 |
| Caspar David Friedrich Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen 1818 oil on canvas Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland |
Infinity through a Keyhole
When we walk on a beach, the sea resembles a vast plain, sometimes disturbed by waves or storms, yet essentially horizontal. Finding ourselves on a cliff (or nowadays in a flying machine) the gaze longs to pierce that flat surface. We guess at the depths it conceals. If only we could plunge beneath it and search out the treasures submerged there.
In Friedrich's painting we discover, as do the three persons shown, a view of the the sea through a natural gap. The cliffs glow white on either side, with a fragment upraised in the center like a crystal stalagmite. Above, the prospect is enclosed by two trees that resemble a triumphal arch. They obscure the horizon of this level sea dotted with tiny sails whose destination is indeterminable. The viewer has a sense of floating high above.
Looking at Backs
Friedrich's protagonists are turned away from us. Their perspective on the scene is also ours. The woman at left looks toward the standing man at right who leans against a tree trunk and stares down on the moving boats. The third member of the group, bending low to the ground, appears to be a botanist. Three ranges of vision: medium-distance, long-distance, close-up. All three ask to be combined, none should be ignored, despite the vertigo this is bound to induce.
Unrecognized Forerunner
By his choice of subjects and his palette, Friedrich anticipated the Impressionists, in the same way and at the same time that Turner did – yet the Impressionists themselves, while familier with the British master were unaware of the German, solely for reasons of cultural politics. After France's 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, Germany came to be regarded as barbaric, artistically barren, shrouded in Wagnerian mists. Renoir's predilection for violet-colored shadows, for example, could have come direct from Friedrich, though in fact it didn't.
The overall thematic tone of the Rügen picture is profoundly Romantic, with its longing to wander, its craving for some great beyond, for a vague dream of infinity, and its ruminative undertone of mortality. In his many evocations of ruins and tombs, Friedrich allied himself with earlier Dutch landscapists like Ruisdael.
 |
| Caspar David Friedrich Chalk Cliffs on the Island of Rügen (detail) 1818 oil on canvas Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland |
To Look is To Meditate
These persons who grant us none of their attention, who lose themselves in contemplation of the fading day or the tiny boats, are meant, of course, as our own representatives. Friedrich is determined to confront the night – and face up to ruins – while striving to perceive some glimmer of light that might flash into revelation. He means for us to seize any fugitive glow that emerges from the gathering shadows, and so prolong our reflections on life and on death.
– translated and adapted from Le Musée imaginaire de Michel Butor: 105 œuvres décisives de la peinture occidentale (Paris: Flammarion, 2019)