What Friedrich Can Teach Us About The Sublime
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- Опубликовано: 18 июн 2024
- What is the Sublime? To help us figure out what it is, we can look at Caspar David Friedrich's paintings and see what they can tell us about the Sublime. From the Wanderer Above The Sea of Fog to the Monk by the Sea, the Two Men Contemplating the Moon and the Abbey in the Oakwood, find out what Friedrich's paintings say about the enigmatic Sublime.
0:00 Intro
0:46 1. Nature
4:35 2. Vastness
6:50 3. Humans
7:47 Final Thoughts
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My cousin has told me one of his most mystical experiences with the sublime, at our teens he was really doing nothing that of grandeur unlike his peers, I know that feeling as well. He said he was contemplating in committing suicide during one of his hikes but right at the top he saw the view he said it felt like he felt God’s fingertips touch him. And gladly the reason I know that story was because he never ended it right there on the mountain.
I'm glad he and you are still around. I would suggest that what he felt was not a sense of the sublime, but instead a sense of grandeur and a connection with God.
Smoke two joints in the morning smoke two joints at night
There's a room on the third floor of the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, dedicated to Friedrich. When I lived there I would go into that room and just.... sit, surrounded by these beautiful portrayals of nature dwarfing man. And when I left, one of the last things in the city I did was say goodbye to that room.
I love "feeling the sublime" exactly because it makes me feel insignificant. It gives me a sense of humility rooted from the truth, that is, that we are but a speck of dust in this vast universe limited only by our imagination.
It's like providing us a sense of truth that makes us realize that the gears that makes the world go round, such as materialism, narcissism, and hedonism to name a few is just a big circus hiding behind reality. The reality being that nobody is special and striving to force such impression on ourselves is futile, because it's not real after all.
damn
Truly agreed ♡♡ it is a great way to humble our egos and selves ♡♡
When I'm stressed or upset or just annoyed, I go for walks. When I'm outside I feel so small and my problems feel small. It's very... relieving
This channel deserves more views and subscribers
Yes it does!!!
Definitely
True
Exactly
I totally agree with that.
One-and-a-half year ago I started researching 'The Sublime' during my last year of film studies (HKU, in the Netherlands). My goal was to create a film where I would portray the concept of the Natural Sublime (The Sublime experience that can be found in nature) in such a way that the viewer could have a similar experience without physically being there. Personally I always had these experiences during long walks near the North Sea. Especially during stormy winter days. Your senses get overwhelmed in such a way that there's nothing more to think about.
The ideas of Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant brought me a lot of insights and inspiration. I was fascinated by Burke's 'Darkness', 'Vastness' and 'Power' as elements that are key for a sublime experience to occur, however I could find myself more in Kant's writing about the 'Mathematical- and the Dynamic Sublime'. Mathematical had all to do with the vastness of the surroundings; A broad horizon, deep or far reaching oceans, space. Dynamic had all to do with nature's powers; Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, windy seas.
I believe that both the mathematical and the dynamic sublime are held by the sea. Thus became my goal: Create a film in which the mathematical and dynamic sublime of the North Sea will be visualized through sound and image.
Aside from Burke's and Kant's theories I started reading the book 'The Sublime in Modern Philosophy - Aesthetics, Ethics and Nature' by Emily Brady. A very interesting read if you want to dive deeper into the concept. At some point Brady starts to discuss if art in itself actually can create sublime emotions. Most art forms - and I agree with Brady here - do not possess the key elements for the sublime. I quote: "First, most works of art simply do not possess the scale of the sublime, that is, the qualities of size and power which characterize actual sublime experiences. Their smaller size and scope means that they are limited in terms of sublime effect. This relates to the second reason: the formlessness and unbounded character of the sublime is something art has difficulty substantiating, given its various frames and forms, settings, and conventions. Third, art lacks the visceral 'wild' and 'disordered' character associate with dynamically sublime things - at least where the natural world is concerned. Fourth, artworks, on the whole, lack the capacity to evoke feelings of physical vulnerability, heightened emotions, and the expanded imagination characteristic of the sublime response. Finally, if we take into account the more metaphysical aspects of the Kantian and Romantic sublimes, art also struggles to present sublimity as such."
