The Sublime in Friedrich's Paintings: Nature, Vastness, and Human Experience

The sublime is difficult to define, encompassing judgment, feeling, state of mind, and response to art or nature. Kant argued it can have form and be formless, exceeding perception due to size. Edmund Burke noted obscurity is necessary for terror. Friedrich communicated the sublime through semi-abstract landscapes, while Mark Rothko developed abstract paintings addressing vastness and solitude. Rothko's color fields engulf viewers, communicating basic human emotions like tragedy and ecstasy. Both artists sought to evoke the sublime, though Rothko removed the monk figure entirely, replacing it with immersive color experiences.

Art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote 'The Sublime Abstract' establishing a connection between Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, and Rothko. Friedrich's 'Monk on the Beach' (1809) shows a small figure contemplating the infinite sea and sky, with horizontal lines pushing toward abstraction. Turner's 'The Evening Star' earned him fame as a precursor to abstract painting through extreme color rarefaction. Rothko's 'Brown on Blue' (1954) was seen by Rosenblum as doing the same thing, revealing that in Rothko's abstract language, viewers themselves become the monk before the sea, in contemplative silence. Rothko associated colors with specific meanings: intense yellows and reds expressed vitality but were also colors of hell and blood; black represented death and feelings of inadequacy. He believed people who wept before his paintings were experiencing the same religious experience he had when painting them.

Color field painting emerged as a counterpoint to gestural abstraction, emphasizing large areas of flat color over dynamic brushwork. Barnett Newman (1905-1970) created imposing works divided by vertical 'zips' designed to energize color fields through dynamic balance. Mark Rothko (1903-1970) believed representation conflicted with his sublime vision of universal themes relating to tragedy; he saw color as the primary conveyor of meaning, considering any other elements distractions. Rothko and Newman favored expressing complex thoughts through simple expression. When MOMA purchased Rothko's painting in 1950, one trustee resigned because it was considered so radical. Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) invented soak stain painting—a revolutionary technique where raw unprimed canvas is rolled out on the floor and diluted paint is poured directly onto it, creating a true partnership between artist and medium since complete control was impossible. Morris Lewis (1912-1962) adapted this technique by elevating the canvas at angles so paint would stream down, then flipping it to pour from other directions.

Mark Rothko, a major figure in American abstract expressionism, created paintings from the 1940s-50s consisting of bands of overlapping color. These works are simple but not banal - they are essential, allowing artists to concentrate more directly on the meaning they want to attribute to their works. This essentialism is a distinctive trait of contemporary art. Friedrich's painting, which resolves into three color bands (beach, sea, sky), shows how Romantic art already contained the essentialism that would characterize 20th century abstract art. The Romantic 'desire for infinity, desire for greatness, aspiration to go beyond' that accompanies every human being throughout their existence must be represented through something physical and concrete in Romantic art, but abstract painters can do so directly. Rothko's paintings required months of work with transparent color glazes that had to dry before the next layer could be applied. Rothko remained to contemplate his paintings for long periods, just as the wanderer contemplates the landscape and the monk contemplates the sea. The large format of his paintings allows viewers to immerse themselves in the colored space, which becomes a spiritual space.

Like Jackson Pollock, who used pure, naked energy and rhythm, Rothko's work 'Lavender Mist' shows this characteristic. Barnett Newman's work on colored backgrounds left colder impressions. The greatest influence on Rothko during this period was Clifford Still, who also created large colored surfaces but whose density gave them tragedy combined with torn, layered boundaries. This static vision allowed these artists to separate from the European school and place the United States on the map of the art world for the first time in history. In the 1950s, Rothko's methods of expression could no longer fit within a single artistic movement. In 1951, he believed he had found his own voice on enormous canvases. Rectangles and colored lines were arranged horizontally, creating majestic, stable, and weightless compositions. The boundaries and lines where colors met were blurred, opening up a background that brought the composition together. The initial monochrome was overlaid with other colors. These paintings reminded viewers of bright doorways or windows, or of a book in which the artist could record revelations from an unknown world. Rothko stated that abstract painting removes obstacles between the artist and the idea, and between the idea and the viewer, allowing him to speak about complex things in a simple way.

The anthropocene crisis (climate change, fossil fuels) presents a paradox for the sublime: on one hand, civilization holds its feet to the fire (greater power than ever before); on the other hand, we face unprecedented disaster. This situation may qualify as sublime experience—either as Burkean overwhelm by external reality or as recognition of something within ourselves responding to what we see. The question is whether this relationship remains sublime or becomes something else. The sublime shakes us out of habitual sense of self and stable individual identity, potentially enabling new kinds of connections—community bonds formed through shared transcendent experiences. Standing on a mountain with someone creates a connection that persists even after loss, transforming the experience into something painful yet meaningful. Discontinuity is central to sublime experience—something unexpected bursts through the fabric of ordinary experience. Walter Benjamin argued distraction is necessary for genuinely modern art. Using Saul on the road to Damascus as analogy: he couldn't have had his transformative experience without the disruptive moment of falling off his horse. The sublime requires rupture from habitual states of being.

The category of the Sublime has returned with force to evidence the Anthropocene and infuse audiences with interest in environmental problems. The complexity that audiences find difficult to assimilate is substituted by the aesthetic quantum of the Sublime, which tensions the limits of imagination but is easier to assume than to comprehend the complex aesthetics of ecological and climate research. The differentiation of responsibilities and complexity of population participation is substituted by the image or quasi-image of the Sublime, which pretends to interpellate equally all audiences. This positions us as subjects of the Sublime as humanity correlating to the quantum of power, rather than as variables of the Earth system. The Sublime is an aesthetic response possible to the scientific and technological mediations that allow comprehension of terrestrial dimensions, deep time, and environmental factors, attuning to the power that shines in these mediations rather than to the precision of processes that help us understand.

