Analysis of The Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog (1818) by Caspar David Friedrich

Introduction

The painter of The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Caspar David Friedrich was a landscape painter of the 19th century- German Romantic Movement, he was considered as the Hilter's favorite artist and the most important painter of that era. Friedrich was famous for a symbolic landscape that represented a contemplative figure silhouetted against morning mists, night skies, barren trees, and Gothic ruins. Since much artwork at his time was used for entertainment purpose, he employed nature as his major theme that made his art to be too careful, too precise, too finely detailed to permit close critical attention. However, over the last few decades, though the shift of opinion, currently, it generally acknowledged that his work created mood: reverence, melancholy, longing, or some of these. The Wanderer above the Sea of fog is a perfect illustration, in this landscape; Friedrich captures the overwhelming vastness of the traditional world and, by comparison, the smallness of the human being who experiences it. Hence, Friedrich's through The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog paintings demonstrate his intention of promoting a reflective state, arising out of the idea and spirit of the artist and communicated to the observer as an object for scrutiny.

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Caspar in The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog places the wandering theme of the painting as a medium of intervening which stands amidst of observers and the sublime mountain landscape under speculation. A viewer is a man wearing a long dark - colored jacket, holding a stick in his right hand, standing in an equilibrium posture on the unbalanced surface of the rocks, which rise above the uttermost noticeable through foggy mass surrounding the most significant portion of the landscape. However, the viewers are denied the opportunity to the face of the figure, making the tone to be questionable. In other Friedrich's work, the general Romantic ideal, it appears fitting to the notion that this wanderer stands in amazement of the mysterious nature before him. Upon the rock, which the man is, stand on; the light seems to be coming beneath it, somehow enlightening the fog. Further, the rock the mysterious figure stands on remains mostly in outline form, while some feature is observable at the pick near the feet of the character.

The forefront section of the painting seems as different plane isolated from the rest of the landscape, appearing nearly as if it were a cut- out mounted in the foreground of a simple representation of a withdrawn mountain. Distancing the figure and rock at the focus from the dark mountainous background is unclear and undifferentiated. Moreover, not only the fog disrupts the viewers but also the man on the paint, that mention the existing problematic relationship between the confines of a human viewpoint and the natural massiveness being defied. Therefore, this nature of the landscape that provokes the feeling of the sublime among the viewers as Immanuel Kant "the ends of our power of judgments" explains it and in this way, represents a form of "violence" against our imagination (Kant, 76). The human judgment remains insufficient when challenged with the illimitable experience presented by a natural world upon which they tend to communicate only a section. Friedrich antagonize this human shortcoming through embracing the abstract emptiness, making it perceptible the absence, which persists yonder the perspectives of human being, utilizes to define their world.

Moreover, the overlook of the sea fog rather vividly confronts the ultimate of the human power of judgment. Placed a short distance behind the figure, makes the observers of the paintings literally above the ends of such decisions. On the other words, the wanderer plays the role of allowing the viewers to experience this great divide on the ferocious level of the imagination, visualizing themselves challenging these limits through the power of a medium that is employed to bridge the gap. By the fact that, the figure stands in meditation and self -reflection, enthralled by the haze of the sea fog as if it were a religious and spiritual experience rather than a faithful representation of water, air rocks, and trees which was the assumed role of an artist. However, Friedrich used this landscape to give the subject a chance to reflect upon the soul and emotion. Consequently, he wrote that 'The artist' "should not only paint what he sees before him but also what he sees within him." Hence, he gave these directions to would-be artists, "Close your bodily eye so that you see your picture first with your spiritual eye. Then bring what you saw in the dark into the light, so that it may affect others, shining inwards from outside" (Ritcher 1985).

A figure such as this viewed from the back; designate a contemporary modified of the old-style in European painting. Friedrich's frequent use of the so-called Ruckenfigur, which Calhoon (638) suggest that it means a conspicuously placed figure entirely exposed from the back. Ruckenfigur was a powerful commentary on the Romantic experience of art and nature; spread across Friedrich's several representations of the land are a range of such figure, incorporating several definite or assumed self-representations, that acts as a visual substitute for the viewers of the image (Friedrich, N.d). Hence, viewers look at the present of figure/ Ruckenfigur as a means of determining the general scale, mainly when associating their physical bodies with the spatial boundaries of the painted world. Besides, it ability to act as a placeholder allow the viewers a virtual existence in the landscape through imagination, whereas influencing their lines of sight within the model of the spatial. Furthermore, the relationship between viewers and the figure generates a visual and theoretical distance by enabling the viewer to be part of the painting even at is absolute absence, the character acting as the observer displaced self.

Conversely, for the observers to be part of the presented world, it requires them to be actively involved in the experience of the paint. Haladyn (53) point out that, the problem is that the figure is made to stand not "at the threshold where the scene opens up but at the point of exclusion, where the world stands completely without me." While the moving figure provides a significant location concerning the visions of the world, their presences at once inspire and disallows observers' opportunity to exemplify such position. The standing figure is a personification of humanity's abstraction from the world, which illogically is portrayed to be at a distance from behind this wandering subject.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Friedrich had a distinctive style in his painting; The Wanderer Above the Sea of fog that enabled him to transform landscapes from a mere image that represents elements of nature are to illustrate limitation nature poses to the human world. Hence, through The Wanderer Above the Sea of fog , Friedrich suited ideally with the traits of Romanticism as he expresses the love of nature, subjectivity, and, spirituality. Nonetheless, such a great work of Fredrick faces corrosion as Romanticism is being replaced with modern ideas.

Works Cited

Calhoon, Kenneth Scott. "FW Murnau, CD Friedrich, and the Conceit of the Absent Spectator." Mln 120.3 (2005): 633-653

Friedrich, Caspar David. "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog." German History Docs (1818).

Haladyn, Julian. "Friedrich's Wanderer: Paradox of the Modern Subject." RACAR: revue d'art canadienne/Canadian Art Review 41.1 (2016): 47-61..

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Mere- dith (Oxford, 2007), 76.

Richter, Gerhard, et al. The daily practice of painting: writings and interviews, 1962-1993. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995