*Sigh*
After these words I started to believe that film as a medium itself could not be a carrier for the natural sublime experience. Not in the classic "limited" cinema way. The months that followed were actually pretty frustrating because I kept reading and reading in the hope to find new ways to overcome the problem. I (Of course) couldn't find a way and ran out of time to finish the project.
Luckily I graduated with the research I did, together with a lot of test footage and scenes that we're made during the year. I slept on the project for a while now and am feeling quite motivated to get back to it. And since there's no teacher watching over my shoulder anymore I'm able to move my own ways with this. To overcome the earlier mentioned problems I think I want to make this concept to be more of a spacious experience (leaning towards the video-art/installation side) where sound (due to its formlessness) is a bigger part of the whole. I also found peace with the fact that I will never be able to capture the sublime in the best way (would even be arrogant if I would say I could), but maybe I'll just try to put my own version of it out there and see the project as one big audiovisual research concept.
I really like your conclusion in this video and I totally agree with it. I'd like to give my two cents to add something to it: I believe we enjoy experiencing the sublime mainly due to the feeling of insignificance. This feeling of insignificance makes us believe that people don't really matter if you look to the bigger picture. Aside from making our worries and our alienation insignificant there's a lot of extra space created in which we ourselves can fill in our own meaning of life (because life is meaningless if it's up to the sublime). For a lot of people - and for me too - we can find this answer in love and being connected with others.
Experiencing the sublime with others tightens your bond with them. And I think this is something you can see physically too. Sharing a starry night sky with your loved ones, a walk in the mountains or a hug near the sea helps you to connect with them on a level that can hardly be described.
All love,
Vasco
This was a wonderful read. I'm deeply grateful I stumbled onto into and encountered a similar sentiment in your journey with the concept. The sublime is an immense and wonderful thing. Thank you for sharing.
What an amazing read , i really enjoyed that , i'm a film graduate myself and have been trying to form a concept for making a film that depicts the sublime experience for a few years now . i would like to talk to you more about your journey with that concept if you have time , i have some questions .
Friedrich's paintings remind me of the great Chinese landscape art, how they depict the human as something that is a part of nature and not separate from it.
I think you mean Japanese art. Ukiyo-e.
Look at Chinese landscape art...Both Japanese & Chinese art depicted the sublime
Those painting are not dramatic at all, very cheap.
6:08 That's a very subtle observation.
I love the feeling these paintings communicate. I think their effect is liberating. We are bound to a very narrow perspective on the world, in which we see everything around us through the lens of our fears and desires. This is not a bad thing because otherwise we could not function in the world. But on the other hand, it is nice to get a glipse of the world through a disinterested lens. In this mode, the mind can experience the universe as it truly is, infinitely vast and beautiful.
I think you are too pesimistic in your conclusion. I think the sublime, far from being an escape from an uncomfortable reality, is a reminder of the beauty that is always there. It is hidden from us because of our narrow point of view and the experience of the sublime reveals this beauty.
I've loved this disertation. Really, I think your work in this channel is deeply valuable.
Thank you so much Enka!!! I saw your other comments on other videos and they're incredibly nice! Thank you for all the nice words of encouragement, it's super appreciated :)
Realizing one's insignificance when feeling the sublime is relieving. As someone with anxiety and overachieving parents, it is reassuring that no matter what I do, it will still mean nothing the the grander scheme of things. It takes the pressure off and let's you just exist without ambition.
You're just a fat loser lol not the point of the sublime
I just finished a book that briefly connected Copernicus' Theory to a sense of self and how it regularly influences the development of the ego and the natural flow of growth and maturity. I feel like the Sublime is a definite connection in this as a unsettled feeling of being so insignificant...but also so honored, on a way, to be part of it. Who are you, small ant, to be part of this grand design? This marvelous painting? And yet you are. It's a feeling I'd never be able to describe. Happy is probably the simplest and best. 😊
The Canvas - You did a great job in this video of providing a meditative, soothing, and reflective framework toward nature and our place in it. Thank you!
