The Wall Street Journal - 22.02.2020 - 23.02.2020

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BYCHRISTOPHIRMSCHER

I

N1810,Johanna Schopen-
hauer, a prolific writer now
mostly remembered as the
philosopher’s mother, traveled
to Dresden to visit the painter
Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).
When she saw his newly finished
painting “The Abbey in the Oakwood,”
she shuddered. “One freezes solid at
that sight,” she wrote. “It is as if one
could hear the snow crackling under
one’s feet.” I had a similar feeling
when I first encountered the original
in the Old National Gallery in Berlin.
Gnarly oak trees, their leafless
branches and broken-off trunks reach-
ing into a darkening, twilight sky, en-
circle—“like wailing ghosts,” thought
Schopenhauer—the broken wall of a
ruined church, the last thing left
standing, its lone high window a bit-
ter mockery of past grandeur: Here
the outside has long become the in-
side. Through the brownish fog set-
tling in on the snowy ground, the
viewer can just about make out a pro-
cession of monks carrying a coffin,
their dark shapes nearly indistin-
guishable from the tottering tomb-
stones that line their path. “What a
vision of death this is,” gasped Scho-
penhauer, adding that Friedrich’s
work was really “different from that
of all other landscape painters.”
In the Old National Gallery, “The
Abbey in the Oakwood” hangs next to
its equally famous companion piece,
“The Monk by the Sea” (1808-10),
which made a big impression on
another well-known writer of the time,
Heinrich von Kleist. Contemplating it,
said Kleist, he felt as if his “eyelids
had been cut off.” The painting, which
features a solitary, black-clad wanderer
on a dreary beach facing a boundless
expanse of dark sky and darker water,
both attracted and repulsed Kleist.
There were no signs of life here, and
yet Kleist fancied he could hear the
crying of the birds, the sighing of the
waves, the murmur of the air.
In her gorgeously illustrated
“Caspar David Friedrich: Nature and
Self,” a triumph of bookmaking for
Yale University Press, art historian
Nina Amstutz sets out to normalize
what Friedrich did, never mind those
jittery reactions from his contempo-
raries. With panache, she sends him
back to where he belongs, the Roman-
tic era. Like everyone else around
him, Friedrich was, she believes, un-
der the spell of GermanNaturphiloso-
phie, the view that there is no separa-
tion between the self and the world,
humankind and nature. Thus, when
the painter drew himself in 1810, his
woolly hair, bushy eyebrows, and out-

of-control mutton chops almost oblit-

erated by the disturbing glare of his

eyes, he was drawing not just a face

but a rock formation. The stubbly oak

trees in his paintings were, she ex-

plains, mirror images of the “plant

living within us,” the body’s circula-

tory and nervous systems. Those

glowing suns in Friedrich’s land-

scapes? Figurations of the human

eyeball, with surrounding branches

taking the place of nerves. And that

reddish water in a forest pond? Body

fluids leaking out from under a rock

that was a tombstone in disguise.

To prove her point, Ms. Amstutz

casts a net so wide that the occasional

fact slips through. One of her exam-

ples for the intersection of the human

and the natural worlds during the Ro-

mantic period is the self-portrait that

John James Audubon inserted into his

depiction of a soaring golden eagle in

his “Birds of America,” “imparting to

viewers the unmediated character of

his observations.” But the tiny hunter

balancing on a log appears only in the

watercolor study, not in the finished

plate, and was thus never actually

seen by his viewers. Audubon knew

that the magnificent bird he had

drawn had left the world of human

worries behind, that nature was more

than a mirror of the self.

Yet the latter is not an insight Ms.

Amstutz seems willing to grant to

Friedrich. Take her reading of “Rocky

Ravine” (1822-23), Friedrich’s view of

four gigantic rock pinnacles in a

deeply wooded, hilly area in eastern

Germany known as “Saxon Switzer-

land.” In his painting, Friedrich boldly

added a fifth, thumb-like protrusion,

so that, to the imaginative viewer,

these cliffs now looked like a massive

left hand reaching up from the bot-

tom of the earth: a fossilized monu-

ment, as Ms. Amstutz sees it, to the

artist’s own hand that had made the

picture. In order to explain why this

was a left hand (given that Friedrich

himself was a righty), Ms. Amstutz

performs some interpretive acro-

batics, reminding us, among other

things, that a self-portrait even of

right-handed artist usually features

the left hand, since the other append-

age was obviously needed to paint the

thing. The problem is that once you

apply Ms. Amstutz’s method, there is

no real stopping point. Everything be-

gins to look like something else, and

the lightly illuminated tree stump in

the foreground of “Rocky Ravine”

might as well be a sitting angel. What

is lost is any sense of the apocalyptic

intensity of Friedrich’s composition, in

which these towering rocks, partially

veiled in mist, seem to have just risen

from the stone-cold heart of the world,

their ascent heralded by the collapsed

tree that cuts diagonally through the

foreground.

