ARCHITECTURAL ASSOCIATION

School of Architecture

AALU Models, Methods and Histories

Essay 1

DIBOS DE TRAMONTANA, Daniella

January 2017
Everything is shore. Eternally summons the sea.

(Gottfried Benn)
 This essay looks at the idea of landscape as an ideological concept as introduced by Denis
Cosgrove (1948-2008) in his book Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. First of all, the study will
look critically at the concept that the author argues before turning to the landscape painting by the German
romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), Monk by the Sea started in 1808 and concluded in
1809. This painting has been chosen as the main example because the artist represents not only a landscape
located in Rügen, an island off the north-east coast of Germany, but also reflects the mood through the
landscape, thus the painting contains this dual ambiguity “of the subject and object, and of personal and
social”1, which extends the layers of meaning of the mentioned ideological concept. As well, it forms part
of a period were the artistic tradition of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries is broken and this
might have a relation to the redefinition of land generated by reactions due to capitalism.

Additionally, as Cosgrove “suggest that landscape represents an historically specific way of experiencing
the world”2 there will be an exploration of the painting through the romantic and the sublime as an historical
phenomenon which the study will reveal us in a number of dimensions “a way in which certain classes of
people have signified themselves and their world through their imagined relationship with nature, and
through which they have underlined and communicated their own social role and that of others with respect
to external nature.”3

Furthermore, the discussion will be about the ground rules, as linear perspective and observation and
recording of nature, that landscape painters like Friedrich and artworks like Monk by the Sea provided to
the modern world.

The aim of this essay is to learn on how ideology, as a way of experiencing the world, is both
represented and reproduced in Fredrich’s Monk by the Sea. For analysing this intention, it is important to
go through Cosgrove’s chapter The Idea of Landscape to understand the various layers of meaning that this
ideology gathers. The author points out, as one of the most important arguments, that landscape is not only
an object material, and in fact it also carries a subject matter. This statement turns the concept in various
dimensions and suggests that landscape is not only “the surface of the earth”4 but also “a way of seeing
the world.”5 Continuing this idea, he also presents the tension between the personal and the social which
refers to the individual and collective involvement with the landscape which begins to overthrow its
scientific concept.

Moving forward trough the different meanings, scientific fields such as geography appear to be the ones
were the landscape concept founds itself bounded in purely objective terms. According to this model,
landscape would be “a land area of measurable proportions and properties.”6 For example, if Fredrich’s
representation of Rügen’s landscape would be under this standards, probably the result would be a
description of the object picturing the type of land, the features, the inhabitants and the physical phenomena.

1
Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1984), 14-15.
2
Ibid., 15.
3
Ibid., 15.
4
Ibid., 13.
5
Ibid., 13.
6
Ibid., 16.
But then again, returning to Monk by the Sea as an example, definitively everybody that observes the
painting is able to say that it is a representation of Rügen’s landscape but through Fredrich’s experience
which remind us that subjective and personal connotations could also be present in this ideological concept.
During different historical moments, geographers found a conflict in this idea, which is also valid to
landscape meaning, and they even thought of excluding it from the geographical vocabulary. However,
they realized that there was a meaning that “lies ‘beyond science’”7 and compromises the concept with an
affective dimension as painters, poets and novelists did. As Cosgrove states, “Like French geographer Paul
Vidal de la Blache [(1845-1918), Carl] Sauer [(1889-1975)] recognised that the affective dimension of
landscape indicated a harmony between human life and the milieu in which it is lived.” 8 As mentioned
before, in landscape the personal and the social coexist; while the personal concept embraces an individual
landscape experience, the social concept embraces a collective landscape one, being this last one more
meaningful for geography because it integrates social and symbolic means of a community.

