You might also like...
The Daily Slice: Painting by the Trunk
How animals that create art can teach us about our own natural creative processes.
Daily Slice: Painting the Lost
Read how one woman’s art got buried just as she was uncovering something important.
The Daily Slice: Ode to a Painting – Wanderer above the Sea of Fog
The world is overflowing with beautiful and interesting things competing for our attention, and if you live in the real world, it’s a tall task to include appreciating the hell out of art on a daily basis. Really, who can find the time? That’s why Guy.com offers a “daily slice.” It’s a small taste of what’s going on in the world of art and design–something we find beautiful or inspiring or worthy of a peek. We’re happy to serve it up.
Painted in 1818, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer (that’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog to you and me) is perhaps Caspar David Friedrich’s most recognisable painting. Friedrich has been established as one of the leading German landscape painters to emerge from the Romantic period; his inclusion of human figures amongst vast and looming panoramas has prompted all sorts of arty types to list him as an influence, including Max Ernst, René Magritte and Mark Rothko.
The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog encapsulates the themes generally associated with Friedrich’s work; spirituality, nature, contemplation, the passage of time. His tendency towards weighty matters and the portrayal of Germanic landscapes even drove the Nazi movement to appropriate his work for patriotic propaganda. Fortunately the resulting stigma didn’t endure throughout the mid-twentieth century and Friedrich’s paintings are valued once again.
…themes generally associated with Friedrich’s work; spirituality, nature, contemplation, the passage of time.
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is a masterful depiction of nature and our philosophical contemplation of it, not to mention the rugged manliness of a lone ranger who goes hiking in what looks like his Sunday best. As far as landscape paintings go, it’s pretty damn sublime.
I like this art and this artist, and I was not familiar with either before this article. The fog and land scape are great, but for some reason the guy’s hair color makes me think of Tintin. Thanks, GUY.com! Growing up, my favorite painting in the world was of a guy in a top hat who had hiked up a volcano and set up a folding chair. It was from the 19th century and it’s in our local art museum. I’d always make sure we’d look at it whenever we went there
(http://www.clarkart.edu/)
PS Two years ago I went to a hamburger pub and they had art on the walls that was for sale. Paintings by various people, ETC. One paiting was of the prow of the ship, looking down from the rigging as it cut through choppy seas on a sunny day. Normally images of the ocean kind of freak me out, but this one was great and captured what I like most about sailing. Unfortunately next time I went the painting had been sold (and it cost several hundred dollars in the first place), and the staff was unable to identify what painting I was thinking of or who’d painted it
Now it’s a mystery and I’ll never see it again..
(it was the MADISON BREWING COMPANY pub in Bennington VT on the off chance someone reading this knows what painting I mean)
I was rereading this article the other day, and when you talked about the “inclusion of human figures amongst vast and looming panoramas” and how the artist’s favorite themes included such hits as “spirituality, nature, contemplation, the passage of time”, it reminded me of my favorite painter, David Roberts. I thought you might enjoy Roberts’ work as he deals with many of the same themes
I find the scenes of time worn ancient wonders quite moving. I love the way all the little people are just sitting around contemplating weighty issues (ke the ones described in the article), in the shadow of these vast architectural wonders
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/Kom_Ombo-David_Roberts.jpg
http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/drawing/1280×1024/David_Roberts_pg21_The_Colossi_Of_Memnon_Seen_From_The_Southwest_.jpg
http://i405.photobucket.com/albums/pp131/netmole/egyptian%20lithigraphs/temple1-1.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Statues_of_Memnon_at_Thebes_during_the_flood-David_Roberts.jpg