This is a fantastic video, thank you so much for writing this.
I was supposed to learn about the sublime during school when I was 16. Unfortunately I ended up basically not having a teacher and having to fumble through my studies with a much more inferior internet. I completely failed the art test, but no one could explain why to me. No one would teach me. They wouldn’t even provide me with resources to teach myself.
This video appeared in my recommended and I instantly clicked. Suddenly I understand. This 9 minute video taught me more than a year of school was ever able to. And now, 15 years on from that exam, I want to go back to these paintings and enjoy them again and perhaps study the subject I so desperately wanted to as a child.
This will help me be a better artist. Thank you
Friedrich is an artist who's works instantly spoke to me.
Absolutely incredible editing and insights. I just found this channel and absolutely love it so far - keep up the wonderful work!
Couldn't agree more with your final point!
Thank you so much for this video. I recently found Friedrich's artworks and the feelings they give off fascinate me. Now I understand why.
Recantly I'm searching 'the sublime' because of my school work, and this video really helps me a lot. Your own conclusion is very impressive for me. THANK YOU
Oh wow! Love your approach. There is truth in it. Finally we find oursleves in resonance with the sublime, because our souls deepest core, the Spirit,or Atma reflects the Sublime. The eternal wide space within us. The Infinity that our spirit is. This is our true identity, and once you are there you feel so much liberated, joyous and loving. God is your deepest heart reflected in you
These paintings are so touching. I really love them.
You nailed it. 👍
Thanks!
absolutely love this, I was worried your video wouldn't do his work justice but it does. nice work man
great video. thank you for introducing me to his work
Your videos are outstanding, and beautiful. Keep up the amazing work!
Thanks for explaining this concept to me! I'd heard people discuss the sublime in such abstract terms that I always felt shut out. Keep making art accessible :)
That was amazing man tha k you for explaining my fav painting in such depths. I learned quite a lot and never knew this was what I was experiencing. Bless you!
Great video! I had never heard this term in this context. Or rather, I knew of the word, but not of its meaning.
This encapsulates my favorite style of art. This feeling of vastness. And it is something I greatly enjoy seeking in life, like when travelling.
I also experience this feeling of the sublime in big cities, like New York, or Bangkok. In particular, when watching the skyline from afar, contemplating the immense number of lives being lived in the city. And when in the thick of it - downtown Manhattan, with humongous skyscrapers towering over you, the people passing by and ignoring you.
It's a feeling of "nothing matters, but the things which you want to matter".
Of course bills do matter, even though I may dislike them lol
It also reminds me of a feeling I often had as a child. When trying to fall asleep, I would imagine myself standing in a field. Looking up into the mountains, I would see a large boulder. I could switch something in my mind, in the way I perceived this boulder, that would make it seem bigger. And when I did so, I got crazy goosebumps and butterflies in my stomach.
I think it's the same feeling I get now, when observing nature and sublime art.
I've apparently been missing out on the past 4 months of videos, slowly catching up and loving each one!
Wanderer above a sea fog is my second favourite painting of all time - it is the most incredible piece of art!
I loved your video. Friedrich is my favorite painter and that’s exactly what I love about him, the whole romantism actually. People back then thought of nature as something vastness, mysterious and beautiful but dangerous. And it can be seen in his paintings.
Also, I think his paintings not only concentrate on sublime, but the important thing also is metaphysical side of his works. Of course, paintings are really subjective and different people interpretate the same artwork differently. That’s why when I look at it, people contamplating something that’s far away and not in their reach, yet so needed and fascinating… doesn’t it look like they don’t look at overwhelming nature itself, but sacrum sphere? They, standing on a land (profanum) looking at something so mysterious but also desirable. Maybe that was sublime for Friedrich, or maybe that’s just sublime for me. As you said, it’s subjective.