Nevertheless, in landscape painting we perceive the perception of a particular scenario from an individual,
a personal experience that again is singular in each person that observes the artwork. This branch of painting
emerged during the fifteenth century in Europe “in the most economically advanced, densest settled and
most highly urbanised regions.”9 As a matter of fact, it is a reaction to modernization over the long term.
All started through the transition from feudalism to capitalism, were there was no control over land and
overturned to a completely controlled system in terms not only of land but also human. Cities started to
grow and people started to fear to lose nature, and this attitude manifested in art in many ways, being the
technique of perspective one of the most important, were “the terms control and order are significant.”10
In the same century, were painters, sculptors and architects “found themselves in a situation in which they
had to adapt the new programme [innovation] to an old tradition”11, Leone Battista Alberti (1404-1472)
provided the foundation for landscape painting with his theories and techniques published in his works such
as in “his treatise on art, Della Pintura (1435-6), … which will allow the painter to represent things as
they really are.”12 This influences maintained until Fredrich’s time and one hint about this fact is that
J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), one of Friedrich’s contemporary outstanding colleagues, taught perspective at
the Royal Academy. Hence, perspective was a device of power over the exterior world that emerged as a
product of specific historical circumstances, “that reinforce ideas of individualism, subjective control of an
objective environment and the separation of a personal experience from the flux of collective historical
experience.”13

In addition, as Cosgrove suggests that to understand the idea of landscape the study should trace the history,
the essay will know focus on a recognition of the historical moments of this ideological concepts in the
specific context of Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea.

7
Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1984), 17.
8
Ibid., 17.
9
Ibid., 20.
10
Ibid., 21.
11
E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1953), 180.
12
Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1984), 22.
13
Ibid., 27.
Caspar David Friedrich, Monk by the Sea, c.1809, oil-on-canvas, 110cm x 171.5cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin, Germany.

The late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century were periods of importance in art because
classic traditions started to break through and people begun to become more self-conscious. As Gombrich
mentions in his book The Story of Art, there was a period were things were done all in the same way just
because people thought it was the unique way of achieving right results. But then again, people started to
ask themselves why must that way was the only one for attaining the correct style and thus they also wanted
to be differentiated from each other. It was a reaction to the power of reason, especially for the ones who
romanticized with the return of a faithful world. One of the most immediate consequence in painting is that
artists were searching for new types of subject and matter, and this new freedom let the landscape painting
arise. At its begging, this branch of painting was not taken seriously and this kind of revolution helped to
change the attitude through the romantic vision of those times.

Monk by the Sea landscape painting belongs to the moment mentioned before, were great and successful
artists such as Turner and John Constable (1776-1837) were also representing nature in poetic and honest
forms. However, Friedrich was the Romantic painter in Europe “whose landscape pictures reflect the mood
of the Romantic lyrical poetry of his time which is more familiar to us through [Franz] Schubert’s [1797-
1828] songs.”14 It was first exhibited in Berlin in 1810 next to Abbey Among Oak Trees, another
Friedrich’s landscape painting, and the place has been identified, as stated before, in Rügen, an island off
the north-east coast of Germany.

Looking closer through the historical phenomena, we notice that one of the main type of landscapes that
Friedrich represents in his paintings, as in Monk by the Sea, are views of romantic places. This is related,
as mentioned in advance, to the fear of people loosing nature due to rapid modernization of cities. It is

14
E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1953), 375.
important to mention that Friedrich, as other contemporary landscape painters to him, focus their studies
on nature and not on paintings for them to sought perfection in nature. A brilliant example are Constable’s
Cloud Studies and other nature detailed inventories which then served for the nineteenth century landscape
painters. Still, the nature represented in Friedrich’s paintings was transformed by his own experience and
“bring to the light of day what he had seen in darkness in a work of art that ‘may react upon others from
the outside inwards’.”15 The romantics tended to figure in their artworks their own way of experiencing the
world, less scientific and more mysterious. Another uncanny subject in Monk by the Sea, as in other
Friedrich’s paintings, is the lonely figure. As mentioned by Hugh Honour in his book Romanticism, it
reminds the audience both, the differences and similarities, between the painting and the attitudes to nature.
There is also a concern by the painter of expressing his thoughts and emotions that are not possible to put
into words.

