The Arctic Ocean

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The Arctic Ocean (Caspar David Friedrich)
The Arctic Ocean
Caspar David Friedrich , 1823-1824
Oil on canvas
96.7 x 126.9 cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle

The Sea of ​​Ice is the title of a painting by the artist Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) from 1823/1824 . It shows an arctic landscape with towering ice floes, under which a capsized sailing ship is buried on the right side, only visible with part of the stern and a broken mast. The 96.7 cm × 126.9 cm picture, painted in oil on canvas , was created during the political pre-March period and at the same time in a phase of Friedrich's life in which his artistic success faded. So will the Arctic Ocean commonly discussed as a representation of the final failure. It has been owned by the Hamburger Kunsthalle since 1905 and is one of the main works in the collection. As a result of a mix-up with another polar painting by the painter, it was called The Failed Hope until 1965 .

Image description

Caspar David Friedrichs Eismeer is a landscape format painting, clearly structured in a "two-layered pictorial space": on the one hand the jagged and restless ice landscape in the middle part and foreground, on the other hand the cold blue of the distance, in which the sea merges into a cloudy sky on a weak horizon line. In the center is a rugged ice structure, a broken ice sheet, the plates of which, pushed over and against each other to form a cliff-like mountain, point diagonally upwards. The individual panels are layered in different groups like a staircase in the main direction from right to left, appear sharp-edged and in some cases pointed like an arrow. Four front fragments lie in a counter-diagonal and thus convey a rotary movement around the central image axis.

Detail from the painting Das Eismeer

In front of the viewer, separated from the main events by the narrow strip of an icy, slightly elevated bank zone, a block of more ice floes heaped up from left to right. They are kept in dirty brown and greenish gray tones, contrasted by ocher-colored piles of snow with a flaky structure. Remnants of earth indicate an area of ​​land. On the right side of the picture, an upright yellowish plate with its bright tip connects the front area with the main zone, in which a sinking shipwreck can be discovered. It seems to have been pressed against the ice of the land region by the power of the floes and capsized. Subsequent ice sheets slide over the hull, only part of the stern, the mizzen mast , a piece of sail and some rope can be seen between the scree . To the left of the ice tower, some bare, thin tree trunks are wedged between the plates, last references to the previous vegetation .

The background is formed by the sea with icebergs floating on them , which are lost in a blue depth. At the left edge there is an ice structure that is similar in shape to the central monument, but while it is opaque and compact, the rear appears glassy and floating in the diffuse light. The sky, cold blue and streaked with foggy-gray hints, lies like a wall behind the frozen and frozen scene. Only in the middle of the upper edge does it break open with a light bank of clouds and give an idea of the depths .

Image composition: Diagonal through arrows made from blocks of ice

The front picture plane shows death and destruction, the land is buried under the eternal ice , organic nature has died, life is crushed. The high ice tablets can be seen in them like tombs, the ship as buried under slabs. The entrance to the painting is formed by the front, dark clods that lead up like steps to a monument or a stage. At the same time, they oppose themselves as a barrier, the viewer remains outside, stands elevated and looks slightly from above at the scene. In the center of the foreground, an arrow made of blocks of ice points diagonally upwards to the stranded ship. There, the mast and ice floes form a counter-diagonal, which is another arrow pointing into the broken sky. The view is directed into the distance and the unlimited background, which in contrast represents the second image level.

The diagonals create an orderly picture structure, supported by the division into an upper third by the horizon line and a center of the picture by the straight line of the bank edge parallel to the horizon. The central ice complex stands in it like a crystalline wedge. The well-proportioned lines reinforce the set-like structure and thus contribute to the tension in the picture between chaos and order. The light within the picture has a diffuse effect and becomes visible on the broken cloud cover along the central axis. However, it falls in from the outside, from the direction to the right above the viewer, so that it illuminates the dramatic foreground with its rich colors of the "objectively heavy and sharp-edged" ice mass and separates it from the luminosity of the blue in the apparent weightlessness and transparency of the distance.

Image title and provenance

As early as 1824, the year of its completion, Friedrich exhibited the painting in Prague as the ideal scene of an arctic sea, a failed ship under the piled-up ice masses, and in Dresden as The Ice Sea . Two years later it was shown in Berlin and Hamburg, this time under the title View of the Arctic Ocean . The painting remained in the artist's possession until the artist's death and was bought from the estate in 1843 by his friend Johan Christian Dahl (1788–1857) . It was in the estate register under number 101 as an ice picture. The failed North Pole expedition expelled. After Dahl's death, it was auctioned off in 1859; the associated auction catalog listed it under No. 91 as a winter landscape with large icebergs or the failed hope in the polar sea to Perris Reise . It did not find a buyer and remained the property of the son, Johann Siegwald Dahl (1827–1902). His widow sold it in 1905 to Alfred Lichtwark (1852–1914), the director at the time, for the Hamburger Kunsthalle. Under the title The Failed Hope , it became one of the most famous works in the collection.

In 1965, the art historian Wolfgang Stechow (1896–1974) proved that the title was mistaken for another polar painting by Caspar David Friedrich, a painting that was originally made in 1822 and was originally called A failed ship on Greenland's coast in delight -Moon , which has been lost since 1868. On this one too, a ship buried by ice masses stood in the center, but in contrast to the nameless wreck in the second picture it was named Hope . In the following decades there was a partial transfer of title, motif and history of origin. According to the knowledge gained, the painting in the Hamburger Kunsthalle is again called The Ice Sea , as it was exhibited in Dresden in 1824. Wolfgang Stechow's research also meant that both the background to the creation and the previously published receptions and interpretations of the image were questioned. Both paintings have been listed in Caspar David Friedrich's catalog raisonné, compiled by Helmut Börsch-Supan and Karl Wilhelm Jähnig, since 1973 .

