Writing About Pictures: Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape by Joseph Leo Koerner (1990)

^click on image for clearer view.

Art historians (and others) consider the opening chapters of Joseph Leo Koerner’s book “Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape” to contain some of the best examples of formal description in all of art-historical writing. Koerner’s painstakingly detailed and yet lyrical formal descriptions of a few paintings and sketches provide the basis for his larger argument. Koerner shows how formal elements in the painting hold their own as evidence equal to historical and philosophical evidence gathered from written texts.

You should read these chapters slowly, while looking carefully at the images. Reading an essay is not a scavenger hunt to be attended to with repetitive swipes of the yellow highlighter, marking off ground already searched as you look for answers to questions. Neither are you looking for a dead body in the woods. Instead, you are looking at the forest itself – to see how the various forms in the forest co-exist and commingle and overlap. You are looking at an ecosystem in which all parts both comprise, and exist within, the whole.

Leave your 200 (or more) word response in the "Comments" section, (accompanied by enough of your name to identify yourself to me (by checking the box marked "Name/URL")) before 12:30pm next Thursday, 3 September 2009. No late blog entries will be accepted.
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Questions:

1. What, according to Koerner's argument is the "Subject of Landscape"?

2. Does he answer this question explicitly anywhere in the essay?

3. Cite a sentence / passage where Koerner SHOWS the relationship between the subject and landscape using a painting or drawing etc..

4. What one specific question did you wish to have answered after reading this article?
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N.b. I will post images from the Koerner article as .jpgs, on bSpace under the "Resources" tab. These images, some of which are in color, this will aid you in your looking, thinking, and writing.

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Jonathan Chun said...: Koerner argues that the “Subject of Landscape”, as mentioned explicitly in the final paragraph, is “always only almost visible”. Furthermore he contends that it is this quality, which then turns the focus of the landscape to the viewer and our location in relation to the image. Ultimately then we, the viewer including our notions of the import of the image, are the subject of landscape.

In the first paragraph of Chapter 2 beginning with “Yet stationed at the center…” Koerner illustrates the relationship between the subject and the landscape by describing how an we the viewer hope for an interior representing shelter from a harsh nature upon seeing the possibility of an entrance to the hovel. This agrees with his explicit statement about how the almost visible subject of lanscape, in this case the possible interior reveals our own subjectivity the desire for refuge.

I wanted to know what is the meaning of the “dissolution” as used when Kroeber refers to it several times in Chapter 2? My best guess is that dissolution here means a gradual fading of the hovel, as if bits of it were disappearing into the background. Maybe if we could get an image of Hut in the Snow the definition would be more apparent?; August 29, 2009 7:34 PM
Camille Roque said...: According to Joseph Leo Koerner in "The Subject of Landscape", the true subject of Caspar David Friedrich's landscape paintings could be anything that the viewer sees. In Friedrich's writings about his own work, he says that his landscapes would relate back to religion. This might seem relevant when one sees subtle objects such as a church in the foggy distance of "Winter Landscape with Church". However, Koerner states that the subject of Friedrich's landscapes could all depend on the viewer's subjectivity and what they see in the landscape; thus their views and thoughts may not always relate to religion. Koerner explains his point when he states, "The subject of landscape, what Friedrich's canvases are finally about, remains always only almost visible...[such as] the fog that wraps the Church's base [in "Winter Landscape with Church" and] the mute firs that conceal their symbolic significance. [T]hese often function to turn the landscape back on the vewier, to locate us in our subjectivity as landscape painting's true point of reference" (20). Koerner believes in the individual's ability to capture their own ideas about the landscape they see in front of them. This gives rise to the question if Koerner believes this because he is unreligious himself.; September 2, 2009 7:28 PM
Wenwan Li (Yunica) said...: According to Koerner's argument, I think the "Subject of Landscape" is the viewer’s experience. I could not find the place where the author answers what the “Subject of Landscape” is explicitly in the essay. But when he talks about the painting “From the Dresden Death”, he says that the thicket is “unremarkable”, and he also talks about how the objects in a landscape serve as a linkage between the viewer and the landscape. Thus I think the subject of landscape is not the most visible object in a picture but the viewer’s experience.
When the Koerner describes the hovel in “Hut in the Snow”, he says that “the hovel, hardly a hovel, decays into wilderness, appearing scarcely built at all, rotting wood enclosing an overgrown and hollow mound. Yet stationed at the centre of the canvas, and affording a dark place of entrance for our gaze... The hovel, that is, offers a vision of dwelling that halts the subject in his passage through the landscape, contrasting with his wandering the condition of arriving at and remaining in a place.” The canvas relates the landscape to the viewers by providing “entrance for our gaze” and the viewer’s passage, making the viewers feel themselves a witness to the scene.
For some painting like "Winter Landscape with Church", a person is drawn in the picture and the painting shows a experience of that person. Does it relate the viewer to the landscape by making the viewer feel that they are the person in the picture?; September 2, 2009 11:32 PM
Dixon Anderson said...: Dixon Anderson

