to and the first lesson about the sublime that friedrich teaches us through his paintings is that you find it in nature most of friedrich's paintings about the sublime actually depict nature trees mountains rock formations the sky all these elements of nature will definitely outlive us they've been there for much longer than we have and will remain there for much longer than we ever will be nature's greatness isn't only about the overwhelming size of trees and mountains but also about their permanence they're pretty much eternal when you compare them to us take for example friedrich's series of two figures contemplating the moon you see these two figures completely framed by nature they are surrounded by it even immersed in it but amongst all that vegetation and these rock formations the two figures contemplate the moon the moon is great both for its massive size which can be hard for us to completely grasp but also for its relative timelessness even if all the vegetation on earth was to burn away and all humans were to disappear the moon would still be there rising and setting another depiction of the sublimity of nature can be found in friedrich's the tombs of the old heroes this painting is also known as arminius's grave arminius having led successful germanic revolts against the roman empire two thousand years ago he became a nationalist symbol in germany during the napoleonic wars of the 19th century and the two figures you see here exploring these tombs are some of napoleon's soldiers but notice how small and insignificant these men are in relation to their surroundings when most artists would get closer to the action of their characters to show what they're doing friedrich decides to zoom out to show the inconsequence of humans this choice reveals friedrich's motivations how he wants us to contemplate the almost eternal quality of nature humans are small as showed by these two figures and humans are ephemeral as showed by the tombs nature however remains the cliffs are massive as they tower over the figures and we can assume that they've been there for thousands of years also by the way the sublime isn't only found in nature it can also be human made like this tunnel here that is abandoned and i have to say it's absolutely sublime friedrich often used human-made constructions to evoke the sublime for example in abbey among oak trees or in ruined monastery of valdena near greece fault you see gigantic abandoned structures which just like nature convey the sublime in their size but also in their permanence the fact that these once strong structures turned into ruins confronts us once again with our mortality our insignificance and our effemorality so fighting the sublime in nature isn't that hard i mean you can just look at the trees look at the rocks on the ground and think to yourself people for hundreds if not thousands of years have walked here it's humbling it makes you feel small and this is the second lesson about the sublime that friedrich can teach us vastness we already spoke about the sense of immensity nature gives with for example the moon the moon or a mountain however big it is doesn't to me really depict vastness is the amount of unobstructed space you're looking at for example the sea behind me is the perfect embodiment of vastness you see an extremely large amount of space and this can be overwhelming it can be sublime friedrich depicted vastness in two of his most popular paintings which also happen to be my two favorites the monk by the sea and the wanderer above a sea of fog however these two paintings depict vastness quite differently yet very efficiently the monk by the sea shows the vastness of both the unobstructed sea and most predominantly the sky the wanderer above a sea of fog is different because it doesn't show the vastness of neither the sea or the sky but of land the landscape however doesn't have much detail in it and as the title suggests it looks more like a sea than a mountain range vastness overwhelms through scale a bit like nature does but while nature dwarfs you through huge trees or mountains vastness dwarfs your world vastness doesn't only make you think of how small you are compared to the world but how small your own world is compared to the actual world your house your workplace your grocery store they embody your world and seeing vast uncharted territories shows just how much your world is tiny and insignificant the best example of vastness is undeniably space and who hasn't contemplated space and thought we live on a tiny speck of dust in the middle of the universe and this brings us to our third and final point humans if there's one thing that friedrich can teach us about the sublime is that the sublime isn't an objective characteristic of something but the subjective experience of a viewer of someone contemplating if there's nobody to contemplate a landscape or a scene then it can't be sublime because for something to be sublime you need someone to feel overwhelmed to feel dwarfed to feel somehow powerless look at any of the paintings featured in this video and you'll see that every single one of them has at least one figure contemplating why because the sublime is an experience and if there's nobody to experience it the sublime can't exist now why do we experience the sublime well i don't think we can find the answer in friedrich's paintings you can read many philosophers on the subject but i believe what matters isn't much why we experience the sublime but why do we enjoy experiencing it what can that tell us about ourselves why do we love the feeling of being insignificant why do we love the feeling of deflating our egos why is it so important for us to leave our little busy worlds and compare it to the bigger one let me know what you think but i would argue that it's because we're feeling deeply deeply uncomfortable with the world we currently live in we need this readjustment in perspective to remind us that all this stress caused by our social situation is not all that necessary maybe the sublime helps us break free from the alienation of the modern world thank you so much for watching thank you for liking and subscribing if you have already and i'd like to thank especially you design i write kohler and every other patron for supporting the channel if you also want to support the channel check out patreon.com forward slash the canvas you

Channel: The Canvas

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Keywords: documentary, painting, analysis, meaning, explained, Art, History, Art History, The Canvas, Canvas, Artist, caspar david friedrich paintings, caspar david friedrich wanderer above the sea of fog, caspar david friedrich monk by the sea, caspar david friedrich sublime, sublime, What is the sublime, sublime art, sublime caspar david friedrich, friedrich sublime, art sublime, burke sublime, burke sublime and beautiful

Id: uU1w_tfaN_4

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 06 2021