Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Time
Caspar David Friedrich, Moonrise over the Sea, 1822, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin.
Caspar David Friedrich: Art for a New Time marks the German Romantic artist’s 250th birthday in a thematic retrospective, with over 60 paintings, including numerous key works and around 100 drawings. The central theme is the novel relationship between people and nature in Friedrich's landscape depictions. In the first third of the 19th century he contributed to make the landscape genre “art for a new time”. In addition, around 20 selected works by artist friends such as Carl Gustav Carus, Johan Christian Dahl, August Heinrich and Georg Friedrich Kersting, will be presented. Their paintings and studies build on Friedrich's oeuvre, but also open up new perspectives on nature.
High-quality and extremely rare Friedrich loans such as the paintings Chalk Cliffs on Rügen (around 1818–1822), Monk by the Sea (1808–1810) and Two Men Contemplating the Moon (1819/20) are in the exhibition alongside the Wanderer paintings, among others over the Sea of Fog (around 1817) and The Sea of Ice (1823/24) from the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle. These works are among the icons of Romanticism. Friedrich painterly explored the ways in which landscape can become a contemporary theme, the potential associated with the reproduction of nature and how it can be conveyed to the viewer. But Friedrich's extensive graphic oeuvre also plays a special role in the show. The conscious stay in the great outdoors with artistic intention is one of the special characteristics of romantic art practice and was essential for Friedrich. The exhibition honors his drawings in their autonomous quality and considers them not just as studies of natural details that are later reflected in his paintings. Friedrich's sensitive approaches to nature often imply a reflection of his subjective point of view.
The enduring high fascination of his works is demonstrated in a separate part of the exhibition, which is dedicated to Friedrich's reception in contemporary art. In cross-genre and cross-media perspectives, around 20 artists from home and abroad discuss Friedrich's central theme - the relationship between people and their environment. They also illustrate how relevant the Romantic artist's artistic perspective is in times of climate change. Across genres and media, around 20 artists from home and abroad take a look at Romanticism, their understanding of nature and Friedrich's art with their works - for example in the form of videos, photographs and large-scale installations. On display are works by Ann Böttcher, Elina Brotherus, Julian Charrière, David Claerbout, Mari Eastman, Olafur Eliasson, Jonas Fischer, Alex Grein, Swaantje Güntzel, Jochen Hein, Nina K. Jurk, Johanna Karlsson, Hiroyuki Masuyama, Lyoudmila Milanova, Andreas bother, Mariele Neudecker, Ulrike Rosenbach, Susan Schuppli, Santeri Tuori and Kehinde Wiley.