Seriously amazing channel with very high quality production. Keep doing your thing, it WILL become very popular.
Amazingly neatly done! Also it was so nice to listen to your thoughts! I agree with all and appreciate that you add more to my thought bubble!
This is so beautiful.
The "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog" is my favourite painting.
Now I'm no art expert nor an artist, but what I love about the painting is that.... it reminds me of the green hills of my village, and when I see the Wanderer...I see my father.
That's so beautiful... It's my favourite painting too but for other reasons. I had the opportunity to write an essay about it in uni. I picked it cause it inspired me to start drawing again after a lot of time being in art block. It's so amazing how everyone has so many different reasons to love sth
@@marilettak6782 It really is how one art piece can convey so many emotions to so many people and how it can speak to them deep within them.
thanks for your work, it's enormous and awesome
Great video! But I tend to slightly disagree with your last statement. It's again about 'we' and 'us', but what the paintings also show - and what tends to be forgotten because it stems from the Romantic period - is how insignificant we are as an individual in comparison to nature. Its the individual temporary life versus the eternal nature, which should humble us.
This was great, thank you
heavily underrated
I give you a virtual standing ovation. Good work, thanks
This was a beautiful video
Profound. Thanks!
Thanks for the food for thought.
This channel is criminally underrated
This is one of the best channels in YT.
👏👏👏👏👏👍 great final ideas/conclusion. Lots of food for thought and a great video to introduce the romantic period in art and promote group discussions.
Great video. Thank you.
Thank you this video is awesome
this was beautiful
Thank you very much Emily!
Always wonderful.
very interesting paintings to see. there is something beautiful of being a tiny, finite creature to experience the vastness of time and space, it’s not just a horror. maybe it’s more horrifying to imagine the tribulations of your own time, your life, and fragile self as the totality of existence! the luminous spectacle of the eternal, reincarnate perfection of the moon’s disc is an awesomely daunting yet beautiful counterpoint to the imperfectable, ozymandian nature of mortal endeavors
I think you're a wonderful philosopher and I just realised I would love to discuss sublime art works, hahah :) (I am in arts and culture studies)
Goddamn, this is one of the best channels on this place. Really good content, bro. REALLY deep and valuable reflexions!
those who do not experience the sublime are typically sociopaths. if you are not willing to put yourself in the context of the greater, to be humbled by it, you are more apt to be insatiably greedy and destructive. thanks for exemplifying this concept of the sublime so well through Friedrich's art. fascinating, illuminating discourse!
If you want to experience the sublime, you should visit Greenland during the winter. It's absolutely awesome.
I adore this channel.
I like your conclusion.
The Canvas: this video is VERY INTERESTING for me!
good video man
The thing I find most difficult about the true sublime is how hard it is to keep in mind! Our tiny existence in this vast universe, for example - thinking about it is a truly mind-expanding exercise, but that huge perspective is hard to retain on a daily basis....
Interesting in Friedrich's works too, how few of them seem to evoke any fear or sense of intimidation, being overwhelmed by the vastness etc? Mostly the viewers depicted in them seem to be experiencing something peaceful or at most elegiac, where many of us may feel rather overwhelmed by how big the world us and how little we individually control it?
sometimes it's comforting to indulge in a little nihilism, to feel smoll and unimportant so your own problems seem not like the big deal anymore. Its comforting to know "i am not the end of everything and my only point to be here is to enjoy it and to be curious". Caspar David Friedrich's Paintigs also convey the fantasy of distance, the desire to be somewhere else, far away. when you look at his work, you are taken on a journey.
What an absolutely lovely, roundabout way of telling people to touch grass!
AWESOME AND POWERFUL! 🙏✝️❤️
''nature doesnt judge you, thaty why the wild is so transformative for people'' - Bear Grylls
you're so underrated.