Excursus: The failed hope

Johann Frenzel: Etching after the painting by Johann Martin von Rohden: Hermit entertains a pilgrim (around 1830)

The painter had created the first polar painting from 1822 as a commissioned work for the Dresden art patron Johann Gottlob von Quandt (1787–1859), who wanted a pair of counterparts with the motifs south and north for his private collection . The painter Johann Martin von Rohden (1778–1868) depicted “southern nature in its lush splendor” in a landscape: on the right a grotto under overgrown rocks, on the left a wide view of mountain ranges and ruins, in the center a hermit, the one Pilgrims catered for. This painting has also been lost, an illustration as an etching by Johann Gottfried Frenzel (1782–1855) has survived. Friedrich was given the task of creating a counterpart:

“The landscapist Friedrich paints a large picture for me, which is supposed to be a counterpart to Rohden's landscape. In Rohden's picture everything is united that a southern nature offers friendly and in Friedrich's, what the north shows the immense and sublime. Rugged rocks covered with snow on top, on which no poor grub can find food, enclose a bay in which storms have smashed ships and crushed them by enormous ice floes. This gray mixture of ship debris, driftwood and ice masses makes a wonderful and great effect. Friedrich managed the transparency and sea-green color of the ice surprisingly. "

- Johann von Quandt : Letter to Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld of March 4, 1822

After its completion, the picture was exhibited in the Dresden Academy, it has the dimensions 95 × 130 cm. According to the exhibition catalog, “black rock reefs on which ruptured, thawing ice floes pile up are shown. The remains of a ship on which you can read the name 'Hope' are wedged between them. ”After Quandt's death, it was auctioned from his estate in 1868 and has been considered lost ever since. Helmut Börsch-Supan evaluates this painting, against the background of the juxtaposition with an Arcadian landscape of earthly paradise, as a parable of religious conviction and “symbol of redemption through death”, but as conceptually different from the Arctic Ocean that was created two years later .

Background of the creation

The wreck in the Arctic Ocean (1798) probably did not come from Friedrich

The theme of shipwreck , which is in the tradition of landscape painting, especially here in the polar sea, was taken up by Caspar David Friedrich in the early 1820s and implemented in two pictures. He planned at least one more, but its execution is unknown. A painting, Wreck im Eismeer , 31.4 × 23.6 cm, oil on canvas, acquired in 1951 by the Hamburger Kunsthalle, was taken in 1798 and was considered the artist's youthful painting for many years. The attribution is doubted, however, and no reference to the later polar images could be established.

With the Arctic Ocean , Friedrich developed the idea of ​​the painting The Smashed Hope, completed two years earlier . The background to the creation of both paintings can be traced back to a more general discussion of the subject of shipwreck, continued as an allegory of failure in the political context of the German restoration . The North Pole expeditions , which attracted public attention at the beginning of the 19th century, as well as Friedrich's scientific and painting-technical interests in depicting the crystallization processes of water and ice, are considered specific references . While the first picture was a commissioned work with a defined task, the sea ​​of ​​ice that was created two years later is also seen against the background of the artist's personal setbacks.

Shipwreck theme

The depictions of ships and ports are considered to be important groups in Friedrich's work. The subject of shipwreck as a special form of marine painting was taken up by him relatively rarely, "but with a noticeably high artistic standard". The tradition of this topic goes back to the 16th century and initially referred to the biblical story of the distressed prophet Jonah . Famous examples are paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (around 1525 / 30–1569) from 1568/69 and Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–1678) from around 1625. The latter contains the main motif of a capsizing ship and a lifeboat in the foreground the characteristic picture elements of later versions. In the 17th century the motif design broke away from the biblical context, the shipwreck became a symbol of the extreme threat from the forces of nature. The first illustrations of the polar sea also fall during this period; Well known is the painting Ship stranded in the Arctic Ocean by Abraham Hondius (1625–1691) from the years 1676/77. The topic was continuously updated in the 18th century; here the numerous historical representations by the painter Claude Joseph Vernet (1714–1789) apply . The painting Shipwreck by the Dresden painter Johann Christian Klengel (1751–1824) from the 1770s, which Friedrich is likely to have known, also stands in this tradition .

The subject underwent a change at the beginning of the 19th century; naturalistic documentation receded; as a result of the Enlightenment , the fate of the acting people and the pictorial nature of political statements became of central importance. Various European artists attracted international attention with monumental shipwreck paintings, for example William Turner (1775–1851) with his painting The Shipwreck, exhibited in London in 1805, and in particular Théodore Géricault (1791–1824) with the work The Raft of Medusa , created in 1819 , which was discussed as a criticism of the reinstated Bourbon monarchy in France.

Caspar David Friedrich's examination of the subject of shipwreck is placed in this context of motivational and humanities and is viewed as an allegory of failure. The background is the political situation in Germany after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, in which order was to be restored according to pre-revolutionary standards. The hopes for civil rights , freedom of the press and democratic German unity , which arose during the French occupation and the wars of liberation , were dashed by the Karlsbad resolutions of 1819. The term Vormärz is a synonym for cold and ice in the political landscape and as a starting point for Friedrich to criticize the icing of the climate in political and social terms. The Arctic Ocean has become a symbol of general paralysis in Germany, it has buried the ship of the idea of ​​freedom under itself and is to be understood as a symbol of an epochal hope that was destroyed, a symbolic protest against the restoration. "In this sense, Friedrich's 'Arctic Ocean' as a landscape picture and Géricault's 'Raft of the Medusa' as a multi-figure picture stand opposite each other as two different but equal solutions to one and the same problem."

Expedition of the ships Hecla and Griper

Map of the expedition of the ships Hecla and Griper (1819–1820)
Location of HMS Hecla and Griper on September 20, 1819 . Engraved by William Westall after a drawing by FW Beechey.

