The Expansive, Unnerving, and Breathtaking: The Sublime in Landscape Painting Across Time and Space

Landscape painting has been involved in discourses regarding the concept of the sublime for hundreds of years, and these works of art which depict views of the natural world bridge the gap between concepts of the sublime which are wholly nature-focused and those which are wholly idea-focused. The paintings “Early Spring” from Guo Xi and “The Sea of Ice” (also called “Das Eismeer” in German or “The Wreck of Hope”) from Caspar David Friedrich depict two, on first look, strikingly different landscapes; however, on deep inspection these works have surprising parallels as well as differences which can jointly, and contrastingly, illustrate concepts of the sublime. In this essay, after introducing these two paintings and providing historical background on their creation and reception, I explain three different perspectives of the sublime, those of Immanuel Kant, Friedrich himself, as interpreted by Laure Cahen-Maurel, and Longinus as well as Zhuangzi, as interpreted by Mingjun Lu. I then critically analyze the two paintings from these different understandings of the sublime. I conclude the essay by examining these works and these understandings of the sublime in light of the recent insights of Margherita Archangeli and Jérôme Dokic regarding the sublime and radical limit experiences and by discussing how this analysis intersects with debates regarding the cross-cultural transferability of ideas of the sublime.

“Early Spring” is a painting from 1072 CE and by Guo Xi (Early Spring (早春圖); Mann, “Artist’s Biography”). Guo Xi was a Chinese court painter under Emperor Shenzong, who reigned from 1068-1085 CE (Mann, “Artist’s Biography”), of the Northern Song Dynasty, which ruled from 960-1129 CE (Art: Early Spring; Mann, “Historical Context” and “Artist’s Biography”). Its dimensions are approximately 62 by 43 inches (“Art: Early Spring”). It is a hanging scroll painting, in which ink and color was painted on a silk surface (“Art: Early Spring”; “Early Spring (早春圖)”; “Guo Xi’s Early Spring”; Mann, “Medium”); this style of painting is called shan shui, which often depicts natural subjects, which is influenced by Daoist thought, and which unconventionally uses ink instead of paint (Mann, “Shan Shui”). Chinese landscape painting was at its height during the Northern Song Dynasty (“Art: Early Spring”, Mann, “Historical Context”); however, unlike many paintings from this era, this painting is signed and dated (“Art: Early Spring”; “Guo Xi’s Early Spring”).

"Early Spring" by Guo Xi ("Art: Early Spring")

The painting is a depiction of a majestic, “ethereal and monumental” (Art: Early Spring) mountain, one that has a group of peaks which seem to “float” above intertwining, s-shaped flows of mist (“Early Spring (早春圖)”; Murashige 352). There is a stream, which includes multiple waterfalls cascading into a pond-filled gorge, on the busier bottom right side of the painting (Murashige 340, 345), while a distant view of a valley is revealed on the middle left side of the painting (Murashige 340), and what is likely a water body is present in the bottom left of the painting, bordered by boulders (Murashige 345). The different figurative elements of the painting, including trees, rocks, water, and mist, all seem to orient themselves in a swirling motion; they retain their individuality, but this individuality is relational in a way which leads them to be understood as all part of one unified whole (Murashige 343, 349-350). The viewer’s perspective changes depending on which part of the painting they are looking at, as the artist used a technique called “floating perspective” (Art: Early Spring; Mann, “Artist’s Biography”; Murashige 342, 353). There are people going about their daily routines as well as buildings in the painting, but they are hard to see (Murashige 340, 349). Guo Xi was well-regarded in his lifetime, and remains an important person in the history of Chinese art today (“Guo Xi’s Early Spring”; Mann, “Artist’s Biography”), with “Early Spring” currently being exhibited in the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan (“Art: Early Spring”; “Early Spring (早春圖)”; Mann, “Please Note”); however, shortly after his lifetime, his work fell in popularity, with some of his paintings being used as rags in the royal court (“Guo Xi’s Early Spring”).

“The Sea of Ice” is a painting from 1823-1824 and by Caspar David Friedrich, a renowned landscape painter from what is now Germany (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 131-132; Levinson). The painting is an oil on canvas (Levinson; “The Sea of Ice”), a medium which Friedrich began to favor after 1806 (Hinrichs 143); its dimensions are approximately 38 by 50 inches, and it is currently exhibited at the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The painting depicts numerous confusingly arranged, jagged ice-floes and icebergs in an arctic setting, with the remains of a wrecked ship obscured underneath to the point of being hard to see upon first look (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Levinson). The pinnacle of ice near the center of the painting reaches up into the sky, which is enlightened by the sun right above it in a way that reminds viewers of spiritual transcendence (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”). Friedrich was both a very religious Protestant Christian and an admirer of nature, so it has been speculated that this painting signals both the power of God and the power of nature over humankind (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 144-145, 148, 155; Cahen-Maurel 7; “The Sea of Ice”).