Very interesting video essay. My 2 cents: I don't think the question "why do we enjoy the sublime" should be phrased in such an open-ended way. Because it very much depends on the way the sublime is presented to us. The pictures of Friedrich you have chosen give an enjoyable and tranquil sense of experience in no small part due to the framing of the scenes through color and form. The humans shown in the picture are integrated in the scene, even color-wise. Yes they stick out, but they feel like they belong, and so, by extension, does the viewer. But take Friedrichs "The Sea of Ice" and you get a whole other impression. Curiously, I think the best "other side of the same coin" would be the writings of H. P. Lovecraft. Lovecraft shows you the sublime, the vast and the unending as well. But through his perspective, nothing feels remotely comforting. I'd say you could shift many of Friedrichs paintings into the same mood by changing the color-pallet. (and yes I know the vid is quite old at this point, still a fun topic to discuss though).
I feel like the sublime finds me rather than the other way around. When it does it’s like the world reminding me of The True Reality. It strips away my perception of what I think reality is and presents itself clearly all at once.
I own a full sized print of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog and the man's elbow is the life light of an eye starting back at the viewer. The curling of the clouds also forms the boundary of the eye.
I am going to put a video up soon regarding a Love, Death and Robots episode called The Drowned Giant. I will outline the eyeball in that video if you can't see it. It should be a nice complimentary piece to this as it plays off tiny people in a tiny world where even death carries no significance to their project.
Look to the Latin: Sublime from Sub-Limen: Under (or just up to) the threshold. The threshold of what? The Divine? The Mystical? It is only by the evaporation of the ego that we are able, in the vary smallest part, to approach what is beyond our consciousness, beyond what our physical senses tell us about reality. This is the goal of many pragmatic philosophies be they Gnostic, Buddhist, Taoist, &c. The Sublime, rather than coming from a mystical/spiritual tradition, grew out of the meanderings of poets & writers, artists & musicians. The ego must be shed, like a snakes' skin, before one might cross that threshold.
Friedrich reminds me that remoteness(vastness according to you), what people consider as nature, devoid of civilization, is like a world without intelligence; without intelligence the remoteness has no perspective and no design, no life.
We, but not all, enjoy vast open spaces
To me, i feel like that pilgrim in the woodcut au p`elerin, flammarion. Looking behind the wall of ignorance and its selffullfilling mechanics and meeting new or old long forgotten insight, with awe
I have felt the sublime every time I have looked through free roaming gameplay of the Last of Us part 2's dystopian environment
👏🏻 👏🏻 👏🏻
I often have similar feelings when I watch astronomy videos. Humanity must shrink to its importance.
You should get yourself some wool for your next hike!
It's because it makes you feel how insignificant your problems are. Which helps you cope with them.
One of the words repeatedly put forth in this reading of a selection of CDF’s work is ‘insignificance’. I’ve not read CDF’s writings (if there are indeed any) but I’d like to propose an expanded reading that moves away from ‘insignificance’ to ‘connectedness’. That the landscape and weather vastly juxtaposes relative to the human figures in the paintings speaks not to the insignificance of these figures (and likely therefore the viewer, of humans) but of the depth we exist amidst. His figures are not suffering, they are not crushed, mangled by powerful forces of nature; rather his figures are idyllic, often marvelling, seemingly at peace (such as the Wanderer). They are not threatened, fearful, diminished by this vastness but empowered and connected. Of the works featuring ruins, we take the place of these figures. We contemplate the vastness of time, of stories, meanings..as we situate ourselves amidst the limited positions we occupy in the here and now (in parallel to the sense of being a speck of dust in a vast universe). I propose a reading not as one of suggestive of ‘insignificance’ of ourselves compared to Nature; rather one of a reminder that as we float off in Modernity (of abstract ideas, cognitive pursuits) that we can once again find ourselves if we allow ourselves to become connected at depth.
Can you experience the sublime through a painting of nature or object like a sculpture
The sublime is very much in tune with dao, zen, and buddhism. It gives me a non religious way of tapping into something eternal and meaningful, when the quenching of the everlasting human thirst - fails.
