The Big Review: Caspar David Friedrich at the Hamburger Kunsthalle
about 3 months ago (02/05/2024)
The Big Review: Caspar David Friedrich at the Hamburger Kunsthalle ★★★★★ Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search Exhibitions review The Big Review: Caspar David Friedrich at the Hamburger Kunsthalle ★★★★★ This curatorial triumph highlights the measured artificiality of the German Romantic artist who made work that still mesmerises J. S. Marcus 5 February 2024 Share Caspar David Friedrich’s Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (1818) is not just a Romantic ecstasy but a picture within a picture that uses nature to show how art is made Photo: © SIK-ISEA, Zürich/Philipp Hitz There are paintings by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840)—the ne plus ultra of German Romantic artists—that are so celebrated and widely reproduced we can see them with our eyes closed. Known for his enthralling depictions of nature in paintings such as The Sea of Ice (1824), which dramatises a forbidding Arctic shipwreck, Friedrich seems to allow the viewer to experience the sublime—not by journeying to the Arctic, or climbing a mountain, but by looking at a work of art. The challenge of staging a Friedrich show is that he almost certainly had something else in mind.