The Wunderkammer of the Mild Colonial Boy, Esq., a Reactionary Tory Gentleman, who armed only with a Steampowered Babbage Engine and Pure Intentions, wanders the Time Streams and Aetheric Plane gathering an Eccentric Hodgepodge of Curiousities, Frivolities, Whimsicalities and Nonsense.
Q. Why is your Tumblelog called "My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning"?
A. Because "My Grandmother's Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning" wouldn't fit in the available space.
(Source: kdkathryn, via planb-becomeapirate)
Caspar David Friedrich, Greifswald in Moonlight, c. 1817
While Greifswald sounds like a place in Germany (Google confirms this), the seemingly sand-swept panorama (probably just the effect of brushstrokes) and the illuminated Babel-esque tower in the distance together exude a Middle Eastern gothic vibe — a time-lost but dangerous mysticism that is reminiscent of the Prince of Persia franchise (/geekmode on). Then again, I’m probably appealing to (and reinforcing) the collective Western fantasy of hypertradition and Orientalism.
This is a strangely alluring work of art, nonetheless. There is something about representations of hidden/liminal space that intrigues me. After all, do aesthetic representations of secret places demystify the spaces themselves by presenting them to us, the readers? To represent is to make present in an observable medium — does presence necessitate knowledge?
Or do these representations simply re-present these hidden spaces as how one would present another with an archaic puzzle box? There is a difference here between knowing that A exists and knowing A: we may know that a box exists without knowing what is in that box. One concerns knowledge of brute existence/presence, the other takes into account knowledge of constitution.
In the case of art that depicts uncanny spaces, the art seems to consist not so much in its haunting aesthetics, but in the seductive epistemic chasm between what is seen (presence) and what is (constitution). In fact, the merit of all art appears to be premised on this interstitial void, which can only be bridged (albeit transiently) by nothing other than the reader’s exercise in back-alley divination and tea-leaf hermeneutics, otherwise known as the act of interpretation.
Picture pretty.
(Source: impartart)
Caspar David Friedrich, Greifswald in Moonlight, c. 1817
(Source: impartart, via bluecollarclassicist)
Dear Art Lovers,
I’m starting a series of posts dedicated to the art I’ve been exploring in The Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, for the last couple of weeks. The Alte Nationalgalerie houses an impressive collection of 19th-century paintings, among which we find more than 15 canvases by Caspar David Friedrich, one of the leading figures of the German Romantic movement.
Caspar David Friedrich always wanted to convey a subjective, emotional response to the natural world. Friedrich sought not just to explore the blissful enjoyment of a beautiful view, as in the classic conception, but rather to examine an instant of sublimity, a reunion with the spiritual self through the contemplation of nature. He was one of the first artists to portray winter landscapes as solemn, stark, even dead. Friedrich’s life was marked with an overwhelming sense of melancholy, loneliness and spiritual uncertainty which is clearly apparent in his art full of gloomy motifs.
All the paintings featured above can be enjoyed in the permanent collection of The Alte Nationalgalerie. Make sure you don’t miss them whenever you’re in Berlin. Tschüß!