Koerner argues that the goal of Friedrich's paintings is the illuminate the true subject of these mundane portraits of nature, the viewer. He suggests that without the viewer's own perception of the portrait as a space in which they, the viewer, are present, it loses all value as a work. Koerner also asserts that Friedrich painted simple, unspectacular scenes to show that God or some divine force is present in all things. Even the benign, boring landscapes were in fact breathtaking in their own right. For example, the intracacies of the pattern of alder branches in From the Dresden Heath II, is a detail Friedrich clearly wants the viewer to focus on. Koerner continues to claim that the landscape is not the subject of the painting but that the viewer is the subject of the landscape, and that the viewer is placed in the space of the painting and gives the painting its perspective. The painting's meaning is garnered from the viewer's own experience, an experience of remembering a scene, or recalling a place visited momentarily. Without the viewer the painting would not be.; September 2, 2009 11:48 PM
Galen Herbst de Cortina said...: Koerner makes a long, elaborate, and over the top argument to come to a simple (intellectually simple not necessarily easy to pick out simple) seeming conclusion in his book “Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape”. He meanders through several different paintings by Friedrich, all of which follow the general motif of a barren winter scene which somehow appeals to the person viewing it, stopping them in their tracks to witness the stark and bleak glory that is this particular sight, all the while observing that there is no real way to tell at what perspective you are standing in relation to the scene. This then turns out to be Koerner’s key revelation, the fact that a lack of perspective makes the person inspecting the painting is in fact the subject and hence the reason why all of the paintings seem to almost lean in towards the observer. Even in the paintings with a human in the form of a hunter or weary traveler the painting is still designed to draw the viewer in; to make them feel as though that moment caught on canvas is there just for them, a moment unspoiled by others. Koerner’s genius is in the simplicity of the conclusion, not the long and perhaps overly drawn out process of discovery.