The only source on the genesis of the painting Das Eismeer is a report by the philologist Carl August Böttiger (1760–1835). After visiting his studio in March 1825, he describes a "second polar picture with the griper sandwiched between staring and yawning blocks of ice (...) with all the crystalline local colors and pertinence pieces on that ice pallaste of winter as Thomson writes."

With the Griper , Böttiger refers to one of the two ships with which William Edward Parry (1790–1855) undertook a publicly acclaimed expedition to discover a north-west passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in 1819/20 . Parry describes his first polar voyage, which he undertook with the ships Hecla and Griper , in an extensive travelogue that was published in London in 1821 and a German translation appeared in 1822. In the fourth chapter, a situation on September 20, 1819 near Melville Island is shown, in which ice floes driven by a strong wind pushed the Griper against land and the sailor threatened to capsize. The ship was saved and the expedition returned to England safely, if unsuccessfully.

In addition to the report, the ship's lieutenant Frederick William Beechey (1796-1856) had made a sketch of this dangerous situation, which was transferred into an aquatint etching by the graphic artist William Westall (1781-1850) for the book edition and thus served for further illustration.

The art historian Wolfgang Stechow assumed that Caspar David Friedrich knew both the report and the engraving, had found inspiration in it for the painting Das Eismeer and continued to write. He considers the re-creation of a template to be characteristic, so that a description of the danger has become a catastrophe and a report has become a poem: “The wide ice cubes of the stab have not only caught up with the ship, but have also turned into a sharp, threatening, ruthlessly crushing giant floe . ”A fundamental analysis of Friedrich's understanding of Romanticism as the epitome of the sum of all poetic in the literal sense of the creation flows into this consideration : the landscape, also known as a composite landscape , is created in the artistic production process by composed elements and invented combinations and is thus preserved a special situation, its specific character and the possibility of meaning. Friedrich himself formulated the content of poetry in his work as a claim:

“The Mahler should not only grind what he sees in front of him, but also what he sees in himself. But if he does not see anything in himself, he also refrains from grinding what he sees in front of him. Otherwise his pictures will resemble the Spanish walls, behind which one only expects the sick and the dead. "

- Caspar David Friedrich : Statement when looking at a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists (around 1830)

The art historian Werner Sumowski and, following him, Helmut Börsch-Supan also see a fiction of the polar sea in the painting, but doubt the derivation from William Parry's book and especially the relationship to the illustration by William Westall contained therein. They show that the expedition was in the public interest even before the travelogue was published and may have inspired Friedrich. On January 25, 1821, an article about the expedition appeared in the literary conversation paper , along with others . In particular, the exhibition of a panorama by the landscape painter and mechanic Johann Carl Enslen (1792–1866) in Dresden in 1822, entitled Winter Stay of the North Pole Expedition, attracted a lot of attention and probably also the interest of Friedrich. Another panorama was exhibited in October 1823 by the theater painter Antonio Sacchetti under the title The North Pole Expedition in Prague. "So Friedrich took up a daily event, but gained a metaphysical aspect from it."

Ice studies

Caspar David Friedrich: Ice floes , three oil studies, 1821, Hamburger Kunsthalle

In addition to the polar expedition, Carl August Böttiger mentions in his report the ice pallast of winter as written by Thomson , and thus names the cycle of poems Seasons by the Scottish writer James Thomson (1700–1748) as a literary source . Central thoughts in this work are considered to pave the way for Romanticism, such as the depiction of nature in its sharp contrasts, its effect on people and the resulting feeling for nature, the search for the infinite and thus death, which becomes within reach in the seasons . Thomson's influence is described by, among others, Wolfgang Stechow and related to the entire work of Caspar David Friedrich, a concrete derivation from the stanza Winter on the painting The Ice Sea is not known.

The suggestions from reality are discussed as essential set pieces in the composition of the painting. In the winter of 1820/21, for example, the Elbe near Dresden was completely frozen, the breakup of the ice cover in January 1821 and the subsequent ice drift are considered a rare natural event, which Friedrich Gustav Carus (1789–1869) , a doctor friend and natural philosopher, wrote in his diary was insistently described:

“The force of the penetrating water on that side finally set the ice masses on this side in motion, and against the banks of the Elbberg now, serious and mighty, wide clods, like hitting, frozen sea waves flooding across the land, pushed far up. (...) Its thickness was from half to one foot, the color partly yellowish, partly a translucent greenish blue, its width from 4, 6 to 8 feet. Behind it lay the wide, firm ice cover, but in many places it had already burst, smaller clods often erected in the crevices, and soon tree branches were trapped. "

- Carl Gustav Carus

During this time Friedrich made several studies of the ice floes, some of them in oil on scraps of canvas. They testify to his interest in depicting the crystallization of water that occurred at different times and, like Carus' text, find their equivalent in the depiction of the Arctic Ocean . Particular attention is paid to a sketch with two chunks of ice that form an arrow, a detail that will later have the important function of the diagonal hint in terms of the conceptual image. The sketches are among the rarely preserved evidence of the meticulous nature studies carried out in oil paint by Friedrich and their later detailed use in the composite landscapes . As illustrative material in a lecture at the Dresden Academy on "the formation of glacier ice", they were used for some years "for apparent instruction" for students. In 1906 Alfred Lichtwark was able to acquire it for the Hamburger Kunsthalle. They are regarded as a paradigm of a view of nature, which in the small reflects the shape plan of the large:

"Observe the shape carefully, the smallest as well as the large, and do not separate the small from the large."

- Caspar David Friedrich

Another influence on the portrayal of deadly coldness and existential abandonment is seen in one of the artist's childhood trauma . At the age of twelve he broke down while ice skating; his brother Christoffer, who was one year younger, was able to save him, but drowned himself in the cracked ice.