The toxic sublime is an artistic and conceptual framework that engages with tensions between beauty and revulsion, abstraction and tangible environmental effects, using visual art to make invisible environmental contamination visible and to provoke contemplation of viewers' position within polluted worlds; this approach raises important questions about how visual representations of environmental harm function to encourage awareness while also acknowledging limitations and potential pitfalls in translating aesthetic experience into meaningful political or behavioral change.

Aesthetic appreciation of nature involves specific skills beyond passive observation: kinesthetic motion through space, spatial awareness (different bioregions call for different movements), temporal awareness (different times produce different experiences), and reflecting on how repeated visits yield different perceptions. Since perception is constitutively action-oriented, variations in motor activity and timing disclose different perceptual structures. The anthropogenic sublime represents a contemporary development where traditional sublime experiences involving nature outstripping human rational capacities intersect with human-caused environmental changes. Hurricanes partly caused by climate change create a new category where nature is both beyond human control and partially our own creation. This concept addresses how human intervention creates environmental conditions that trouble us—they are beyond our control while simultaneously being something we have caused, representing a complex intersection of human agency and natural power.

In the Anthropocene, we are frightened by our own capability to destroy the planet through climate change. This qualifies as sublime—if life is valuable and we're threatening it on an epic scale, this represents something remarkable. Yet it's banal because we're all implicated—killing a planet by dropping kids at school. Creative work must take this on board without messaging, requiring nuanced approaches that acknowledge horror while recognizing daily beauty and productivity. The conversation concludes by emphasizing that being a citizen today requires intellectual equipment not previously needed, as our sense of place is complicated and stretched across multiple scales, demanding both terror and hope in equal measure.

Art historian Robert Rosenblum wrote 'The Sublime Abstract' establishing a connection between Caspar David Friedrich, J.M.W. Turner, and Rothko. Friedrich's 'Monk on the Beach' (1809) shows a small figure contemplating the infinite sea and sky, with horizontal lines pushing toward abstraction. Turner's 'The Evening Star' earned him fame as a precursor to abstract painting through extreme color rarefaction. Rothko's 'Brown on Blue' (1954) was seen by Rosenblum as doing the same thing, revealing that in Rothko's abstract language, viewers themselves become the monk before the sea, in contemplative silence. Rothko associated colors with specific meanings: intense yellows and reds expressed vitality but were also colors of hell and blood; black represented death and feelings of inadequacy. He believed people who wept before his paintings were experiencing the same religious experience he had when painting them.

Romanticism applied to figure paintings, with 19th century German painters making highly evocative works. Caspar David Friedrich was the most important German Romantic painter, influenced by mystical work of Rumba. He conveyed strong sense of mood through subject and coloration in landscapes. The power of nature and man's inability to control it are common themes. Friedrich elevated landscape to full emotional power, translating spiritual goals of Christian art into secular language. While some works are blatant in symbolism, others are simple like 'A Monk by the Sea.' The most remarkable English Romantic landscape painter was Joseph Mallord William Turner. His early work was conventional in the 17th century Dutch tradition while his mature work is full of color and luminous, representative of atmosphere itself. He was first to abandon brown priming for white and often used undiluted yellows.

J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) took a different path, academically studying Old Masters while encountering Goethe's color theory proposing emotional associations—blue as gloomy, yellow as serene. He applied this systematically, using plus and minus colors to capture dramatic universal themes. Unlike predecessors who concealed paint application, Turner embraced visible brushwork to prove paint itself could express nature. His 'Rain, Steam and Speed' (1844) depicted a locomotive rushing over a bridge, anticipating modern motion perception through blurred forms, demonstrating how Romanticism embraced modern technology while exploring nature's sublime power. Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) represented German Romanticism's spiritual dimension, seeing the artist as mediator between nature and humanity. Nature was too sublime for ordinary comprehension, requiring artistic interpretation. His landscapes convey strong melancholy and symbolic meaning. 'The Cross in the Mountains' (1800) pioneered using landscape as altarpiece, with every element carrying Christian symbolism—cross, evergreen trees, dying sunlight. As a devout Protestant, Friedrich believed landscape could examine redemption and salvation, aiding meditation. Many objected to landscape replacing religious imagery, yet Friedrich created elaborate carved frames transforming paintings into devotional objects. Viewers approached them in hushed silence, treating them as revered objects. This represents Romanticism's highest ambition: using nature to explore spiritual truths, handing artistic liberty to future generations including the Impressionists.

Caspar David Friedrich, the most important painter of early Romanticism (1820-1850), created paintings that evoke Kant's concept of the sublime by depicting tiny human figures in vast, dramatic landscapes, using Northern European settings with Gothic architecture, stormy seas, and moonlit scenes to symbolize humanity's insignificance before nature's overwhelming power and to explore deep introspective and spiritual contemplation.

Caspar David Friedrich, a German Romantic painter of the early 1800s, revolutionized landscape painting by using nature to evoke the sublime—a concept from Kantian philosophy where humans experience awe and terror before something vast and incomprehensible; Friedrich achieved this through techniques like tiny human figures against vast landscapes, ominous nebulous environments with rolling mists and contorted trees, and the röken figure (viewed from behind), which invited viewers to feel their own insignificance before nature's immensity, making him particularly resonant for winter's humbling season.