I hope my laggy internet didn't double post this.; September 2, 2009 11:59 PM
David Tang said...: Koerner argues that the “Subject of Landscape” in Friedrich’s art is not what is pictured in the landscape, but what cannot be seen. An example would be the emotions the pictures evoke in its viewers, or an idea that it represents. Even though all the viewer sees in Snow Covered Hut is a hut with some trees, the subject is really the “at-homeness” feeling one gets from the hut. He answers the question in the last paragraph stating, “The subject of the landscape, what Friedrich’s canvases are finally about, remains always only almost visible”. In Winter Landscape with Church, it is “the fog that wraps the Church’s base, the mute firs that conceal their symbolic significance: these often function to turn the landscape back on the viewer, to locate us in our subjectivity as landscape painting’s true point of reference”. A question that I would like to see answered is whether his definition of the “subject of landscape” only applies to Friedrich’s works. If not, then why did Koerner specifically chose Friedrich to base his argument on? With so many other artists out there painting landscapes, what made Friedrich different? Does he draw using a specific style that others didn’t?; September 3, 2009 12:43 AM
montooner said...: The subject of the landscape is Friedrich's search for divinity within nature. He belongs to the Romantic class of painters, who place emphasis on describing real--as opposed to idealized--experiences. This first chapter describes the pair of paintings of fir trees as the description of the artist's experiences during a stroll in a specific time and place. Koerner describes evidence that Friedrich discovered the subject of the fir tree paintings 21 years before the actual execution of the piece. This means that he kept the experience in his mind, and had a considerable amount of time to mull over the visual elements that best describe the experience. The second chapter describes Friedrich's Romantic interest in nature as a mode through which he expresses his religion. Koerner summarizes this interest in the first paragraph on page 16: "One answer..., yet the religious intention in Friedrich's art is unmistakable." He immediately gives an example: "The artist one remarked about his painting 'Swans in the Rushes'...". Upon reading this article, I wanted to know: what contemporary artists or ideas in his life caused him to take nature so seriously as the medium for expressing religiosity? Also, I found the analysis fascinating in the detail and well argued points about the viewer's unclear relation to the fir trees in the painting. To be honest, it initially seemed like tasteless clutter (but maybe partially it was the quality of the prints). --Andrew Shu; September 3, 2009 1:57 AM
Molly said...: Koerner states the subject of Freidrich's landscape as deriving a Christian, spiritual essence from an otherwise mundane, ubiquitous image. Though the viewer may initially see simply what is before him, he or she will eventually transcend the obvious and derive religiousmeaning. Kroener states that the subject of these landscapes is, "a gathering of symmetries...In the way... fir grove and church, nature and art, faith and salvation are perfectly paired,Freidrich dramatizes in the landscape the reciprocity that should come before it." I, personally, am not good at recognizing Christian implications in art unless they are explicit. Thus, this explanation was quite perplexing to me. I would like to know how a layperson could look at a painting of nothing more than a cluster of fir trees, devoid of any indication of human presence, and see a church. I know that I would never have drawn that conclusion on my own. Is there a cultural/historical context tham makes drawing transcendental, religious themes, (or at least coming up with the explanation Koerner provides), from these paintings more intuitive?; September 3, 2009 2:01 AM
Charlene G. said...: Koerner states that the subject of landscape is the viewer. The positions, shapes, and arrangements of the objects depicted in the picture somehow places the viewer in the landscape. In illustration 2, Fir Trees in the Snow, the asymmetry and randomness of the objects in the picture, frame the gaze of the viewer. “The grove becomes a frame for your gaze, a natural altarpiece with you as its single, consecrated object” (8). In addition, the picture provides the viewer a space where they can picture themselves in. “…the fir trees gather about a concave foreground that surrounds you, establishing you as the grove’s potential centre” (9). The viewers see themselves being depicted in the picture as though what they see are something they have already experienced and are moments within their lives. A sense of belonging is felt in the viewers as they study the landscape and they feel that they are the subjects. Belonging will only disappear the moment a subject appears in the scene. Also, according to Koerner, due to Friedrich’s only almost visible subject of landscape, “the fog that wraps the church base, the mute firs that conceal their symbolic significance”, allow the viewers to be “landscape painting’s true point of reference” (20).; September 3, 2009 2:22 AM
Gina said...: Gina Su

According to Koerner's argument, the "Subject of Landscape” can almost be anything because, “Somehow the painting places you (5).” He explains that the subject of a painting comes from the experiences of the audience and therefore can reflect many different ideas. However, Koerner comes to the conclusion that the "Subject of Landscape” is the promise of Christian faith.

Koerner does not answer this question explicitly anywhere in the essay, though he does mention that “the subject of landscape “remains always only almost visible (20).”

An example where Koerner shows the relationship between the subject and landscape using a painting or drawing is when he explains that the fir grove is especially shaped to house a crucifix. He compares the shrubbery in the center of a painting to be “ The vision of the Church(17). “ He continues, “we shall learn to say, discovers the fir grove as a symbol of the divine, even as the carved crucifix already uses nature for it ministry (17).“

After reading this article, I was so engulfed in Koerner’s analysis of the painting that I began to overlook its simplicity. Is it possible that writers are overanalyzing images just to serve a purpose or prove a point? I would want to ask Koerner, “What if the artist simply just wanted to paint trees in the winter?”; September 3, 2009 3:31 AM
Karen Molina said...: 1. According to Koerner's argument, the "Subject of Landscape" is "only almost visible." He argues that Freidrich's art uses subtle clues like fog to function as a way for the viewer to look back at the landscape so as to locate ourselves as the "landscape painting's true point of reference."

2. Yes Koerner's does answer this question explicitly at the end of the second chapter.

3) Koerner shows the relationship between the subject and landscape in the reading, "From the Dresden Heath," in the following passage about the painting "Trees and Bushes in Snow."