Classification in the overall work

In 1834, after visiting Friedrich's studio, the French sculptor Pierre-Jean David d'Angers (1788–1856) described his works as poems that make you dream, and coined the phrase: “Voilà un homme qui a découvert la tragédie du paysage. ”D'Angers succinctly summed up the painter's central question about the representability of nature: from the“ penetration of natural truths ”he wanted to create a new level of spiritual statement in landscape painting that human life and suffering should be in nature become visible.

“Since man relates everything to himself, he finds himself embodied in the great crises of nature. (…) There is nothing to add to the great scenes of nature; the role is nowhere greater than when he portrays the tragedy of the landscape in itself. There is indeed a mourning moon and cries of despair and pain in formations of clouds. "

- Pierre-Jean David d'Angers : Diary entries, 1834

This embodiment is already succinctly composed in the painting The Monk by the Sea from the years 1809/1810, discussed on the one hand as an inexorable depiction of “gruesome loneliness”, but also as a new level of artistic knowledge in the sense that Friedrich took landscape painting out of status of the bare background. The years between 1818 and 1825, with a multitude of motifs and shapes, are considered to be the happiest creative period of the artist, without having deviated from his central theme. However, from the mid-1820s onwards, he was increasingly sidelined to other conceptions of art, especially realism , which did not want to burden the perception of nature with ideas, and Biedermeier , who preferred an idealization of nature. Friedrich, on the other hand, refused to play down the environment in the picture to create a pleasant landscape. "Instead, he tried to show nature in its abstract grandeur and to put it in a cosmic context with people's lives." The painting Das Eismeer from 1824 can be seen as an expression of Friedrich's radicalism, the will not to find the new one Subordinate questions to art.

In particular, from the creative period around 1824/25, some works are viewed as conceptually, motivically or thematically related. In the painting Rock Reef on the Sea Beach , which depicts the western tip of the Isle of Wight near Bournemouth , the towering pinnacles are similar to the arrangement of the ice in the polar image and also point to a breaking sky. Friedrich was not familiar with this view either from his own experience, but from reports and graphs. The Nordic Sea in the moonlight was initially named as a scene from the North Sea with a bluish distance and icebergs in the background , but was probably created as a Norwegian archipelago landscape using pencil sketches by geologist Carl Friedrich Naumann (1797–1873). A later painting on the subject of shipwreck is the sea ​​with shipwreck in the moonlight , which is constructed like a counterpart to the Arctic Ocean. In this representation, the castaways of the stranded sailor can save themselves and carry the light with them. Elements of the stony coastal landscape can be found in Friedrich's last painting, Seashore in the Moonlight from 1836. This painting, from which Friedrich, partially paralyzed after a stroke, practically wrested his strength, is considered the summa of his pictorial thinking. The limitlessness, the emptied image space, the complete symmetry and the limited color scale in dark tones illustrate the premonition of death. The proverbial silver lining just but clearly takes up the promise of the afterlife that is omnipresent in Friedrich's work .

Reviews

“The spirit of nature reveals itself to everyone differently, which is why no one is allowed to impose his teachings and rules on the other as an infallible law. Nobody is the yardstick for everyone, everyone just yardstick for himself and for the more or less related minds. "

- Caspar David Friedrich : Statement when looking at a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists (around 1830)

The painting met with incomprehension among Friedrich's contemporaries, such is a statement by the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. handed down, who doubted the representation and said, "the big ice in the north would like to look different". The picture, exhibited four times, did not find a buyer and was in principle forgotten until the artist was rediscovered at the turn of the 20th century. When Alfred Lichtwark bought it in 1905, he wrote about it in a letter: "Judging by the few works by Friedrich that I know, that is the great thing about him that he has always had new pictorial ideas." Hamburger Kunsthalle is exhibited, it has been discussed and reinterpreted many times in this sense. As a “program picture and summary of the goals and intentions of Friedrich”, it became one of the key works of the 19th century and a highlight of the collection.

The tragedy of the landscape

The painting Das Eismeer was rejected by contemporary critics . For the exhibition of the picture in Prague in 1824, the review said:

Detail from the painting Das Eismeer

“As little as death seems suitable to us as an object of fine art, we would not recommend such a completely lifeless, monotonous, dreary view of nature to a painter. (...) We consider the painting to be a study that will later be used in some kind of composition. "

- Anonymous : About the Prague Exhibition of 1824.

In the review of the Dresden art exhibition in the same year, the presentation was not understood:

“... one of which is an unfortunate shipwreck on the Arctic Ocean. I confess that I consider such objects to be outside the field of painting, what are the colors supposed to conjure up the soul into some lumps of ice? "

- Anonymous : About the art exhibition in Dresden. Literary conversations sheet, 1824

The review at the Berlin exhibition of the same year, where all the art of the year was belittled, was even more drastic:

“Art did not seem to have made any significant progress in the past year, when one of the celebrated masters made pathetic advances for novelty and strangeness as far as the rigid ice floes of the North Sea, from which the wedged ship debris chased back the eye seeking beauty and life "

- Anonymous : The Berlin art exhibition. Literary conversations sheet, 1824

The painting was on view in Hamburg on the occasion of the first exhibition of the Hamburger Kunstverein from April 13 to May 18, 1826. The critic Carl Töpfer dealt intensively with the picture and came to the conclusion that the strength of the technically experienced artist had failed because of the size of his own project:

“The thought of bringing before us that part of our planet where an eternal winter holds the impetuous waves of the sea tied up with a mighty fist, where giant ships are shattered under the force of the immense ice mountains, has something sublime, but also something terrifyingly bold. (...) But we cannot tie our imagination to a branch of a tree to think of a forest, we cannot work a wave into a sea, pieces of heaped ice do not lead us to see the Arctic Ocean. (...) the piled-up ice does not become large due to the smallness of the ship, but the ship becomes a fragmented model, small due to the size of the ice, and we imagine we can see a small part of the Oder or Elbe ice in which a courageous boy threw a miniature boat broken. "

- Carl Töpfer : First art exhibition in Hamburg. Originals from the realm of truth, art, whimsy and fantasy , 1826

The painting met with a positive response recorded in writing in 1834 after David d'Angers' studio visit, who, particularly when looking at the Arctic Ocean , shaped the expression of the tragedy of the landscape that was often quoted in connection with Friedrich's work :

“(...) an iceberg swallowed up a ship, of which only remnants can be seen. A great and terrible tragedy; no one survived. That is well considered, otherwise the attention would be divided. "

- David d'Angers : Diary entries, 1834

Despite the short tradition and the largely negative response, the statements of contemporaries echo the basic ideas that are taken up in the reviews of the 20th century. This is how reflections on the allegory of death and destruction and on the idea of ​​something sublime are continued.