There is an admirable consistency

to Ms. Amstutz’s sleuthing, even

though her evidence is often as thin as

(1808), such a cross, with the effigy of

God’s abandoned son attached to it, is

turned away from the viewer, facing,

as we all do in the end, the setting sun.

In 1835, Friedrich suffered a debil-

itating stroke. The tracks we leave on

the shores of the world might seem

deep to us, he had written two de-

cades earlier, but all it takes is a gust

of wind and they are gone. He did

manage to finish the mesmerizing

“Seashore in Moonlight” (1835-36),

in which shimmering patches of

moonlight would seem to lead the

observer all the way to the horizon—

a preview of infinity, were it not for

the billowing band of black clouds

pressing down on it. It’s almost com-

pletely dark where the viewer stands.

This is, I suspect, the Caspar David

Friedrich who still speaks to us today.

It’s not the one who has studied the

anatomy books, looked at a landscape,

and found mostly reflections of him-

self, but the one Johanna Schopen-

hauer celebrated in 1810: a painter

who has visualized for us, like few

others before or after him, the beau-

tiful and terrifying strangeness of the

world and the prospect of our own

disappearance from it. As for what

comes after, that was, as Friedrich

insisted, “not investigable,” not with

our own eyes.

Mr. Irmscher is director of the

Wells Scholars Program at Indiana

University Bloomington.

the layers of paint Friedrich applied to

his canvases. With great determi-

nation, she humanizes his paintings,

making us feel at home in them. Yet

is this what Friedrich would have

wanted? Humans do in fact appear,

undisguised, in many of his best

works, but they are usually shown

from the side or from behind. When

we get a glimpse of their faces, as in

“Moonrise Over the Sea” (1822), they

often seem blank, even unfinished, de-

fined mostly by the act of looking.

Fully engrossed in the landscape,

Friedrich’s observers model a deep,

inner kind of seeing for us—not the

kind where one looks at the world in

happy recognition, but an infinitely

more serious “seeing to see,” as Emily

Dickinson once called it, with no

promise of success. Friedrich was a

devout Lutheran, but he lived in a

world from which he believed God the

Father had departed. Many of his

paintings feature haunting crucifixes;

in one of the most controversial of

them, “Cross in the Mountains”

Friedrich was under the

spell ofNaturphilosophie,

the view that there is no

separation between the

self and the natural world.

Caspar David Friedrich:

Nature and the Self

By Nina Amstutz

Yale, 269 pages, $65

Mirrors of the Self

OUTSIDE AS INSIDE‘The Abbey in the Oakwood’ (1809-10) by Caspar David Friedrich.

BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

BOOKS

‘The artist is a man, himself nature and a part of nature.’—PAUL KLEE

A

wordless

picture

book

peopled

with

figures

from the

beguiling

rural

scenes

of

Bruegel.

CHILDREN’S

BOOKS

MEGHAN

COXGURDON

FORTUNATE ISthe child who

is introduced early on to the

paintings of Pieter Bruegel

the Elder. For the young

newcomer, Bruegel’s tableaux

of 16th-century peasants

roistering, resting and hunting

in the snow can be as

mesmeric and thrilling as the

landscapes rich with religious

and allegorical symbolism.

Once viewed, his pictures are

hard to forget; in their mingled

realism and weirdness, they

stir the heart and set the

imagination in motion. That’s

howitwasformanyofusin

childhood; that’s how it was

for Belgian artist Sassafras

De Bruyn, who has spun her

affection for the painter into

a picture book,“The Hunter

and His Dog” (Eerdmans,

40 pages, $17.99).

