Romanticism & the sublime

In aesthetics the category of the sublime is an important one for the representation of the
Australian landscape. It enables us to make sense of the harshness of the landscape; a menace of
nothingness that threatens death. The sublime refers to the endless desert, the white heat and
death by thirst. This conception of the sublime is very pervasive in colonial settler discourse,
where has historically been contrasted with the lovely, soft green English garden in the civilized
cities. (More here on the sublime in Australian cinema.)
In his 'A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful'
(1757) Edmund Burke equates the sublime with astonishment, fear, pain, roughness, and
obscurity and the beautiful with a set of opposite qualities (calmness, safety, smoothness, clarity,
and the like). With the romantics the sublime becomes associated with the turbulent chaos of
mountain behind mountain, rolled in confusion; dark rocky crags that impede ones way; Alpine
precipices etc:

Turner, The Passage of the St Gothard, 1804

The sublime referred to awe-inspiring works of nature such as the cataract, avalanches,
volcanoes, black jungles full of wild beasts and earthquakes. It was linked to the appalling or the
horrible that threatened to overwhelm human beings. The colonial settlers put new content into
the sublime as the awesome power of nature.

In exploring the romantic pictorial conventions in Australia Mandy Martin reworks the pictorial
convention of the sublime. It's no longer the European dark and gloomy one found in Salvator
Rosa (also here.)
The sublime in Australia is lighter and much more light filled:

Mandy Martin, Horizons of Expectation, Salvator Rosa Series 2----1999.

Major Mitchell's explorations in Queensland involved, and evoked, colonial settler dreams of
conquering the vast inland space. Settlers are emigrant with little hope of returning home. Their
narrative is one of displacement and traumatic severance from their home. They project their
expectations into the future. Mitchell's explorations were an early version of 'on the road again'
heading for the unknown. Hopefully, they will find El Dorado.
And:

Mandy Martin, Passage, Salvator Rosa Series 111-----2000.

There is little hint of the technological sublime in this romanticism. Technology has yet to join,
and supplant, nature as the source of the sublime.
When it does it becomes the sublime becomes technology out of control: a Frankenstein.

Casper david:

The visualisation and portrayal of landscape in an entirely new manner was Friedrich's key
innovation. He sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the
classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self
through the contemplation of nature. Friedrich was instrumental in transforming landscape in art
from a backdrop subordinated to human drama to a self-contained emotive subject.[47] Friedrich's
paintings commonly employed the Rckenfigura person seen from behind, contemplating the
view. The viewer is encouraged to place himself in the position of the Rckenfigur, by which
means he experiences the sublime potential of nature, understanding that the scene is as
perceived and idealised by a human.[48] Friedrich created the notion of a landscape full of
romantic feelingdie romantische Stimmungslandschaft.[49] His art details a wide range of
geographical features, such as rock coasts, forests, and mountain scenes. He often used the
landscape to express religious themes. During his time, most of the best-known paintings were
viewed as expressions of a religious mysticism.[50]

The Abbey in the Oakwood (180810). 110.4 171 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. This
painting has been described as like "a scene from a horror movie, it [forebears] all the Gothic
clichs of the late 18th and early 19th centuries".[51]
Friedrich said, "The artist should paint not only what he sees before him, but also what he sees
within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also refrain from painting
that which he sees before him. Otherwise, his pictures will be like those folding screens behind
which one expects to find only the sick or the dead."[52] Expansive skies, storms, mist, forests,
ruins and crosses bearing witness to the presence of God are frequent elements in Friedrich's
landscapes. Though death finds symbolic expression in boats that move away from shorea
Charon-like motifand in the poplar tree, it is referenced more directly in paintings like The
Abbey in the Oakwood (180810), in which monks carry a coffin past an open grave, toward a
cross, and through the portal of a church in ruins.
He was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes in which the land is rendered as stark
and dead. Friedrich's winter scenes are solemn and stillaccording to the art historian Hermann
Beenken, Friedrich painted winter scenes in which "no man has yet set his foot. The theme of
nearly all the older winter pictures had been less winter itself than life in winter. In the 16th and
17th centuries, it was thought impossible to leave out such motifs as the crowd of skaters, the
wanderer... It was Friedrich who first felt the wholly detached and distinctive features of a
natural life. Instead of many tones, he sought the one; and so, in his landscape, he subordinated
the composite chord into one single basic note".[49]