Allegory of Broken Hope

Cemetery in the Snow 1826

As evident in the motif of the shipwreck and in particular in connection with the decades-long common title The failed hope , which resulted from the mix-up , the painting was viewed as a symbol of disappointment under precisely this aspect. In 1944 , the art historian Hermann Beenken describes a world "in which everything living has long since fallen victim to death and nature itself is building a grave monument from ice floes, as it were". He sees it as a parable such that death buries all hopes except for those of the resurrection. He puts it in the context of another motif of transitoriness in Friedrich's work, the images of the cemetery and grave, which testify to his constant confrontation with death. In these works, too, the viewer is drawn into an anteroom of the afterlife in this world through the formal image design . For both the cemetery pictures and the transposition of the North Sea with an icy grave, the realism in the depiction is related to the “emotional power”; the aesthetic postulate arises from the relationship between humans and the landscape. The landscape is not portrayed for its own sake, but as a testimony to human tragedy.

In particular, however, the symbolism of destroyed hope relates both to Friedrich's personal situation and to the political situation in Germany. After the violent death of his friend Gerhard von Kügelgen (1772–1820), he withdrew from social life in Dresden and was considered lonely. In 1824 he was appointed associate professor at the Dresden Academy, but he did not receive the coveted teaching license. The reason was that his painting was too gloomy to guarantee a "successful training for young artists". His political attitude as a supporter of the liberal bourgeoisie is seen as the background . The depiction of the destroyed hope in the painting Das Eismeer coincides with the disappointed withdrawal of Frederick from public life and in turn provokes incomprehension and rejection. The art historian Irma Emmrich states in 1974: "Under the oppressive German conditions, the displeasure with Friedrich's later creations was more likely due to the piercing tenacity with which an uncompromising artist defended the former ideals of his people, who were fighting for national liberation and social justice."

The art historian Helmut Börsch-Supan expands this interpretation and points out that the depiction of destruction and decline in the foreground of the picture contrasts with the aspect of eternity and transcendence in the illuminated background. Wrongly in this picture “only the horror of the polar world was seen.” The two-layered nature of the pictorial space, the depiction of the eternal ice and the dynamism of the ice floes layered to form mountains, which correspond to a gesture pointing upwards, are the clear metaphors in which the here and the hereafter is juxtaposed. In the Arctic Ocean, Friedrich increased the juxtaposition of overpowering nature and impotent human performance to a conspicuous contrast and thus created a symbolic catastrophe depiction aimed at the perception of the viewer beyond an abstract allegory, which wants to show the intangible divine greatness.

The Watzmann (1824/25)

“The eternal ice signifies the eternity of God, the failed ship the impotence and transience of man in contrast to him and the futility of rationally exploring God's nature. The picture structure and colors express solemnity and grandeur. The formation of the ice floes in the foreground is reminiscent of the steps of a temple. The viewer has to climb these steps in the imagination in order to get to the level on which the icebergs rise towards the clear sky. "

- Helmut Börsch-Supan : Caspar David Friedrich. New interpretations. Lecture on the 200th birthday of C. D. Friedrich , 1974

In this way, Börsch-Supan puts the message of the painting in the context of works such as Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer or Der Watzmann , which with forms striving towards the sky carry an expression for the divinity of nature and clear promises of the hereafter. In 2005 the Hamburger Kunsthalle honored the art-historical connection between the two paintings with an exhibition entitled Watzmann meets Eismeer .

The sublime

An enduring term for the complete works of Friedrich and especially for the painting The Ice Sea is the concept of the sublime . Already in 1822 it can be found in Johann von Quandt's description of the first polar picture, it is also used in the criticism by Carl Töpfer in 1826, Hermann Beenken takes it up in his detailed interpretation of the picture in 1944 and Helmut Börsch-Supan sat down with it in 1974 Background apart. This concept of the sublime in the history of ideas goes back to Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) and was analyzed by Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) to the effect that as long as man was a slave to his physical needs, he was affected by the The incomprehensibility of nature is brought to the limits of his imagination, but the destructive nature of nature reminds him of his own physical impotence.

“The sight of unlimited distances and incalculable heights, the vast ocean at his feet and the greater ocean above him wrest his mind from the narrow sphere of reality and the oppressive imprisonment of physical life. (…) When nature suffers violence in its beautiful organic formations (…), or when, in its grand and pathetic scenes, it exercises violence and acts as a force on people, since they only become aesthetic as an object of free contemplation can, its imitator, the visual arts, is completely free because it separates all accidental barriers from its object, and also leaves the mind of the beholder free because it only imitates appearance and not reality. But since the whole magic of the sublime and the beautiful lies only in the appearance and not in the content, art has all the advantages of nature without sharing its bonds with her. "

- Friedrich Schiller : About the sublime. 1801

The landscape paintings by Caspar David Friedrich have become the epitome of the sublime in art and the Arctic Ocean is an outstanding example. The depiction of the destructive forces of nature in a stage-like image structure, accessible and at the same time delimited by the steps of the front ice floes, can be viewed by the viewer from a slightly elevated position. It thus corresponds to the aesthetic stimulus of violent nature, which is guaranteed as long as it remains intuition and does not become a real threat to existence.