What is the name of the person making this video, I’d like to look up his other videos
And also reference him in an academic essay
If you look at all of Casper David Friedrichs landscape pictures, you would realize, that you only can see a person’s back. In school a teacher taught us, that cdf was insecure about his painting skills and didn’t believe, that he can paint humans
Well Sublime taught me that "nuuuuthin is what I got, I said remember that nuuuthin is what I got"
Being overwhelmed is a common human trait. Creating something that represents that can share this. This thing now only exists in our minds and therefore cannot be what it was originally described to be without human observation. The irony is the thing exists but only when perceived is an inherently human self-centered view. The reality we construct is technically comprehensible because we can present it and share it. Even if never fully understood we can still hold it with our insignificant, minuscule, and easily overlooked minds.
Sublime!
wow, also Nerdwriter1 did a video about this artist
hahaha dude nerdwriter steals almost all his content from other videos. He literally plagiarized most of that friedrich video from this guys video on Caspar Friedrich from 2019.
@@devinmichaelroberts9954 yeah, that was my feeling too, but I wasn't sure
Size is relative, actually I could not care less how big or small the cosmos is, I will never let that make anything important to me feel insignificant, cause I find size and scale itself just a mere curiosity of little significance...
Cosmic Horror is the Romantic notion of The Sublime, continued through an Astronomical scaling to its natural conclusion.
The 'sub' (up to) 'limen' (lintel) is mostly below the threshold of perception, but we know it when we see it, and give it 'the nod' (Latin = 'numen'), and names like 'the numinous'. It makes the hairs stand on the back of the neck, making Jacob say "mah-norah!" [Gen28v17], Norse say 'awesome/ awful!', and pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons say 'god!'
Kanye's new album art sent me here 🔥
TOMORROW
@@d9zirable IM SO HYPED BRO 🦅
When I am out in nature, I certainly don't feel insignificant, I feel like I am part of it. Perhaps people who spend too much time in boxes should get out more.
Thank you for this good video. My only suggestion for you, if I may say, would be to work on the pronounciation of the artists name, not only on C. D. Friedrich but on some other as well. It is not very difficult to find out the right way to pronounce names in their original language. I encounter this problem very often when I listen speakers from USA. It cause a bit of irritation while listening and it degrades the quality of content and presentation. I hope you take this as a constructive comment. Wish you all the best and keep making good content.
I agree with a lot of your post, but not the feeling of insignificance. I consider that it is our innate and internal subjective ability that fuels the meaning of what is sublime. Without this aspect of us, there is no sublime. This essentially means that we carry the sublime within us, as a part of us and expose it at moments of connection with an external reference of nature. That we may forget about our own sublime nature, is not to be insignificant.
what is the opposite of the sublime?
you really are a documentarian
Thank you for this seriously interesting reading of Friedrich's masterpiece.
Another interesting take by Deutsche Welle: ruclips.net/video/WfLrjBhbvAk/видео.html
Does the political dimension inherent within the work of Friedrich possibly interfere with his attempts to capture the sublime? (I'm not entirely sure it does, but I'm posting this as a potential point of discussion.) The patriotic, even nationalistic, aspect of a work such as 'The Chasseur in the Forest' seems to refer to the vastness of nature as a metaphor for the all-encompassing power of a nation, with the solitary searching figure clearly intended to represent a supposedly 'inferior' nation surrendering themselves to this greater power. The sense of the sublime in nature is most definitely present, but a closer reading of the painting reinterprets this sublimity as a representation of Franco-German hostilities, thus centering the human subject above that of the natural.
True, Friedrich was all about nationalism. But remember the context, nationalism as an alternative to feudalism.
I heavily disagree
We enjoy the sublime because it remembers our souls of god and the heavens. And that gives us hope.
Not everyone is relegious.
@@Ziad3195 That does not matter, even these people have souls.
@@apollontheintp3257?
