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Caspar David Friedrich in His Element 2 (Friedrich on Interpretation)

(Picture: DS)

(29.4.2023) I had not come to Berlin to see paintings by Caspar David Friedrich. The above view – an intense Berlin twilight hour – was that from my hotel room in September of 2011, just after arriving, when I had come to Berlin to do archival studies in relation with my biography of Jean Paul Richter. It was immediately after my 40th birthday, and needless to say that I was often in a pensive mood. Later that month I had the chance to visit also the Alte Nationalgalerie with the Caspar David Friedrich paintings. I also did take pictures there, but what I remember most vividly was that a visitor was being photographed by another person, and in front of the Mönch am Meer by Friedrich, with the person being photographed doing the victory-sign. I did not catch that in a photograph. But reviewing all the pictures of that trip, I am reliving intensely what I had been doing and seen, and musing about that trip, it seems to me that it would be easy to create a narrative of that trip that would turn the whole journey into a trip to see Caspar David Friedrich, and to experience Berlin with Caspar David Friedrich, or in dialogue with Caspar David Friedrich.

1) Against Interpretation

In September 2011 I was a restless observer. I had been confronted with illness and death earlier that year, and then again with illness, and probably, and especially after my 40th birthday, I felt more vulnerable than usually, or before all that, and on the other hand I was eager to see and to experience as much as I could. In Berlin.
All in all I brought back 1123 photographs of that trip, that actually had been dedicated to doing some archival research. Picture number 5 was the above shown evening mood. Could it pass for a dawning? I don’t think so. This was an intense evening mood, the kind of material Caspar David Friedrich worked with, not by just representing such moods (dawn as well as dusk), but by transforming them into images that reflect the elementary things in life. In pictures that, perhaps, leave out the trivial, banal, the distracting, the ordinary and the ugly. But not the grave, the sublime, the mighty, the grand, the beautiful, and not mortality and passing time, and not human figures seemingly reflecting on all that, or contemplating whatever they are contemplating. Picture number 1123 which I brought back from my trip to Berlin was to be the photographic representation of a Caspar David Friedrich picture in the Nationalgalerie. The picture shown below. A Man and a woman contemplating the moon.

I was eager for distraction from my moods, and such strategy does work, in Berlin, and does not work, not even in Berlin. I remember lows, but even after 12 years, I am still full of all the impressions I gathered, with a feel that I have not digested everything, or even parts of it. In other words: I am still drawing on that experience (which also makes me someone who prefers staying at home, happy to have travelled, but not eager to embark on new trips all of the time).

If one is eager to see every painting in Berlin, or if one is eager to gather a maximum of impressions, in a city with past being extremely present, and with the media sphere being very present, even in the streets, one is not necessarily eager to make something of all these impressions on the spot. Perhaps the attitude is rather: against interpretation, because interpretation would slow the process (of eating the visual impressions) down. One is a devourer of what can be seen. And certainly I did not know then, that Caspar David Friedrich scholarship is controversial, and if I had known, I would not have cared. This I would have classified among the trivial, the banal, the irrelevant. Coming to terms with what I had experienced in my personal life was more important. And getting oneself distracted seemed to be one way. This worked for some time, but not after coming home. But the good thing is: one can do something, with all the material amassed. Perhaps only later, after having to overcome crises by other means, but then, there is a lot to think about, and for quite some time.

(Picture: DS)

2) Friedrich and Interpretation

Does it matter if Caspar David Friedrich intended to represent dusk or dawn in a painting? Or if he represented the moment before sunset, or after sunset?
There are scholars who say that Friedrich loved ambiguity. Which means that he may have, according to these scholars, intended ambiguity. Which may be right for one example, but not necessarily for another. Other scholars seem to hold a different view: the doyen of Friedrich scholarship for example, Helmut Börsch-Supan, argued against the tradition to see a dawning in the Frau vor untergehender Sonne (on the right). But in recent years corrected also himself: by stating that the above shown Grosses Gehege (which is not a painting that can be seen in Berlin) does not intend to show the moment after, but before sunset.

To me it seems that the subject matter in Friedrich paintings, in a way, relativizes the pettifogging discourse of scholars fighting (but actually, by fighting, demanding respect, recognition, and status, because status cannot be attained without recognition). This is all very banal, but a fact of scholars’ life, and even if the subject matter is, in some sense, demanding a stance ›above such trivialities‹, one has to deal also with the realities of scholars’ lives, as banal as this may seem. If one is not part of the community of Friedrich scholarship, the easy solution might be just to look at what various positions may imply, and how convincing and fruitful such positions may be (regarding one’s questions and needs), while ignoring the pettifogging fight for recognition and social position. As a Friedrich scholar (which I am not) one could switch between joining and not joining the argument, but Friedrich also seems to allow to relax, since Friedrich can be quoted for a very relaxed stance: a beholder might not have the same thoughts and feelings as the artist had, but if a beholder is stimulated to have his own thoughts and feelings, this is a noble thing, and perhaps the most noble thing. Which might inspire to make a simply and rather basic difference: it is one thing to know about, or to speculate about what Friedrich may have had in mind himself with a painting; and it is another one to develop a view of one’s own regarding the same painting and regarding what Friedrich may have had in mind. But it seems to make sense to me, not to cut the one from the other. I like to be informed of what we know about Friedrich. But on the other hand a painting is not the equivalent to a test. If I know what Friedrich may have had in mind, I’d like to develop my own view on that. Which may include that I am not perceiving the things Friedrich represented, in the same way he did, even if I know (which is rarely the case) how he did perceive a sunset or a sunrising, with some human figures contemplating it. I am free, knowing what the artist intented, to go my own way as an interpreter. But this includes the respect for what the artist wanted. And often we simply do not know (which makes the fight for recognition pointless, because on the basis of speculation nothing can be decided).

3) Contemplating the Contemplation

I have been familiar with Friedrich paintings, in reproduction, since early childhood. In 1974, a bicentennial year, I was three years old, and the stamps that were being issued in both Germanies, I collected as a child. I do not recall how I did perceive the paintings, being reproduced on these stamps, but I do recall that I knew them, and that I developed a basic understanding of political geography, simply by becoming aware that there was West-Germany issuing a stamp, and that there was East-Germany issuing a stamp, a similar one, but one, as I would say today, with two comrades contemplating the moon, while in West-Germany obviously a man and a woman were contemplating the moon.

In 2011 my photograph of the painting in the Nationalgalerie was to become picture number 1047 of the pictures that I brought back from my trip. And if I am looking back at that trip now, it seems to me that I am doing exactly the same thing as Friedrich in his paintings and with his paintings: I am contemplating my own contemplation in 2011. How did I perceive the evening mood, shown above. How did I perceive the line of paintings in the museum, and the presentation of Friedrich paintings? And how did I perceive a person showing the victory-sign, while turning her back to the Mönch am Meer? I think that Friedrich would have smiled. It must be allowed not to be moved by Friedrich. It must be allowed to misunderstand him, and, yes, even to deliberately ignore him by preferring the distractions of Berlin to a test-like tourist visit in the Nationalgalerie. Why should everyone grasp what the Mönch am Meer is about. Daily life is usually the opposite of grave contemplation on the elementary facts of human life, and it has to be. And perhaps turning one’s back to the Mönch am Meer is even a deliberate statement: for the moment the vitality of youthful life is more important than the musing on the stages of life, the ungraspable of the creation and the creator, and on humans’ mortality. Youthful life has to be lived, and I think that Auf dem Segler (Hermitage), for Friedrich himself as for his wife, was, then, a youthful picture.