However, this classification has been questioned and controversial since the end of the 20th century, since the painting can also be understood as a criticism of philosophical theory. The art historian Johannes Grave explains in 2001 that the picture does not allow the aesthetically pleasing shiver of looking at it, but rather conveys the whole horror of hopelessness and doom. "Friedrich beats the theoreticians of the sublime with their own weapons." The artist was probably familiar with the contemporary philosophy on the sublime and the central themes in the Arctic Ocean , human confrontation with nature, death and eternity, include the sublime, but Friedrich's view does not contain it the moral meaning inherent in the term. In his artistic work, Friedrich kept to his inner images. One of the artist's pieces of advice was:

“Do you want to know what beauty is? ask the estheteers; at the table it can be of use to you. But in front of the easel you have to feel what is beautiful. "

- Caspar David Friedrich : Statement when looking at a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists (around 1830)
Detail from the painting Das Eismeer

In the opinion of the art historian Peter Rautmann, the painting Eismeer goes beyond a view of the sublime: the contrasts in the picture between the “grave field made of ice sheets” and the deserted nature in the background are present in a contradicting unity and demand a “thought art ” beyond the sensual perception “Of knowledge. In the remarks by Helmut Börsch-Supan that the picture was wrongly interpreted as a representation of the horror of the polar world, rather it is an expression of solemnity and grandeur, Rautmann sees the potential conflicts as leveled off. It is not horror or sublimity, "but both as opposition and togetherness make up the puzzling peculiarity and cutting unconditionality of the picture." The composition of the picture indicates the radical nature of an overthrow. As a free and liberal person, Friedrich rejected the political situation in Germany in the mid-1820s. At the same time, as a Christian, he was filled with the hope of redemption in eternity. In the Arctic Ocean he represents both. The characterization of death in the foreground as a zone of “purification of our passions” not only promotes our “compassionate suffering”, but also the hope for a completely new life in the sense of an “idea of ​​the north as one Land of Freedom ”. This hope is shifted into the intense blue arctic ocean and sky, inaccessible in the distance and at the same time indestructible.

"The threatening and threatening iceberg in the vicinity is transformed into a fabulous, fantastic crystal palace in the distance. (...) Friedrich, pushed to the margins of society, counters with the radical denial of the existing conditions and the dream of a completely different society."

- Peter Rautmann : Caspar David Friedrich: The sea of ​​ice. Through death to new life , 2001

Receptions

Walter Gropius: Memorial to those who fell in March

With the late appreciation, the growing importance of the painting and the extensive discussions about its content in the 20th century, the influence on various artists and their works of art is also discussed. Since the 1970s, when Friedrich's work became internationally known through major exhibitions, there has also been an increasing number of direct receptions.

  • Walter Gropius ' (1883–1969) Monument to the March Fallen is considered an indirect derivation of the cipher of the looming diagonal in the Arctic Ocean . The memorial was erected in the Weimar cemetery in 1922 in memory of the people who died when the Kapp Putsch was suppressed in 1920. This work, too, is about a representation of failure, in which at the same time emerging forms contradict defeat and point to a higher endeavor. The monument was destroyed by the National Socialists in 1936 as so-called Degenerate Art .
  • Caspar David Friedrich was adapted from the National Socialist propaganda as a painter of the native landscapes, in this sense the Arctic Ocean was interpreted as a representation of the forces of Nordic nature. But this adaptation was arbitrary and ambiguous, so it could also stand as an allegory for the heroic death in the Arctic Ocean. A reversal took place in a painting by the marine painter Claus Bergen (1885–1964) from 1941 with the title Im Kampfgebiet des Atlantik , not destruction and death are emphasized, but a submarine that shows the strength of the German Navy and its will to succeed demonstrated.
  • A relationship with the Arctic Ocean has Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) in his installation Lightning with Stag in its Glare by contained therein bronze sculpture Boothia Felix created, named after the Canadian peninsula Boothia , west of Melville Iceland and near the magnetic pole of the northern hemisphere. The failure in the ice stands for the failure of human communication. Hans Dickel refers to the metaphor of cold in Casper David Friedrichs Eismeer and the installation by Beuys on the myth of the north as a place of a natural secret, which is found in the literature of the Romantic period primarily in the poetic interpretations of magnetism and northern lights, for example in Johann Wilhelm Ritter or Novalis expressed.

“Both artists reached the limits of representability at which they have to activate the viewer's imagination in order to evoke thoughts of the unrepresentable. Instead of confirming the apparently familiar way of dealing with nature by depicting landscape painting, both of them move nature into the realm of the imagination. The relationship between man and the cosmos is represented as the relationship between the visible and the invisible. "

- Hans Dickel : Ice Age of Modernity
  • In 1997, the director Herbert Wernicke staged the Schubert opera by Maurizio Kagel from Germany at the Basel Theater and created a set for it that recreated Friedrich's sea of ​​ice from piled-up real piano grand pianos, on which the singers as characters from the Schubert songs, in particular climbed around the cycle winter travel. Friedrich's scenario served here to illustrate the resigned tendencies in contemporary music of his time, to which Kagel refers as an ensemble of German myths in his re-composition.
  • In 2005, the installation artist Marius Heckmann (born 1957) staged a performance under the title Portrait H. - The failed hope in an old city pool in Berlin. With set pieces from painting, plastic reconstruction and sound documents, he critically contrasted Friedrichs Eismeer with the cultural and aesthetic self-image of National Socialism.
  • The artist Hiroyuki Masuyama (born 1968) created a direct reception with the photomontage Das Eismeer 1823–1824 in 2007. Combined and technically processed from around 700 photographs in an LED light box , he redesigned the landscape and merged it into a visual unit. Referring back to the genesis of the painting The Arctic Ocean , instead of the shipwreck, a small wooden boat is trapped in the ice; on the horizon, a bank with urban development can be seen. The Hamburger Kunsthalle acquired this work in 2008.
  • Since May 2010 , the white sculpture Hun ligger / She lies by Berlin-based Italian artist Monica Bonvicini has been in the harbor basin of Oslo , about 60 meters in front of the opera house . The object is modeled on the piled-up ice masses of the painting, measures 17 × 16 × 12 meters and was made of steel and glass.
  • The photo artist James Casebere refers directly to Caspar David Friedrich's painting in his work Sea of ​​Ice , 2014, Archivar Pigment-Druck, Collection of Santiago Sepulveda and Gloria Cortina, Vail, CO.

