How often do you wander into the unknown?
This Sunday’s artwork is a 10 minute Youtube video about Caspar David Friedrich’s art.
CDF was a German Romantic painter known best for his allegorical landscapes, most notably Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, which was all but ignored during his lifetime.
Wanderer was painting shortly after the Napoleonic wars, when Germany was made up of independent states. CDP wanted the country to come together as one after the war — a proto-nationalist whose work was later coopted during WW1/2. He was, like other Romantics, a proponent of liberal, anti-authoritarian and individualistic views. Very founder-chic amirite?
What are the importances of wandering into the unknown? The dangers of leaving it unexplored? Perhaps s/he is realizing that this journey may change them forever; life once through the journey will never be the same. The wanderer must nonetheless have full faith and go into that unknown.
The image pictured is of course not Wanderer, but The Sea of Ice, painted at a time when the ends of the Earth were delineated around the polar regions. Exploration was frighteningly dark.
It’s a haunting reminder of the dangers and promises of exploring life’s margins — perhaps most salient of all to the Romantics, the boundaries of the self and our place in the natural world.
Video link — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDy_d9YmIjs&t=360s
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