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Europe 1800 - 1900
Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 2
Lesson 6: GermanyFriedrich, Abbey among Oak Trees
Caspar David Friedrich, Abbey among Oak Trees, 1809 or 1810, oil on canvas, 110.4 x 171 cm (Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
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- : "new way of representing eternal issues". Perhaps those figures are entering a spiritual space? They are entering a portal of sorts, even if the actual doors are missing. Alternatively, I'm struck by the absence of enclosure. The closing (comforting) walls of the abbey are gone; we cannot take shelter within it; there is no "inside", only "outside" in a universe that seems cruel and cold. Maybe there can be no "entering" other than death! On the other hand, could the traceried window symbolize art? t's central and only quasi-material. 3:41(6 votes)
- What sorts of things were happening in the world, and particularly in Germany, at this time that could have influenced Friedrich's very sombre style?(3 votes)
- According to my Art History 102 textbook, Goethe encouraged Friedrich in college to paint landscapes, and in his early years, Friedrich saw influence from the writings and teachings of Kosegraten -- a Lutheran pastor that described the landscape as "God's Book of Nature." Divinity was found through a deep connection with pure nature.(1 vote)
- Why use Oak trees in the painting... what is Friedrich suggesting with the relationship of the Abbey and the Oak trees as the Oak trees seem to be reaching for the sky, yet deeply rooted in the earth?(3 votes)
- At time, they said that the oak trees represented an older tradition, the druidic tradition or another ancient pre-Christian tradition 1:43(2 votes)
- I was wondering about the light. Our narrators mention a sunset or sunrise. It seems to me that it is coming from our direction. And if I am correct I see it lighting the top section of the Abbey and at the same height on the oak trees.(2 votes)
- I often wonder at the presence of the monks. Are they returning to the Abbey or have they been there and been forced to watch it's destruction and deterioration?(1 vote)
- Where is this abbey located? Or is it a product from artists imagination?(1 vote)
- It imagined but based on Eldena Abbey -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldena_Abbey(1 vote)
- How long does a typical art piece such as this take to finish. It looks very very detailed and I wondered I assume it is all freehand.(1 vote)
Video transcript
DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: We're in the
Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin, and we're looking at Caspar
David Friedrich's "Abbey in the Oakwood." It is a large
painting, and it was one of a pair that included
"The Monk by the Sea." This is a very somber
image, and it really is a perfect example
of the way Friedrich used landscape in order to
represent issues of human life and of the divine. DR. BETH HARRIS: That's right. In this painting, we see
the ruins of an abbey, an old abbey, and a
procession of figures entering this ruined abbey
carrying a coffin. And so immediately we have a
sense of the passage of time, of the transience
of human existence. We're also looking at, it
seems, the dead of winter. And perhaps it's sunset. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: If you look
at the remnant of architecture that's left, you
have this-- first of all, this very forlorn sense
from the ruins themselves. But you see this
old lancet window that's fallen into disrepair. No glass remains. Then you have a real
sense of the grandeur of the original space,
but now what's left is just the futility
of human experience, the futility of human effort. DR. BETH HARRIS: And what we
see is that nature is eternal, but what man creates
is transient. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: You
have the monks themselves going through their
ancient ritual of burial. But you see that the cemetery
that surrounds them in the snow is not well tended, is
haphazard, and seems to be itself falling
into disrepair. The abbey refers back to
the medieval tradition, but that's now fallen away. Older than that
are the oak trees, which might have
represented for Friedrich the Druidic traditions, the
pre-Christian traditions. These truly ancient oaks,
gnarled and terrifying in their silhouettes,
but that speak of a tradition as
witnesses that are even older than
Christianity, and then beyond that the crescent
moon and the sky. When you were speaking, that's
the nature that I was looking at, that is permanent,
that is trans-historical, that moves beyond even the
growth and death of the trees, certainly of the architecture
of man's efforts. DR. BETH HARRIS: The moon having
a sense of the cosmos even beyond the seasons of the Earth. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER: That's right. And so you have this
sense of human time. You have this sense
of nature's time. And then you have this sense
of the time of God's space. And in fact, if there's
any optimism in this image, it is that moon. It is the faintest crescent,
and it might wane even more and become a new moon, but
then it will regenerate. And there is this
possibility for rebirth. You mentioned that it's
the dead of winter, but spring will come. And so even if it
seems quite distant now in this sort
of bleak twilight, there is the sense that
there will be renewal. DR. BETH HARRIS: So we may have
a suggestion of resurrection in the cycles of the moon. We have the crosses that
are part of the cemetery. We have the cross that forms
part of the ruin of the abbey and that suggestion
of resurrection. I think what's so
interesting about Friedrich is that he's imbuing a
landscape with this very, very serious meaning, almost
the way that in the past, people had looked
to the iconography of Christian paintings. Friedrich is looking for a
modern language with which to express these
trans-historical human feelings contemplating our
role in the universe, and trying to make sense of
all of those layers of time that you referred to before. DR. STEVEN ZUCKER:
That's exactly right. Friedrich is finding a
new way of representing these eternal issues. And it makes sense
that he would have to, because this is now the
beginning of the 19th century. Friedrich is now living
in a rational culture, and the idea of using the
iconography of the Renaissance or even of the Baroque
would feel implausible. It wouldn't make sense. And so Friedrich,
this artist who was trained in Copenhagen,
who grew up in Greifswald, which was then part of
Sweden on the southern coast of the Baltic, is looking
towards the very extreme, cold, northern landscape as
a way of expressing these ideas of the eternal.