literature

  • Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings , Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973, ISBN 3-7913-0053-9 (catalog raisonné)
  • Johannes Grave: Caspar David Friedrich and the theory of the sublime. Friedrich's "Sea of ​​Ice" as an answer to a central concept of contemporary aesthetics , VDG-Verlag, Weimar 2001, ISBN 3-89739-192-9
  • Werner Hofmann (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840. Art around 1800. Exhibition at the Hamburger Kunsthalle September 14 to November 3, 1974, Prestel Verlag, Munich 1974, ISBN 3-7913-0095-4 (exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the same name)
  • Werner Hofmann: Caspar David Friedrich. Natural reality and art truth. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46475-0
  • Helmut R. Leppien: Caspar David Friedrich in the Hamburger Kunsthalle , Gerd Hatje Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7757-0455-8
  • Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich. The Arctic Ocean. Through death to new life , Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2001, ISBN 3-596-10234-0 (monograph)
  • Wieland Schmied : Caspar David Friedrich , DuMont Verlag, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-8321-7207-6
  • Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich and his circle . Exhibition in the Albertinum from December 24, 1974 to February 16, 1975, VEB Verlag der Kunst, Dresden 1974, without ISBN (exhibition catalog for the exhibition of the same name)
  • Wolfgang Stechow: Caspar David Friedrich and the 'Griper' , in: Festschrift for Herbert von Eine on February 16, 1965, Gebrüder Mann Verlag, Berlin 1965, (without ISBN) pp. 241–246.
  • Norbert Wolf : Caspar David Friedrich. Taschen-Verlag, Cologne 2003, ISBN 978-3-8228-1958-6 .