"You seek entrance to that which commands your attention. The scene becomes an extension of yourself, a buried meaning, an experience half-remembered, or what you will. You believe that because this is a painted scene, it is somehow for you, and that insignificant nature, represented, will have a bearing on your own life. Frozen in your passage before the canvas, however, like a moth drawn towards a flame, you discover your kinship with the canvas: object among objects."

4. One specific question I wished to have answered after reading this article is:

Why couldn't Koerner directly tell us that that the "From the Dresden Heath" paintings were organized in a way to have a religious meaning in the first chapter instead of waiting to the second chapter to explain the symbolic significance of the painting and just have us fully believe that the painting was basically just an experience that a painter drew just for an experience?; September 3, 2009 8:29 AM
John said...: John Huang

Koerner states that the “subject” of landscape would be that “display of you to yourself in your various orientations toward the things you see, the spaces you inhabit and the infinities you desire.” I take this to mean that the artwork that we see before us, was created based on the impression that the artist had at the moment but whose true meaning lies to “accommodate and frame your gaze.” Koerner’s characterization of works by Friedrich is mainly found to be reflective of how the scene is posed to an individual. In some cases such as “Trees and Brushes in the Snow” compared to “Fir Trees in the Snow”, the former specifically “singles you out to stand before a thicket” while the latter “embrace you.” In the second chapter of the book, Koerner shifts his prospective of the landscape from the audience’s point of view towards how the idea(s) that the artist might have wanted to communicate through his audience. It is noted that Friedrich’s works holds many underlying Christian themes and that he wanted to incorporate his own beliefs into the artwork. I found the religious aspects of Friedrich most apparent when Koerner mentioned that in the Swans in the Rushes it seems as though Friedrich painted this “dark surface of the canvas, which [refuses] entrance, keeps us outside looking in.” This ideology of a hidden religion is very widespread as each landscape portrait is never completely opened or exposed but rather secluded and cut off, denying the audience further visual scenery besides that could be seen in the foreground. Thus I have found Koerner to say that the subject of landscape is whatever emotions or ideas the audience can think of, but continent on the artist’s own desires to share what he has seen or feels.; September 3, 2009 9:10 AM
Douglas Hom said...: According to Koerner, the subject of landscape is the artist’s experience. It is, however, not the immediate experience that is conveyed, but a delayed memory. During the period between the encounter and the expression, time alters the experience, causing some aspects to be forgotten. What remains is a remnant of the original. Although the painting may now differ significantly from experience, it represents what was most memorable and striking. For example, in the paintings From the Dresden Heath, trees and shrubs take center stage in the foreground. The background, obscured from view by fog, is thus rendered somehow less important than the ordinary trees. Koerner believes that this suggests the subject of the landscape is something beyond the confines of the painting – it is the artist’s personal experience.
He further argues that the subject of landscape is the relationship “between landscape painting and its sacral meaning, between you and the painted object of your gaze.” (p. 19) Koerner adds, “the resolution achieved in Winter Landscape with Church maps one trajectory of that experience in which the human subject, once hunter, then spiritual seeker, ends his search in God… the wanderer’s perspective, internalized into the structure of the painting-as-experience, has now become our own.” (p. 19) Thus, it is not merely the artist’s delayed memory of an experience that is the subject of landscape, but also the meaning behind that particular experience, and the communication of it to the observer.
Koerner provides a very reasonable interpretation of the paintings described in the text. I could imagine another art historian having a completely different view. My question would be: how often do they agree on a particular interpretation, and what makes one interpretation better than another?; September 3, 2009 9:14 AM
Carmen said...: According to Koerner’s argument the “Subject of the Landscape” is the artist of the painting. Towards the end of his first chapter, Koerner states that the artist is “the implied subject of the landscape, i.e. its initial viewer and its ultimate theme”. This is to say that the artist becomes the subject of the landscape, not the object painted, because it is through their experience and their interpretation that the audience sees the painting. The subject, what is most important, of the landscape in the painting is the perspective through which the painting is experienced and not the object itself. These images though based on real experiences, however, are not direct translations of the landscape. They are more of personal expressions and abstractions of an experience by the artist. A combination of reality obtained directly from the landscape and an abstraction from the perspective through which the landscape is seen and interpreted. By the time that the audience sees the painting, they are seeing an object through the experience, the perspective of the artist. We learn that these paintings are based on pauses or moments in time that the artist experiences, as seen from their perspective. This occurs in the “Trees and Bushes in the Snow” painting, 1828, where Koerner writes that the painting “captures this particular thicket as seen by a unique observer from a single spot in space”, that is to mean from the perspective of the artist. The painting is a representation of the “artist’s lived experience” and their interpretation of the landscape.; September 3, 2009 9:57 AM
