caspar david friedrich’s windows

caspar david friedrich’s windows ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................

caspar david friedrich's
windows

viewpoints
1805 / 06 friedrich painted two ‘view from the artist‘s
studio’ images. these paintings or better ‘seppias’
address directly the issue of perception and reflect
his developing interest in representing contrary states.

thematically the contrast rests on the different angles
at which he sees the two windows he is depicting.
the left-hand window is seen at an angle,
the right-hand one is viewed straight on.
it is a very elegant demonstration of the simple yet
all-important point that things look different depending
on the angle from which you observe them.

the pictures provide an eloquent illustration of the limits
of vision. they give us glimpses out of their respective
windows to the ‘elbe’ river.
the left-hand window has a more inviting, meanwhile
the right-hand picture has a more restricted view.
because of our viewer’s position, deep inside the studio,
we can only see fragments of what lies beyond :
a shore line, the top of a ship mast,...

for sure friedrich alludes to the limitation in our
perception of reality. there is a metaphysical point to
be grapped here:
the human being is trying to make sense of the world.

friedrich gives us a clue -
in the fragment of the mirror of the right-hand side
of the ‘spiritual’ view, we can see part of friedrich’s
own head. now we know exactly where the artist
has positioned himself and it testifies his ‘mood of
introspection’.

although he might not have intended it,
but this pair of pictures provide a critical revision
of the perception of space, which had been
accepted as a standard or norm in western art
since the renaissance.
renaissance art imagines an abstracted, universal
observer dominating the center of the picture and
his viewpoint orders the world around him.
friedrich modified this, he is aware of a very different
position, which has since become one of the hallmarks
of the modern condition.

(the english artist and poet william blake once put it:
‘a fool sees not the same tree that a wise mean sees’.)

woman at the window
again, subjectivity in experience is rooted in the
relationship between the viewer and the viewed, ...

surrealist art
the windows series are now considered forerunners
of surrealism.

rené magritte (1898 - 1967) seems to have taken
his cue from the window images in friedrich’s oevre.
his painting ‘the human condition’ not only has
friedrich’s frontal exactitude but also re-poses
the problem of vision.
friedrich, in his glimpse through windows,
questions artistic conventions.
magritte shows us in his picture a painting in front of
a window that might or might not be the same as the
landscape that it obscures.

salvador dalí (1904-1989) references friedrich's work
even more closely in his piece 'figure at the window' , 1925.
the contrast in mood and colour between the interior of the room
and the windows view, frame the boating scene.

see more work
by caspar david friedrich

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inventing romanticism

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figures seen from the back
contemplative landscapes on the
theme of spectatorship.

in the history of painting, the back figure has a
long tradition. but only with friedrich did it obtain
such a prominent position. motionless these lonely
people stand and watch the spectacle of nature,
without taking part...

‘view from the artist's studio’, 1805 / 06
(left-hand window)
© galerie im belvedere, vienna

‘view from the artist's studio’, caspar david friedrich, 1805 / 06
(right-hand window)
© galerie im belvedere, vienna

‘window looking over the park’, caspar david friedrich, 1810 / 1811
© state hermitage museum, saint petersburg

‘woman at the window’, caspar david friedrich, 1822
© staatliche museen zu berlin

‘the human condition’ by rené magritte, 1934

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