"The Sea of Ice" by Caspar David Friedrich (Levinson)

Several events informed the creation of “The Sea of Ice''. One event was the widely-publicized voyage of the British explorer and admiral William Parry and his two ships to the North American Arctic in 1819-1820, which were troubled but did lead to a safe return (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 133; Levinson; “The Sea of Ice”). Another event was a tragic incident in 1787 in which Friedrich almost lost his life to falling into the ice at 13, was saved by his younger brother Christoph, and looked on, powerless, as Christoph drowned (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 146; Levinson; “The Sea of Ice”). A final event was Friedrich completing several oil sketches of ice on the Elbe River in German-speaking Europe in 1820-1821 (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 134-135; Levinson). Friedrich was a widely-celebrated painter in the years before the creation of “The Sea of Ice'', but the painting had a mixed-negative reaction because of its radical form and dark subject matter, and he died with the painting unsold just over 15 years after its first showing (Hinrich 148; Levinson; “The Sea of Ice”). The painting, and Friedrich’s art in general, has received four waves of popularity since his death. It first was emulated in polar paintings in the late 1800’s and expressionist and modern architecture works of the 1920’s and 1930’s (Levinson). It was then used as a tool of Nazi propaganda; Friedrich was a German nationalist who wanted to see the German-speaking lands of his time united into a single country, but there is not evidence that he had the type of hateful views the Nazis expoused (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 147-153; Levinson). After his works’ popularity lessened for decades because of its association with the Nazis, it regained popularity in the post-1970’s postmodernist era for its revolutionary form and unique approach to subject matter, and has inspired several works of postmodern art and architecture (Cahen-Maurel 2, 12; Levinson).

The sublime is a multifaceted concept which has been explored by many theorists throughout history; however, for the purposes of this analysis, I will explore these two landscape paintings through ideas about the sublime from Immanuel Kant, Friedrich himself, as interpreted by Laure Cahen-Maurel, and Longinus as well as Zhuangzi, as interpreted by Mingjun Lu.

The famous German-speaking philosopher Immanuel Kant discussed his views on the sublime in “The Analytic of the Sublime”, the second part of his work Critique of the Power of Judgment. Kant describes two broad categories of the sublime; both of these types of the sublime, to him, lead us to realize the power of our reason to understand that we are facing something beyond comparison, and therefore lead us to recognize the freedom our reason has over our animal instincts and over nature (Kant 134, 145, 147). Kant first describes the mathematically sublime, which he defines as what is impossible to precisely conceive of or measure beyond a certain magnitude, either lesser or greater. This measurement is an aesthetic estimate, not a precise measure (Kant 131-135). Kant then describes the dynamically sublime, which he defines as being aroused by objects of fear when one is conscious of their own relative safety in a situation. He brings up many examples of the dynamically sublime aroused by natural events but that occur within us (Kant 143-147).

Laure Cahen-Maurel interprets the sublime as understood by Friedrich himself in his posthumously-published work Considerations while contemplating a collection of paintings by artists who are for most part still living or recently deceased as distinctive from the Kantian sublime. She describes how he understood the sublime to be the greatest form of, not the opposite of, the beautiful, and how he thought that all objects, both grand and ordinary, could be sublime when they are put in relation to something spiritual (Cahen-Maurel 5-8). She states that, for Friedrich, the artistic sublime connects humanity to God “by means of a more direct feeling, experienced in the interiority as the meeting point of two worlds, the corporal and the spiritual, the sensible and the intelligible” (Cahen-Maurel 8). So, despite their differences in understanding the sublime, as Kant contrasted it with the beautiful and associated it with things beyond the ordinary (Kant 128, 131-132), the sublime is a profoundly internal experience for both Kant and Friedrich (Cahen-Maurel 11).

Mingjun Lu describes the concept of the cosmic sublime, and claims that it has been articulated by both the ancient Greco-Roman thinker Longinus and the ancient Daoist thinker Zhuangzi in their writings. He describes how the cosmic sublime marvels in the wonder of the infinite scope of the Universe and is related to the dichotomy between the large and the minute and between the subjective consciousness of the viewer and the infinite object they are viewing. He also discusses how Longinus seems to anticipate Kant in elevating the preeminence of the mind in sublime experiences, while Zhuangzi focuses on the uniting of the subject with the infinite oneness of the Universe (Lu 693, 697-698). He contrasts the cosmic sublime with the tragic sublime of Aristotle and Edmund Burke, arguing that the cosmic sublime leads to a more positive affect and insight (Lu 693, 701-702).