Web links

Commons : Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Helmut Börsch-Supan: Caspar David Friedrich. New interpretations. Lecture on the 200th birthday of C. D. Friedrich. held on November 20, 1974 at the Pommern Foundation, Kiel 1974.
  2. ^ Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. P. 12.
  3. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. Pp. 103 and 107.
  4. Werner Hofmann (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840. Art around 1800. p. 258 f.
  5. Wolfgang Stechow: Caspar David Friedrich and the 'Griper' p. 241 ff.
  6. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 376 f .: A failed ship on Greenland's coast in the Wonne-Mond , dated 1822, (also: Failed North Pole Expedition or The Smashed Hope ) under the number 295 (BS 295); and 386 f .: Das Eismeer , dated 1823/1824, (also: Die verunlückte Nordpolexpedition or Die verunlückte Hoffnung ) with the number 311 (BS 311).
  7. ^ Johann Gottlob von Quandt to Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld of March 4, 1822; quoted from Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 176.
  8. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings , p. 376. Helmut Börsch-Supan also states that the dimensions given by Wolfgang Stechow of 101 × 147 cm are based on a conversion of Rhenish instead of Saxon feet and are not correct.
  9. David d'Angers reported: “He told me that he intended to paint another picture in which one would see an iceberg on the horizon which had crushed a ship. In the foreground, the water would be clear and transparent, and spring vegetation would be recognizable. (…) What a great idea for a picture. ”Pierre-Jean David d'Angers: Les Carnets de David d'Angers. Paris 1958, Vol. 1, p. 329; quoted from: Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. 19. Carl August Böttiger also mentions in a report from 1825 about Friedrich's polar pictures that a third one is to be painted.
  10. ^ Helmut R. Leppien: Caspar David Friedrich in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. P. 54.
  11. ^ Norbert Wolf: Caspar David Friedrich. The painter of silence. P. 73 f.
  12. a b c Siegmar Holsten: Friedrich's picture themes and the traditions. In: Werner Hofmann (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840. Art around 1800. P. 36 f.
  13. ^ Norbert Wolf: Caspar David Friedrich. The painter of silence. P. 73 f .; see also: Jens Christian Jensen: Caspar David Friedrich: Life and Work. Cologne 1974, p. 205.
  14. ^ Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. P. 34.
  15. ^ Carl August Böttiger in Artistisches Notblatt, March 1825, No. 6 p. 21; quoted from Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 106.
  16. ^ William Edward Parry: Journal of Voyage for the Discorvery of the North-West-Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific 1819 to 1820. London 1821, p. 92 f .; also as us.archive.org (PDF; 30.7 MB), accessed on March 31, 2010
  17. Wolfgang Stechow: Caspar David Friedrich and the 'Griper'. P. 244 f.
  18. Beatrice Nunold: Landscape as immersion space and sacralization of the landscape. Contributions to the 11th International Congress of the German Society for Semiotics, Frankfurt (Oder) 2006, p. 3; also online at: University Viadrina ( Memento from January 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on December 5, 2011
  19. a b c Caspar David Friedrich: Statement when looking at a collection of paintings by mostly still living and recently deceased artists. Lost script from around 1830. Quoted from: Sigrid Hinz (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich in letters and confessions. Henschel-Verlag art and society, Berlin 1968, ISBN 3-8077-0019-6
  20. Wolfgang Stechow: Caspar David Friedrich and the 'Griper'. P. 243; see also: James Thomson: The Seasons, Winter. Online version from poemhunter , accessed March 31, 2010.
  21. Carl Gustav Carus: Nine letters on landscape painting. Fleischer, Leipzig 1831, p. 206; → Nine letters about landscape painting in the Google book search
  22. Caspar David Friedrich quoted from Werner Hofmann: On the history and theory of landscape painting. In Werner Hofmann (ed.): Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840. Art around 1800. p. 10.
  23. ^ Norbert Wolf: Caspar David Friedrich. The painter of silence. Cologne 2007, p. 74.
  24. There is a man who uncovered the tragedy of the landscape. quoted from Carl Gustav Carus: Memoirs and Memories. New edition based on the two-volume original edition from 1865/66, Weimar 1966, Volume I, p. 172.
  25. ^ A b Pierre-Jean David d'Angers: Les Carnets de David d'Angers. Paris 1958, Vol. 1, p. 309; quoted from: Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. P. 9.
  26. The Monk by the Sea , 1809/10, Charlottenburg Palace Berlin, Catalog raisonné BS 168
  27. ^ A b Hans Dickel: Ice Age of Modernity. Cold as a metaphor in Caspar David Friedrich's “Sea of ​​Ice” and Joseph Beuys' installation “Lightning strike with light on deer”. P. 235 f., Quoted from: Nina Hinrichs: Das Eismeer - Caspar David Friedrich and the North. (listed as a PDF file under web links)
  28. ^ Rock reef on the sea beach 1824, Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, catalog raisonné BS 301
  29. ^ Nordic Sea in the Moonlight 1824, National Gallery Prague, Catalog raisonné BS 312
  30. ^ Sea with shipwreck in moonlight 1825–1830, Alte Nationalgalerie Berlin, catalog raisonné BS 336
  31. ^ Seaside in the moonlight 1836, Kunsthalle Hamburg, catalog raisonné BS 453
  32. ^ Helmut R. Leppien: Caspar David Friedrich in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. P. 46.
  33. ^ Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 139.
  34. ^ Alfred Lichtwark: Letters XIII. 1905, quoted from: Helmut R. Leppien: Caspar David Friedrich in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. P. 51.
  35. Norbert Wolf: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840. The painter of silence. P. 77
  36. ^ Archive for History, Statistics, Literature and Art XV, 1824, p. 377, quoted from: Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 103.
  37. ^ Literarisches Conversations-Blatt 1824, p. 821, quoted from: Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 103
  38. ^ Literarisches Conversations-Blatt 1824, p. 1121, quoted from: Scholl, Christian: Caspar David Friedrich und seine Zeit, EA Seemann Verlag, 2015, p. 103
  39. ^ Carl Töpfer, quoted from: Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. , P. 107.
  40. ^ Hermann Beenken: The nineteenth century in German art: tasks and contents. An attempt at an account , Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1944, p. 237
  41. ^ Siegmar Holsten: Friedrich's picture themes and the traditions. In: Werner Hofmann (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich 1774–1840. Art around 1800. p. 53.
  42. Irma Emmrich: Caspar David Friedrich - Time and Work. In: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich and his circle. P. 28 ff.
  43. Irma Emmrich: Caspar David Friedrich - Time and Work. In: Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Ed.): Caspar David Friedrich and his circle. P. 33.
  44. Wanderer above the sea of ​​fog. around 1817, Hamburger Kunsthalle, catalog raisonné BS 250; The Watzmann. 1824/25, Nationalgalerie Berlin, catalog raisonné BS 330
  45. Hamburger Kunsthalle archive: Watzmann meets Eismeer ( memento of January 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed May 7, 2010
  46. ^ Hermann Beenken: The nineteenth century in German art: tasks and contents. An attempt at an account , Bruckmann Verlag, Munich 1944, p. 237; Helmut Börsch-Supan, Karl Wilhelm Jähnig: Caspar David Friedrich. Paintings, prints and pictorial drawings. P. 387; see also: Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. P. 20 ff .; Norbert Wolf: Caspar David Friedrich 1774-1840. The painter of silence. P. 74; Rolf H. Johannsen: 50 classics. The most important paintings in art history. P. 162.
  47. Friedrich Schiller: About the sublime. 1801, In: Friedrich Schiller. Complete edition, Volume 19, Munich 1966, p. 215; Available online at: zeno.org: Friedrich Schiller: About the Sublime , accessed on March 31, 2010.
  48. Johannes Grave: Caspar David Friedrich and the theory of the sublime. P. 128.
  49. ^ Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. P. 14.
  50. ^ Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich: Das Eismeer. Through death to new life. Pp. 67 and 75.
  51. Werner Hofmann: Goya. The Age of Revolutions 1789-1830. Exhibition in the Hamburger Kunsthalle 1980, Prestel-Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7913-0520-4 , p. 480; on the memorial for those who fell in March see also Weimar under National Socialism , accessed on March 31, 2010.
  52. Nina Hinrichs: The Ice Sea - Caspar David Friedrich and the North. In: Nordlit. No. 23, Arctic Discurses, Tromsø 2008, pp. 131-160; listed as pdf under web links; The painting Claus Bergen: In the battle zone of the Atlantic. is protected by copyright and can be viewed under Third Reich Ruins , accessed on March 31, 2010
  53. ^ Peter Rautmann: Caspar David Friedrich. The Arctic Ocean. Through death to new life , p. 30 f.
  54. Magdalena Holzhey: In the draftsman's laboratory. Joseph Beuys and natural science . Reimer, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-496-01412-6 , p. 111
  55. ^ Christian Fluri, Iris Becher and Marianne Wackernagel: Herbert Wernicke. Director, set designer, costume designer , Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2011, ISBN 978-3-7965-2590-2
  56. ^ Homepage Marius Heckmann The failed hope , 2005 , accessed on March 30, 2010.
  57. Archive of the Hamburger Kunsthalle: Hiroyuki Masuyama ( Memento from August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) accessed on March 30, 2010
  58. James Casebere. Volatile , altertuemliches.at, accessed on March 5, 2016
This article was added to the list of excellent articles on May 11, 2010 in this version .