The Deep End

Caspar David Friedrich by Johannes Grave

The celebrated romantic landscape painter, Casper David Friedrich, is introduced by Johannes Grave in this lavish, immense, illustration adorned-monograph. On the cover the iconic Rückenfigur 'Wanderer above the Sea of Fog', stands resolute before misty mountains wild, surveying the vast expanse of a formidable and uncertain terrain, the Romantic Nature Sublime.

The opening quote from Friedrich announces a measured approach, “A painting must stand as a painting, made by human hand; not seek to disguise itself as nature". Here artist and author belay amidst disputed territory, the text hovers before a numinous cloud swept sky, and together we hasten forward into the least reassuring aspects of nature, into darkness and storms, across the wastes of the sea and desert, through the shifting physical and psychological nature of place. This book sets out to navigate the verisimilitudes of artistic representation.

Graves erudite commentary expertly guides the reader through the artistic and historical milieu of 19th Century German Romanticism, expounding upon the visual and philosophical complexities of Friedrich’s work. And visually the journey is superlative, from early teenage sketches to wonderfully atmospheric coastal and pastoral scenes where skies, saturated with light and colour, recede into misty twilights, towering mountains stretch across vast horizons, and lonely figures stand dwarfed before natures immensity.

The scholarly text and sumptuous images speak of weighty metaphysical themes, of the artist’s heroic effort to give form to the ineffable qualities of the sublime experience. And so its fitting that this book is heavy, packed with quality reproductions, as it sets out to masterfully chart the liminal realms of the romantic contemplative reverie. Its a journey I can whole heartedly recommend!

Title: Caspar David Friedrich
Author: Johannes Grave translated from the German by Fiona Elliott.
ISBN: 9783791346281
Published: 2012
Publisher: Prestel