Although “Early Spring” and “The Sea of Ice” have many differences, including their differences in their modes of production, artistic styles, time periods, and subject matter -- “Early Spring” includes people pleasantly going about their daily activities in a nice season (Murashige 340, 349), while “The Sea of Ice” implies that people have met their tragic end in dangerous climatic conditions (Cahen-Maurel 11; “Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”; Hinrichs 131)--, there are similarities in how the paintings induce both the Kantian mathematical sublime and the Kantian dynamic sublime. The mathematical sublime is induced in both paintings through the sheer number of different elements created by the brush, people, buildings, water, and especially trees and rocks in “Early Spring” and pieces of the wrecked ship and especially angular ice floes in “The Sea of Ice”. We can only aesthetically estimate the sheer variety of detail in these natural landscapes when we spend less than an immense amount of time studying the paintings, and this estimate can only be what is beyond comparison. The dynamical sublime is induced by both paintings though an implied fear and wonder induced by the landscape; however, this fear and wonder is induced in different ways by the two paintings. In “Early Spring”, it is sparked by the top of the mountain, fantastically, seemingly floating above the mist (“Early Spring (早春圖)”; Murashige 352). Friedrich himself described how mist could induce a sublime effect through its opacity inducing imaginative thoughts (Cahen-Maurel 10; Friedrich, qtd. in Cahen-Maurel 10). In “The Sea of Ice”, it is sparked by the fact that the viewer is faced with monumental, sharp pieces of ice which have eviscerated a ship, and is implied to be standing on an ice floe themselves (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”). Even though Kant, Friedrich, Longinus, and Zhuangzi viewed the sublime as having a greater overall positive affect than Aristotle and Burke, there is still an overwhelming and unnerving quality to the sublime for them, and this is shown in both “Early Spring” and “The Sea of Ice” by their aspects which spark the dynamical sublime.

Both the Friedrichian sublime and the cosmic sublime can also ensue in viewers of both “Early Spring” and “The Sea of Ice”. The objects in both paintings are relatively ordinary when seen in isolation; trees, rocks, and water as seen in “Early Spring” are common features of many varied landscapes all around the world, and ice is commonly seen in nature in temperate and colder climates and is used to cool in varied circumstances. It is only because these ordinary objects are in a certain figuration which has a spiritual or at least elevated situation, a magically floating mountain in “Early Spring” and a harrowingly destructive group of sharp ice floes and icebergs in “The Sea of Ice”, that they are sublime; this connects to Friedrich’s account of the sublime. The cosmic sublime is in play for both paintings because of the perspective that the artists intended the viewer to have through their skillful crafting of the paintings; in both paintings, the artists drew the viewer’s eye to the expansiveness at the top of the work; in the case of “Early Spring”, Guo Xi places the viewer below the top of the mountain so they have to look up at its marvelousness (Murashige 342), while in the case of “The Sea of Ice”, Friedrich does the same and also illuminates the sky above the pinnacle of the tallest iceberg (“Caspar David Friedrich: The Sea of Ice”). Both paintings give the viewer a sense of their smallness in the face of the sky, and the Universe, but also the awesomeness of the fact that they have, in Kant’s terms, the reason to comprehend, in some sense, the power of nature.

Margherita Archangeli and Jérôme Dokic describe their innovative take on the sublime in their article “At the Limits: What Drives Experiences of the Sublime”. They argue that radical limit experiences are an essential component of sublime experiences (Archangeli and Dokic 9). They define radical limit experiences as, in short, experiences in which the subject cannot conceive of a greater or lesser experience with a certain faculty, is aware of the shortcoming of this faculty, and does not know of any other faculty that can break this limitation; mundane limit experiences are similar, but do not have the last aspect mentioned (Archangeli and Dokic 6-7). Limit experiences of both a sightwise and an emotional nature are brought about by, respectively, fantastic and unnerving elements of “Early Spring” and “The Sea of Ice”. The subject cannot conceive of, by sight, a real-life mountain more obscured by mist than the one in “Early Spring”, and the subject cannot conceive of, by sight, a real-life mass of ice more angular and dangerous than that of “The Sea of Ice”. Yet these are only mundane limit-experiences; a viewer could use another faculty besides sight to see that the mountain was not really floating and can in both instances use their reason to understand that what is shown in both of the paintings is not actually real. However, there is no faculty humans have that can fully conceive of dying, shipwrecked in icy peril, as is shown in “The Sea of Ice”, or fully conceive of (not just imagine) living in a marvelous mountain landscape like the one seen in “Early Spring”; it is conceiving of being the humans in the paintings, despite them being out of view in “The Sea of Ice” and being tiny in “Early Spring”, which induces radical limit experiences in viewers of the two paintings. The trick used by the two artists to raise the sublimity of the paintings past that induced by these limit experiences is to obscure, but not fully hide, these unimaginable moments of human life and death through breathtaking views of the natural world.

As this exploration of sublimity in these two landscape paintings comes full circle, back to questions about how much the sublime has to do with the natural world and how much it has to do with human ideas, a question emerges. Is the sublime cross-culturally transferable? Can this Eurocentric term be applied to an 11th-century Chinese landscape painting to the same degree as it can to a European, 19th-century counterpart? I noticed that the Daoist ideas present in “Early Spring” and Murashige and Lu’s articles were to an extent marginalized because of the focus of this paper on the sublime. But I think that the sublime is, to a degree, cross-culturally relevant, although cultural context should always be considered as a limiting factor to the universalizability of concepts such as the sublime. The article from Lu shows that fruitful ideas can emerge from comparing and contrasting ideas from different time periods and places. And there are human experiences, sture and grappling with mortality, which are, respectively, near-universal and universal.

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