The Wanderer above the Mists - Caspar David Freidrich
A depiction of the lone artist seeking the divine in nature while contemplating his inner life.
“The painter who is initiated in the divine secrets of the arts hears the voice of nature recounting its infinite mysteries through trees, plants flowers water and mountains the gift that transposes emotions into art comes to him like the spirit of God”
ETA Hoffman
In a time of the imminent rise of the new scientific cult of the white coat and the rampant growth of industrialism, in 1800s Europe, art was still regarded solely as a science, which indeed, in part, it absolutely is. However, with the dawning of the industrial age, the scientific part of creative arts endured a firm revolt in the hearts and minds of contemporary artists of the time. A new way of thinking emerged that rejected all conventions and unleashed the imagination of the artist to execute thought, feeling and emotion in a unique and original way, as opposed to painting only in the traditional realist manner of their predecessors.
For the first time artists painted what was in their minds and souls and didn’t care if they were understood or even liked by the pubic. Their images were of the dark, the passionate, the mysterious and the introspective. Inspiration was drawn from the natural world and viewed as a divine gift. The creative drive was conceived as an inner voice, which when obeyed, could give the artist a sense of euphoria; thus construed as a complete rejection of the elevation of science and rationalism. This new way of being in and with art, self and universe was referred to as Romanticism. The movement spawned such greats as JWM Turner, Caspar David Freidreich and contemporaries.
Romanticism was a reaction against society and the norm. It was anything new or different. One of the key driving philosophies was freedom and the examination of true and false senses of freedom in social structures, as described by Jean-Jacques Rousseau who observed...‘Man is born free but is everywhere in chains’.
In terms of the discourse of Romanticism, many of the artists of the day were literally the poorest, most marginalised and vulnerable in society : many suffered with mental illness and were shunned by society, as was the norm of the day and many were recluses, whom did not fit with the trends of their times. These sculptors, poets, composers and painters embraced the ethos of Romanticism. This ethos became a culture of likeminded, damaged creatives and the philosophers among them were quick to discover the link between creativity and elevated mood, and hence the formal recognition of art as therapy by the creative expressive and energetic arts community of the ill and impoverished was begun.
This artistic movement encouraged them to find freedom through outward expression of imagination; to focus on intuition rather than calculation; to explore feeling rather than thought; and to express the emotional and the subjective. JWM Turner expresses the essence of how dramatic the Romantics could be to capture the inexpressible, exclaiming of the creation of 'Snow Storm - Steam boat off a harbour's mouth'...
“I wish to share what such a scene was like. I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it and I did not expect me to escape it but I felt bound to record it if I did. No one had any business to like the picture.’
Snow storm – Steam boat off a harbour’s mouth - Joseph Mallord William Turner
In terms of studio practice, an artist's originality often meant isolation and solitude - the walls are bare, the light is dim, the artist faces away from the canvas, concentrating on the inner landscape.
Caspar David Friedrich in his studio - Georg Friedrich Kersting
The Romantics were complex people : they were philosopher artists who delved more deeply into the human mind, the human condition and the human submission to nature state than any artists before them.
As well as the overarching philosophies of freedom and inspiration in nature, the Romantics also explored the dark side, enjoying the depiction of such themes as a fascination with death and dying; creating depictions of insanity, horror and chaos, suicide and martyrdom, madness and and madhouses. Below, Fuseli juxtaposes beauty and innocence with horror and Goya examines the dark side of night when rational thought ceases and irrational nightmares take over in 'The Nightmare' and 'The sleep of reason produces monsters', respectively.
The Nightmare - Henry Fuseli
The sleep of reason produces monsters - Francisco Goya
Artists were the first to consciously emloy art as therapy but the secret eventually made its way to the mainstream and marriage of sorts between science and Romanitcism first occurred in the 1800s when doctors and psychologists also recognised the use of art as therapy for the mentally ill. In the UK, William Tuke – an English businessman who established a code of ‘moral care’ for the mentally ill and established York House. In France, Jean-Baptiste Pussin and Phillipe Pinel pioneered a more individualised approach to treatment in hospitals and Auguste Comte pioneered the rise of positivism : that knowledge must be able to be verified in terms of experience.
melanie du jardin for cre8ofit : copyright 2022