Subtitled “A Fantastical

Journey Through the World of

Bruegel,” this wordless story

begins with a sturdy yeoman

in cap and tunic standing on a

featureless plain in an attitude

of perplexity. He and his dog

have lost their way. Catching

sight of a bird overhead, the

man points: They should

pursue. When the bird slips

into a narrow gap that appears

to be torn in the background,

the hunter and his dog follow

and suddenly find themselves

surrounded by tiny characters

from “The Fight Between

Carnival and Lent” (1559) and

“Children’s Games” (1560). As

the crowd turns threatening,

the two make their escape only

to be immersed in another

Breugel mash-up, this time a

scene featuring the alarming

folkloric figure of Dulle Griet,

an armored woman from the

eponymous 1563 painting,

who’s leading a cohort of

skeletons and monsters from

other pictures. On and on the

hunter and his dog go, through

one famous evocation after

another, until they tumble,

at last and with relief, into the

wintry landscape where they

belong. For art-loving families,

this enthralling book would

pair perfectly with “The Hero

of Little Street” by Gregory

Rogers, published in 2012, in

which a boy enters a painting

by Johannes Vermeer and,

also with a dog, finds himself

dashing through the streets

of 17th-century Delft.

Yevgenia Nayberg gives the

job of narrating her picture

book“Typewriter” (Creative

Editions, 32 pages, $19.99)to

an obsolete but still wonderful

piece of machinery that most

young children today will

never have encountered in

person. “I am an old Russian

typewriter,” the typewriter

says, looking at us from ink-

ribbon reels that resemble

eyes. “I type on paper,” he

continues, as fragments of

Cyrillic float about him.

“When I get to the end of the

line, I ring the bell. I make

beautiful sounds.” In Ms.

Nayberg’s off-kilter, mixed-

media illustrations, we learn

the typewriter’s bittersweet

tale: how he met a writer in

Russia “when I was just out

of the factory”; how the writer

brought him as a prized pos-

session to America; and how

eventually he was ousted by a

laptop and left outside bearing

a sign: “Free to good home.”

Poor typewriter! “I had read

enough Russian novels to

know that it would begin to

rain now,” he predicts, cor-

rectly. Yet what is this? Along

comes a little girl to save the

day in this oddly charming

story for readers ages 6 to 8.

There are perks to being the

youngest child in a family, but

for those in that position the

advantages are not always clear.

It can be frustrating to feel

(and be) thelittlest; maddening

always to be made to follow

rather than lead; exasperating

to endure the patronizing

attitudes of older siblings. Two

illustrated tales explore these

vexatious age dynamics. In Tom

Percival’s picture book“Ravi’s

Roar” (Bloomsbury, 32 pages,

$17.99), the indignities suffered

on a family outing ignite little

Ravi’s temper: “He growled...

and a stripy tail popped out

from the back of his shorts.

Then...hesproutedtwofurry

ears, sharp, pointy teeth, and

stripy orange fur!”

Transformed into a boy-

tiger, radiating rage and bright-

orange scribbles of vengeance,

Ravi goes wild. He rushes

around, roaring at everyone

and doing anything he wants.

And for a little while it feels

great, as righteous anger does.

But when Ravi realizes that no

one wants to play with him,

and indeed that he can’t really

remember what made him so

cross to begin with, his wrath

peters out. Mr. Percival’s digital

artwork gives panache to a

relatable tale of anger and

reconciliation for children

ages 3-6.

In“Elsie”

(Abrams,

40 pages,

$16.99),

Nadine

Robert

tells a sib-

ling story

largely

through the

hurly-burly conver-

sation of seven little rabbits

as they embark on a fishing

expedition one sunny Sunday.

Elsie is the youngest of the

Filpot children and as such

tends to be chivvied and bossed

and made to do what everyone

else says. Her older siblings

aren’t unkind, but they don’t

pay much attention to Elsie’s

opinions. During the riverside

excursion, there’s lots of

competitive raillery between

the older rabbits and a near-

unanimous dousing of Elsie’s

suggestions. “I will go down by

the river with my fishnet,” Elsie

says, when, by happy accident,

a fish snags on the untended

line that she had baited with a

buttercup. “Don’t do it, Elsie! It’s

useless,” chime her brothers and

sisters. It’s not useless, though,

for soon Elsie (with some help)

lands the only fish that the

Filpots will catch that day. Maja

Kastelic’s pictures (see below)

have a bright retro sweetness

that feels drawn from the mid-

century golden age:

The seven young

Filpots share a

cozy bedroom with

dormer windows,

carved wooden beds

and patchwork

quilts; the land-

scape they move

through is green

and gentle,

full of flowers,

butterflies and

birds. It is, in

most respects,

the opposite

of Bruegel.

Realism,Weirdness, Skeletons and Monsters

THIS WEEK

The Hunter and His Dog

By Sassafras De Bruyn

Typewriter

By Yevgenia Nayberg

Ravi’s Roar

By Tom Percival

Elsie

By Nadine Robert

Illustrated by Maja Kastelic

ABRAMS