Actually, this sensitive manner of Friedrich recognizing just an individual in the landscape painting, turns
in one of the main concepts of the essay. It is not a group of people experiencing the landscape, it is an
isolated figure in this kind of wilderness, minor to the landscape. It is about the communion with nature,
but an individual and intimate communion and that is the ideology represented in Monk by the Sea, this
sort of power over the landscape. Furthermore, we notice that “the lone figure on the shore represents
Friedrich himself seen from behind but recognizable through his lost profile.”16 This act of the spectator
turning his back on the landscape painting brings back the concept of dual ambiguity over the ideology as
explained by Cosgrove:

“Perspective locates the subject outside the landscape and stresses the unchanging objectivity of
what is observed therein. Collective human experience is reduced in significance compared with
the individuality of the observer. But by claiming realism, paintings of landscape and the idea of
landscape itself offer the illusion of an affinity with the insider’s world, the world we do
experience as a collective product of people subjectively engaged with their milieu.”17

The ideas mentioned, bind together a group of artists that are distinguished by their romantic landscapes
but for moving forward and because it is also present in Monk by the Sea, it is essential to go through a
concept that overlaps the romantic, the sublime. “His pictures owe their extraordinary power less to
emblems than to their visual subtlety, a unique manner of seeing and representing, the strange intense
polarity of closeness and distance, of precise detail and sublime aura." 18

This new concept mentioned, “In the history of ideas it has a deeper meaning [than nowadays], pointing
to the heights of somethings truly extraordinary, an ideal that artists have long pursued.”19 Edmund
Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry refers to the sublime as of horror experiences. This is because nature, as
seen as the most sublime object, had the power to produce tough experiences. This is seen as a romantic
concept about the sublime which influenced artists such as Friedrich. In Monk by the Sea, the painter is

15
Hugh Honour, Romanticism, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1979), 64.
16
Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape, (London: Reaktion Books Ltd, 1990), 81.
17
Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, (London: Croom Helm Ltd, 1984), 27.
18
Hugh Honour, Romanticism, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 1979), 78.
19
Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Ridings (eds.), ‘What is the sublime?’, The Art of the Sublime, Tate Research Publication, January
2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/what-is-the-sublime-r1109449, accessed December 2016.
responding to the sublime concept of his context and it is clear when the focus goes into the ocean and
evokes feelings of infinity and isolation.

Although for some thinkers the sublime disappeared at the end of the nineteenth century, it is
possible to say that the romantic and the sublime are the continuity to abstract expressionism. In fact, this
concept might be seen as the last part of romanticism, were artists are also interested in the sublime. This
started happening during the mid-twentieth century were artists such as Mark Rothko (1903-1970) were
still engaged to the sublime concept and led to a modern idea. As in the romantic sublime, rather than
picturing someone loosing themselves in nature is kind the idea of losing yourself in immediate relationship
to the scale of the painting. Taking Rothko’s Black on Gray final series paintings as an example, anyone
standing in front of this large scale diffuse paintings will have an immersive experience similar to the one
of standing in front of Monk by the Sea. As well, in the first instance it is likely to notice the relation
between this paintings mentioned, not only because of form terms but also because of experiences that
spectators can literally feel.

Mark Rothko, Untitled 1969, c.1969, acrylic on paper, 123.5cm x 173cm, National Gallery of Art, Washington, USA.

In conclusion, it is possible to notice upon how ideology, as a way of experiencing the world, is
both represented in and reproduced by Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea. The artist’s specific kind of view of
nature is not in itself natural, but the product of historical circumstances in Europe. As described in the
essay, the landscape painting contains, as a matter of fact, object and subject material and represents both,
the personal and social connotations. It is also interesting to point out how this concepts transcend, with
similar meanings, to modern forms as in the abstract expressionism and later on to photography.
Bibliography

Cosgrove, Denis E. Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape. London: Published by Croom Helm Ltd,
1984.

Gombrich, E.H. The Story of Art. London: Published by Phaidon Press Ltd, 1953.

Honour, Hugh. Romanticism. London: Published by Penguin Books Ltd, 1979.

Koerner, Joseph Leo. Caspar David Friedrich and the subject of landscape. London: Published by Reaktion
books Ltd, 1990.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry. New York: Published by Oxford University Press Inc, 1990.

Llewellyn, Nigel and Ridings, Christine (eds.), ‘What is the sublime?’, The Art of the Sublime, Tate
Research Publication, January 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/what-
is-the-sublime-r1109449, accessed December 2016.

Llewellyn, Nigel and Ridings, Christine (eds.), ‘The Romantic sublime’, The Art of the Sublime, Tate
Research Publication, January 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-
romantic-sublime-r1109221, accessed December 2016.

Llewellyn, Nigel and Ridings, Christine (eds.), ‘The modern sublime’, The Art of the Sublime, Tate
Research Publication, January 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-
modern-sublime-r1109223, accessed December 2016.