Ryan Roschke said...: 1. According to Koerner, the "Subject of Landscape" is always meant to be just out of reach. He comments that we are to recognize ourselves and our subjectivity as the landscape's true point of reference.
2. Although he does not answer the question directly anywhere in the essay (at least not that I could discern), he asserts on page 19 that Friedrich "dramatizes in the landscape the reciprocity that should occur before it: between landscape painting and its sacral meaning, between you and the painted object of your gaze."
3. While critiquing "From the Dresden Heath," Koerner implies that the "artist, who is the implied subject of the landscape, i.e. its initial viewer *and* its ultimate theme, wanders upon the Dresden heath, halting occasionally before views of remarkable nature. The canvases represent the content of these pauses, although not in the manner of images produced immediately in the landscape" (11).
4. Can we be sure that the religious images portrayed by Freidrich are meant as symbols of organized religion? What if Friedrich is trying to convey that life itself is a religion? That, perhaps, we should find religion and in nature, and spend our lives getting as close to it as possible?; September 3, 2009 10:28 AM
Tiana Hampton said...: According to Koerner’s argument, the “Subject of Landscape” refers to the artist and his experiences within a certain setting. Koerner makes this rather explicit in the first chapter of his novel, when he chooses to discuss From the Dresden Heath, in which he states: “The artist, who is the implied subject of the lanscape, i.e. its initial viewer and its ultimate theme, wonders upon the Dresden heath, halting occasionally before views of unremarkable nature.” He goes further to talk about the relationship between the subject and landscape on page 10, using From the Dresden Heath as an example. Koerner argues, “In the painting of the alder thicket, Friedrcih conjoins an extreme randomness of detail with a centralized and symmetrical overall design in order to assert that the pattern of branches silhouetted against the sky captures this particular thicket as seen by a unique observer from a single spot.” Koerner is arguing that the landscapes that Friedrich chose to depict are as unique and individual as the subjects themselves, not generic landscapes that he conjured from his mind, but actual landscapes that he found in nature. However, the way Koerner phrases his argument is a source of confusion for me. When Koerner says the “Subject of Landscape,” does that mean the same thing as the “subject of THE landscape”? Does it make a difference which phrase is used?; September 3, 2009 12:00 PM
Xiangming Li said...: In his essay on "The Subject of Landscape", Koerner begins by suggesting that the subject of the landscape has to do with faith and the search for salvation. He discusses the perfect pairing of “the viewer and the work of art, fir grove and church, nature and art” etc. In the landscapes mentioned by Koerner, each one depicts a scene of nature which is recreated by the viewer and was encountered on his journey towards seeking God, always during a moment of transition, where something lies in the distance, “almost visible”. In that sense, the viewer never finds out what Friedrich’s canvases are “finally” about. Whether it’s the fog wrapped around the church or the firs, which block almost all visibility, the subject is always hidden. Koerner says that the purpose of this is to “turn the landscape back on the viewer, and to locate us in our subjectivity as landscape painting’s true point of reference”. Thus, by not having a clearly visible subject, Friedrich can use to landscape to incorporate a divine presence, one that cannot be illustrated by something concrete. In these landscapes, the artist places the viewer in an intermediary location.; September 3, 2009 12:21 PM
Rene Garcia said...: Joseph Koerner’s essay, “From the Dresden Heath,” places new focus to what many would perceive to be simple pictures of snow-covered trees, buried among the snow landscape. According to Koerner, the subject of the landscape is the artist himself stating that “it’s initial viewer and its ultimate theme, wanders upon the Dresden Heath, halting before views of unremarkable nature.” This is what the author would perceive as the “experience” of the image, the placement of the artist in front of the thicket through a “journey of inhospitable nature.” One could argue that there are hidden meanings, or reasons, for the artist among the thicket and the snow. Utilizing these analogies, as the thicket as a source of meaning for the artist, Koerner implies that the artist is the subject of the landscape. For example, Koerner writes “You are placed before the thicket. You seek entrance to that which commands your attention. The scene becomes an extension of yourself, a buried meaning, an experience half-remembered, or what you will. You believe that, because this is a painted scene, it is somehow for you.” I believe Koerner provides a valid insight to the artist’s depiction of the Dresden Heath. However, one question I wish Koerner would have answered is: how is it that the Dresden Heath is not a part of the artist’s experience and rather tied to some other philosophical meaning beyond that of the human experience?; September 8, 2009 4:23 PM
