Caspar David Friedrich (1774 1840), the greatest painter of the Romantic movement in Germany, was perhaps Europe's first truly modern artist. His melancholy landscapes, often peopled by lonely wanderers, represent experiments towards a radically subjective art, one in which, as Friedrich wrote, the painter depicts not what he sees before him, but what he sees within him. Yet in their awesome power to capture the individuality of visible forms Friedrich's pictures also accept and express the irredeemable otherness of Nature. Winner of the 1992 Mitchell Prize for the History of Art, this compelling and highly original book is now made available in a compact pocket format. Beautifully illustrated, "Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape" is the most comprehensive account ever published in English on this most fascinating of nineteenth-century masters.
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'There's a haunting coda to Koerner's scholarly analysis of the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich, and his place in art history . . . This has many reproductions more true to Friedrich's winter colouring than I've seen before.' --The Guardian
`Provides insights not only into the nature of Friedrich's art, but also into the whole predicament of art in the early nineteenth century . . . It is a book that should be read by all who have an interest in the art of the period' --Burlington Magazine
`This is a model of interpretative art history, taking in a good deal of German Romantic philosophy, but founded always on the immediate experience of the picture . . . It is rare to find a scholar so obviously in sympathy with his subject'
--The Independent
'This masterly book on what must be one of the most clear and deliberate - and thus most intelligible - bodies of work to have been produced ... is impressively contextual, as well as being minutely forensic . . . Koerner uses the pictures to think about subjectivity and the self in a very twentieth-century way' --TLS
`One of the best books about the work of a single artist that I have read for a long, long time. It seems to me to have everything'
--Frank Whitford, Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
`Provides insights not only into the nature of Friedrich's art, but also into the whole predicament of art in the early nineteenth century . . . It is a book that should be read by all who have an interest in the art of the period' --Burlington Magazine
`This is a model of interpretative art history, taking in a good deal of German Romantic philosophy, but founded always on the immediate experience of the picture . . . It is rare to find a scholar so obviously in sympathy with his subject'
--The Independent
'This masterly book on what must be one of the most clear and deliberate - and thus most intelligible - bodies of work to have been produced ... is impressively contextual, as well as being minutely forensic . . . Koerner uses the pictures to think about subjectivity and the self in a very twentieth-century way' --TLS
`One of the best books about the work of a single artist that I have read for a long, long time. It seems to me to have everything'
--Frank Whitford, Kaleidoscope, BBC Radio 4 --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
About the Author
Joseph Leo Koerner is Victor S. Thomas Professor of History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University. His books include The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (1993) and Reformation of the Image (Reaktion, 2004).
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 14 people found the following review helpful
By David Levy
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I've read a lot of art history, but I don't think I've ever encountered anything so congested and opaque, or so apparently dismissive of biography or practical context. I'm obviously in a minority; the reviews seemed to have raved. The reproductions are profuse and beautiful, so it's not without virtue, but I was surprised that there were almost no sentences I understood, even after multiple re-readings. Try this, pretty well at random:
Runge stages this transformation within a fiction of artistic origination, that is, the genesis of history painting from nature drawing, only to overturn its temporality and therefore its implicit hierarchy.
I clearly don't understand, never mind appreciate this `model of interpretative art history'. Is landscape art conceptually that difficult? The classicists gave it a lowly placing in the hierarchy of artistic endeavours; nobody thought very much of those gloomy Dutch landscapes until recently. Malcolm Andrews in Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art, 1999) didn't feel the need to make it quite so troubled. We've clearly missed something that Mr Koerner knows, but perhaps what he knows is so darned clever that he can't convey it to a reasonably intelligent reader. He may therefore have thrown out the historical baby with the philosophical bathwater. An odd purple paragraph is the prerogative of a Harvard Arts Professor, but nearly 300 pages of it? Weird.
Runge stages this transformation within a fiction of artistic origination, that is, the genesis of history painting from nature drawing, only to overturn its temporality and therefore its implicit hierarchy.