The Sea of Ice (182324), Kunsthalle Hamburg. This scene has been described as "a stunning
composition of near and distant forms in an Arctic image".[53]
Bare oak trees and tree stumps, such as those in Raven Tree (c. 1822), Man and Woman
Contemplating the Moon (c. 1833), and Willow Bush under a Setting Sun (c. 1835), are recurring
elements of Friedrich's paintings, symbolizing death.[54] Countering the sense of despair are
Friedrich's symbols for redemption: the cross and the clearing sky promise eternal life, and the
slender moon suggests hope and the growing closeness of Christ.[55] In his paintings of the sea,
anchors often appear on the shore, also indicating a spiritual hope.[56] German literature scholar
Alice Kuzniar finds in Friedrich's painting a temporalityan evocation of the passage of time
that is rarely highlighted in the visual arts.[57] For example, in The Abbey in the Oakwood, the
movement of the monks away from the open grave and toward the cross and the horizon imparts
Friedrich's message that the final destination of man's life lies beyond the grave.[58]

Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon (183035). 34 44 cm. Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
In this work, the artist depicts a couple gazing longingly at nature, in "Old German" clothes,
"scarcely different in tone or modelling from the deep dramas of nature around them".[59]
With dawn and dusk constituting prominent themes of his landscapes, Friedrich's own later years
were characterized by a growing pessimism. His work becomes darker, revealing a fearsome
monumentality. The Wreck of the Hopealso known as The Polar Sea or The Sea of Ice (1823
24)perhaps best summarizes Friedrich's ideas and aims at this point, though in such a radical
way that the painting was not well received. Completed in 1824, it depicted a grim subject, a
shipwreck in the Arctic Ocean; "the image he produced, with its grinding slabs of travertinecolored floe ice chewing up a wooden ship, goes beyond documentary into allegory: the frail
bark of human aspiration crushed by the world's immense and glacial indifference."[60]

Friedrich's written commentary on aesthetics was limited to a collection of aphorisms set down
in 1830, in which he explained the need for the artist to match natural observation with an
introspective scrutiny of his own personality. His best-known remark advises the artist to "close
your bodily eye so that you may see your picture first with the spiritual eye. Then bring to the
light of day that which you have seen in the darkness so that it may react upon others from the
outside inwards."[61] He rejected the overreaching portrayals of nature in its "totality", as found in
the work of contemporary painters like Adrian Ludwig Richter (180384) and Joseph Anton
Koch (17681839).
GOYA:

Francisco Goya, considered to be "the Father of Modern Art," began his painting career just after
the late Baroque period. In expressing his thoughts and feelings frankly, as he did, he became the
pioneer of new artistic tendencies which were to come to fruition in the 19th century. Two trends
dominated the art of his contradictory; they actually were not. Together they represented the
reaction against previous conceptions of art and the desire for a new form of expression. In order
to understand the scope of Goya's art, and to appreciate the principles which governed his
development and tremendous versatility, it is essential to realise that his work extended over a
period of more than 60 years, for he continued to draw and paint until his 82nd year.
The importance of this factor is evident between his attitude towards life in his youth, when he
accepted the world as it was quite happily, in his manhood when he began to criticise it, and in
his old age when he became embittered and disillusioned with people and society. Furthermore,
the world changed completely during his lifetime. The society, in which he had achieved a great
success disappeared during the Napoleonic war. Long before the end of the 18th century Goya
had already turned towards his new ideals and expressed them in his graphic art and in his
paintings.
As an artist, Goya was by temperament far removed from the classicals. In a few works he
approached Classical style, but in the greater part of his work the Romantic triumphed.
Born in Zaragoza, Spain, he found employment as a young teenager under the mediocre artist
Jos Luzn, from whom he learned to draw and as was customary, copied prints of several
masters.
At the age of 17 he went to Madrid. His style was influenced by two painters who were working
there. The last of the great Venetian paintersTiepolo and the rather cold and efficient neoclassical painterAntonio Raphael Mengs. In 1763 he entered a competition at the Royal
Academy of San Fernando, and failed, as he did in the year 1766. In 1770, he want to Rome and
survived by living off his works of art.
WORKS:

Goya painted the Spanish royal family, which included Charles IV of Spain and Ferdinand VII.
His themes range from merry festivals for tapestry, draft cartoons, to scenes of war and corpses.
This evolution reflects the darkening of his temper. Modern physicians suspect that the lead in
his pigments poisoned him and caused his deafness since 1792. Near the end of his life, he

became reclusive and produced frightening and obscure paintings of insanity, madness, and
fantasy. The style of these Black Paintings prefigure the expressionist movement. He often
painted himself into the foreground.

The Maja

The Nude Maja, ca. 1800

The Clothed Maja, ca. 1803

Two of Goya's best known paintings are The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda) and The Clothed
Maja (La maja vestida). They depict the same woman in the same pose, naked and clothed,
respectively. Without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was "the
first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art".[6]
The identity of the Majas are uncertain. The most popularly cited subjects are the Duchess of
Alba, with whom Goya was sometimes thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tud, mistress
of Manuel de Godoy; Godoy subsequently owned them. Neither theory has been verified, and it
remains as likely that the paintings represent an idealized composite.[7]
The paintings were never publicly exhibited during Goya's lifetime. They were owned by
Manuel de Godoy, the Prime Minister of Spain and a favorite of the Queen, Mara Luisa.[8] In
1808 all Godoy's property was seized by Ferdinand VII after his fall from power and exile, and
in 1813 the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836 to the
Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.[9]

Darker realms

Courtyard with Lunatics, 1794. Oil on tin-plated iron, 43.8 x 32.7cm

In a period of convalescence during 17931794, Goya completed a set of eleven small pictures
painted on tin; the pictures known as Fantasy and Invention mark a significant change in his art.
These paintings no longer represent the world of popular carnival, but rather a dark, dramatic
realm of fantasy and nightmare. Courtyard with Lunatics is a horrifying and imaginary vision of
loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of
mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth. In this painting, the ground, sealed
by masonry blocks and iron gate, is occupied by patients and a single warden. The patients are
variously staring, sitting, posturing, wrestling, grimacing or disciplining themselves. The top of
the picture vanishes with sunlight, emphasizing the nightmarish scene below.
This picture can be read as an indictment of the widespread punitive treatment of the insane, who
were confined with criminals, put in iron manacles, and subjected to physical punishment. And
this intention is to be taken into consideration since one of the essential goals of the
enlightenment was to reform the prisons and asylums, a subject common in the writings of
Voltaire and others. The condemnation of brutality towards prisoners (whether they were
criminals or insane) was the subject of many of Goyas later paintings.
As he completed this painting, Goya was himself undergoing a physical and mental breakdown.
It was a few weeks after the French declaration of war on Spain, and Goyas illness was
developing. A contemporary reported, the noises in his head and deafness arent improving, yet
his vision is much better and he is back in control of his balance. His symptoms may indicate a
prolonged viral encephalitis or possibly a series of miniature strokes resulting from high blood
pressure and affecting hearing and balance centers in the brain. The triad of tinnitus, episodes of
imbalance and progressive deafness is also typical of Mnire's disease. Other postmortem
diagnostic assessment points toward paranoid dementia due to unknown brain trauma (perhaps
due to the unknown illness which he reported). If this is the case, from here onwe see an

insidious assault of his faculties, manifesting as paranoid features in his paintings, culminating in
his black paintings and especially Saturn Devouring His Sons.