SiSi said...: 1. What, according to Koerner's argument is the "Subject of Landscape"?
The “Subject of Landscape”, in Friedrich’s case, is the visibility of elements in his paintings that are symbolic or later symbolic of religious meaning. Friedrich’s winter landscapes are not paintings about observing winter nature or works describing a history or accomplishment. Initially the “Subject of Landscape” cannot be fully seen and realized until Friedrich’s later paintings of 1811 tie together previous paintings as well. Once the viewer has seen a series of his artworks, the viewer may then see the “Subject of Landscape” as artworks about the visibility and presence of what we see, and what they conceal in terms of their symbolic significance. It is also about the experience of the artist and the painting and the viewer confronted with the painting.
2. Does he answer this question explicitly anywhere in the essay?
Yes, he answers this question explicitly in two parts of the essay. On page 19, he writes “Friedrich dramatizes in the landscape the reciprocity that should occur before it: between landscape painting and its sacral meaning, between you and the painted object of your gaze.” On page 20, Koerner also writes, “The subject of landscape, what Friedrich’s canvases are finally about, remains always about only almost visible.”
3. Cite a sentence / passage where Koerner SHOWS the relationship between the subject and landscape using a painting or drawing etc..
On page 19, Koerner writes, “…the resolution achieved in Winter Landscape with Church maps one trajectory of what experience in which the human subject, once hunter, then spiritual seeker, ends his search in God… the wander’s perspective, internalized into the structure of the painting-as-experience, has now become our own.”
4. What one specific question did you wish to have answered after reading this article?
I’m still slightly confused as to the “Subject of Landscape”. Originally I thought this was referring to the object of study in the landscape painting itself. Is this also meant to be taken as “we”, the viewers, are also the subjects of the landscape painting itself as we are subjects of its experience and its projection of itself onto us?; September 8, 2009 9:18 PM
arielle said...: According to Joseph Leo Koerner, “The Subject of Landscape,” is all about the viewer. He speaks about many different paintings by Friedrich, all of which are lifeless and dreary. Koerner repeatedly describes the paintings as dull and unsophisticated, yet he believes, it is how “the painting places you.” Koerner portrays the viewer and his or her location, as the real subject of landscape, and draws meaning from the human mind. Although paintings may not have traces of human existence, Koerner states, “the intensity with which it fixes on its motif, and in the way it arrests the viewer…fashions about itself a humanizing plot.” Koerner believes paintings that do not capture the viewer, lose all value of importance. The subject of the landscape is truly one that is not visible to the naked eye. It is something within our minds that lets our imaginations take us to a place that we create using a painting. One of the main questions I had was why Koerner focused on paintings by Friedrich? Are there other meanings behind it? I also wonder why he focuses on lifeless art? It would be interesting to see his views on more modern art and how they shape the viewer’s landscape.; September 9, 2009 12:27 AM
SiSi said...: 1. What, according to Koerner's argument is the "Subject of Landscape"?
The “Subject of Landscape”, in Friedrich’s case, is the visibility of elements in his paintings that are symbolic or later symbolic of religious meaning. Friedrich’s winter landscapes are not paintings about observing winter nature or works describing a history or accomplishment. Initially the “Subject of Landscape” cannot be fully seen and realized until Friedrich’s later paintings of 1811 tie together previous paintings as well. Once the viewer has seen a series of his artworks, the viewer may then see the “Subject of Landscape” as artworks about the visibility and presence of what we see, and what they conceal in terms of their symbolic significance. It is also about the experience of the artist and the painting and the viewer confronted with the painting.
2. Does he answer this question explicitly anywhere in the essay?
Yes, he answers this question explicitly in two parts of the essay. On page 19, he writes “Friedrich dramatizes in the landscape the reciprocity that should occur before it: between landscape painting and its sacral meaning, between you and the painted object of your gaze.” On page 20, Koerner also writes, “The subject of landscape, what Friedrich’s canvases are finally about, remains always about only almost visible.”
3. Cite a sentence / passage where Koerner SHOWS the relationship between the subject and landscape using a painting or drawing etc..
On page 19, Koerner writes, “…the resolution achieved in Winter Landscape with Church maps one trajectory of what experience in which the human subject, once hunter, then spiritual seeker, ends his search in God… the wander’s perspective, internalized into the structure of the painting-as-experience, has now become our own.”
4. What one specific question did you wish to have answered after reading this article?
I’m still slightly confused as to the “Subject of Landscape”. Originally I thought this was referring to the object of study in the landscape painting itself. Is this also meant to be taken as “we”, the viewers, are also the subjects of the landscape painting itself as we are subjects of its experience and its projection of itself o; September 9, 2009 10:11 PM
Anonymous said...: SiSi