I clearly don't understand, never mind appreciate this `model of interpretative art history'. Is landscape art conceptually that difficult? The classicists gave it a lowly placing in the hierarchy of artistic endeavours; nobody thought very much of those gloomy Dutch landscapes until recently. Malcolm Andrews in Landscape and Western Art (Oxford History of Art, 1999) didn't feel the need to make it quite so troubled. We've clearly missed something that Mr Koerner knows, but perhaps what he knows is so darned clever that he can't convey it to a reasonably intelligent reader. He may therefore have thrown out the historical baby with the philosophical bathwater. An odd purple paragraph is the prerogative of a Harvard Arts Professor, but nearly 300 pages of it? Weird.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.5 out of 5 stars
2 reviews
41 of 41 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Portrait of the Invisible
3 Sep 2001
By "moe_d_anglais"
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
Koerner has written a philosophical masterpiece in the form of an art book. Caspar David Friedrich is one of the most complex and thought-provoking of nineteenth-century artists, whose whose exploration of perception shows up in his most mundane paintings as well as his most grandiose.
Koerner shows us how even a painting of something as simple as a bushy thicket in the snow contains many subtle contradictions and complexities that baffle the eye as we examine it more closely. The apparent simplicity and underlying intensity of many of his works is similar to that of Edward Hopper, on whom he seems to have been a major influence (and this book bears comparison with Kranzfelder's "Hopper").
Friedrich specialized in painting the human figure seen from behind (rueckenfigur), and this ties in with sense of nostalgia that is a major component of his art. A really notable example of this is "Abbey Graveyard under Snow", a painting of a ruined mediaeval monastery with a spectral procession of monks from a bygone age; this painting was destroyed by bombing in 1945 and exists only in reproduction - a ghostly painting of ghosts.
Koerner's dense prose is heavy going, but well worth the effort because it contains so much; the author evidently has a thorough grounding in philosophy as well as a great sympathy for his subject.
The last chapter is entitled "deja vu", and this sums up one of the main feelings aroused by this art. The last sentence is worth quoting:
"And it arrests you on the Dresden heath, before the thicket in winter, when what you thought were just alders in the snow are fragments of your darkest history".
Koerner shows us how even a painting of something as simple as a bushy thicket in the snow contains many subtle contradictions and complexities that baffle the eye as we examine it more closely. The apparent simplicity and underlying intensity of many of his works is similar to that of Edward Hopper, on whom he seems to have been a major influence (and this book bears comparison with Kranzfelder's "Hopper").
Friedrich specialized in painting the human figure seen from behind (rueckenfigur), and this ties in with sense of nostalgia that is a major component of his art. A really notable example of this is "Abbey Graveyard under Snow", a painting of a ruined mediaeval monastery with a spectral procession of monks from a bygone age; this painting was destroyed by bombing in 1945 and exists only in reproduction - a ghostly painting of ghosts.
Koerner's dense prose is heavy going, but well worth the effort because it contains so much; the author evidently has a thorough grounding in philosophy as well as a great sympathy for his subject.
The last chapter is entitled "deja vu", and this sums up one of the main feelings aroused by this art. The last sentence is worth quoting:
"And it arrests you on the Dresden heath, before the thicket in winter, when what you thought were just alders in the snow are fragments of your darkest history".
3 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best book so far
26 May 2010
By Brad Teare
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The best reproduction in this book is on the cover, Large Enclosure, one of Friedrich's finest paintings. The interior illustrations tend to be small on the page. There are 64 color illustrations most of which are quite small at 6.25" x 4.5" on an 11" x 8.5" page. The text is readable and gives quite a lot of background information. There are black and white reproductions sprinkled throughout which convey an idea of Friedrich's compositions and use of values.
I am still looking for the definitive book of Friedrich's paintings so until then this book will have to do.
I am still looking for the definitive book of Friedrich's paintings so until then this book will have to do.
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4.5 out of 5 stars
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