@@Ziad3195 Well, the question if you have a soul or not is independent from what you think about it, right?
Because we are beings built to worship something, and the emotion of the sublime is the embodiment of that desire. The awe at the vastness, power and splendour of our Creator.
I know that, and you’re free to disagree, because God doesn’t force anyone to believe in him. But I am, and Friedrich was. His religion was a very important part of his world outlook and artistic philosophy, and I don’t think we can have his art without at least part of his theology as well.
...Its ALMOST Great...Looping forward
i have to disagree about your reasoning why we enjoy the sublime somewhat, seeing how we can see people enjoying the sublime in places and times that wouldn’t really call “the modern world”. that proposition seems too narrow. unless we mean the “modern world” as whatever world the person is in at that moment, that is to say to contemplate the relativity of your current circumstances whatever it is.
one of my favorite writers on the Topic is Pascal, and I think he had a novel and in some ways broader thoughts on the matter. He said that many people like to think of the immensity of things and how insignificant we are, but he goes on to say that that is only one side of the coin, and its misleading to only see that part of it, if everything is relitive, we can also be infinitely signifigant in the same measure that we are infinitely insignificant. to a flee a man is the entire world, just as the continent is the entire world to a man, and that relation goes infinitely in both directions.
i feel like this is a major point, the sublime isnt necessarily in the insignificance of ourselves, but in the RELATIVITY of ourselves.
I want to add, that these paintings have been made in a time of censorship. Napoleon had been defeated; the Congress of Vienna had restored the old borders (not all, only the longer ones), and all the dreams of freedom, equality, and fraternity, altogether with the participation of citizens in the state government had been subdued. Papers that discussed democratic principles were banned, the authors often imprisoned. By his contemporaries, his paintings were perceived as a mere wistful depiction of nature, a topic that was shared by many artists of his time in a movement that was called the 'Romantic'. But...
If you look closely, there are traces of political comments, well hidden in the picture and only visible to the informed eye. The men gazing at the moon for instance are students, wearing 'altdeutsch' clothing, ie clothing sewn in a perceived medieval tradition, 'reconstructed' from an imaginary time in which Germany wasn't split up into more than three dozen territories. A time when Germany was imagined to have been great and powerful, a time when no french emperor would have been able to overpower it just because the feudal lords couldn't even agree on how to cooperate. Actually, the treaty of the 'Deutscher Bund' (a kind of military union) fixed that for the time after 1815. But this union didn't really unify the many territories into one german nation; the inner politics of the respective states remained untouched.
Also, some of his paintings of abbey ruins (which are always towering) have a hidden meaning, too. In Huttens Grab (the tomb of Hutten, Ulrich von Hutten had been a leader of the opposition to the catholic pope in 1520) shows a man clothed in 'altdeutsch' garments, bent over a sarcophagus from which a butterlfly escapes. Above him are some gothic traceries that are actually inverted silhouettes of leaders of the contemporary liberal opposition, also putting their and even more names on the sarcophagus, together with the year in which they had been imprisoned.
Another of his paintings shows a vast sea covered in ice, that is lit by a mid day sun shining nearly from above (which is impossible in a polar region), maybe through a massive sheet of clouds. There must have been a bad weather some time before, because the thick ice has been broken up into sharp jagged blades of floes, which pile up in the center to an iceberg. To the right side, barely visible, there are the remains of a ship that has been destroyed by the ice. There are also tree trunks to the left and in the foreground that poke up from beneath the layers of ice in an precarious angle, and about to be crushed. The most colourful part of the picture is the foreground, which is not kept in blue or white as you would expect, but covered in earthy tones like ochre and red, and structured by layers that resemble a flight of stairs, or strata that you may see in a quarry. It is actually land; the ship seems to have attempted to reach it, only to find it overrun by a massive sheet of ice.
The title of the painting is 'Das Eismeer' (the polar sea), but it has often been misunderstood to be the painting of The Wreck of Hope, another of his paintings, which is lost.