1. What, according to Koerner's argument is the "Subject of Landscape"?
The “Subject of Landscape”, in Friedrich’s case, is the visibility of elements in his paintings that are symbolic or later symbolic of religious meaning. Friedrich’s winter landscapes are not paintings about observing winter nature or works describing a history or accomplishment. Initially the “Subject of Landscape” cannot be fully seen and realized until Friedrich’s later paintings of 1811 tie together previous paintings as well. Once the viewer has seen a series of his artworks, the viewer may then see the “Subject of Landscape” as artworks about the visibility and presence of what we see, and what they conceal in terms of their symbolic significance. It is also about the experience of the artist and the painting and the viewer confronted with the painting.
2. Does he answer this question explicitly anywhere in the essay?
Yes, he answers this question explicitly in two parts of the essay. On page 19, he writes “Friedrich dramatizes in the landscape the reciprocity that should occur before it: between landscape painting and its sacral meaning, between you and the painted object of your gaze.” On page 20, Koerner also writes, “The subject of landscape, what Friedrich’s canvases are finally about, remains always about only almost visible.”
3. Cite a sentence / passage where Koerner SHOWS the relationship between the subject and landscape using a painting or drawing etc..
On page 19, Koerner writes, “…the resolution achieved in Winter Landscape with Church maps one trajectory of what experience in which the human subject, once hunter, then spiritual seeker, ends his search in God… the wander’s perspective, internalized into the structure of the painting-as-experience, has now become our own.”
4. What one specific question did you wish to have answered after reading this article?
I’m still slightly confused as to the “Subject of Landscape”. Originally I thought this was referring to the object of study in the landscape painting itself. Is this also meant to be taken as “we”, the viewers, are also the subjects of the landscape painting itself as we are subjects of its experience and its projection of itself o; September 9, 2009 10:14 PM
Thi Nguyen said...: The “Subject of Landscape,” in Koerner’s essay, is the viewer’s personal experience of God and religion. On page 15, he states that “Friedrich empties his canvas in order to imagine, through an invocation of the void, an infinite, unrepresentable God.” According to Koerner, God is an omnipresent being that is “almost visible” (page 19) to the viewers. Yet in the end, it is left to the individual observer to use his imagination to find God and construct his own religious experience. In Koerner’s description of the first picture, he states “The thicket’s placement at the very centre of the canvas… only intensifies the caesura between the mundane and particularized foreground in which you exist and an entirely indeterminate and potentially infinite background.” (page 5) By describing the background as “indeterminate and potentially infinite” Koerner suggests a sense of grandness and a feeling of ambiguity to convey God’s presence and the observer’s uncertainty of it. Yet by emphasizing the individual’s position in the painting by mentioning “the particularized foreground in which you exist,” Koerner depicts the viewer as having an active role in the scheme of the painting, which connects the experience of the viewer to the landscape. Thus, not only did the artist include references to God in his work, but he also allowed viewers to bring in their personal experience and religious interpretation as well.

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Thursday, August 27, 2009

Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape by Joseph Leo Koerner (1990)

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