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Monk By The Sea Essay

Decent Essays

“A vast endless expanse of sky… still, no wing, no moon, no storm – indeed a storm would have been some consolation for then one would at least see life and movement somewhere. On the unending sea there is no boat, no ship, not even a sea monster, and in the sand not even a blade of grass, only a few gulls float in the air and make the loneliness even more desolate and horrible (WGA par. 4).” Caspar David Friedrich had many admirers, but also many critics. This description of one of Friedrich’s most famous and outstanding pieces of work, Monk by the Sea, received mixed reviews throughout history, some of which are embracing of the work, and some of which offer a bold outlook on who exactly Friedrich was. A common theme in the majority of his …show more content…

First and foremost, we get a taste of an artistic rebellion by the way that the monk parallels the solitude that much of the Germans sought for after these events. In contrast to the landscape, the monk is a small figure and although art historians have studied this painting for a very long time, much debate comes about when the audience tries to decide who the figure is and what exactly the shape of his body indicates. There are many speculations to who the monk could be, including Friedrich himself. Where art historians have assumed that the painter is in fact Friedrich, the monk then becomes a symbol of his place outside of society and the embodiment of what German Romanticism used to be, a portrait of tragedy and sadness. Last but not least, this painting represents something of a divine instance. Through this painting we see the representation of a spiritual figure, the embodiment of God inside the painted self-portrait of Friedrich as the monk. God was the driving work for Friedrich as an artist, believing that the secular life should be woven into forms of everyday life such as art work (Whittington par.

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