Z – TIME

Towards the end of his life, the artist himself was confident that time was on his side. “I am far from wanting to resist the demands of the times, unless it is merely fashion, and to swim against the current,” he wrote around 1830. “But even less am I so weak as to pay homage to the times against my conviction. I spin myself into my cocoon; let others do the same, and I leave it to time to decide what will emerge from the spun threads, whether a colorful butterfly or a maggot.”* Friedrich’s current standing as a central figure of Romanticism and the great public interest in his art probably exceed all his expectations.

An excerpt from Barbara Hess’s Caspar David Friedrich A–Z

*Quote from: Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich. Landscape and the Subject, translated from English by Christiane Spelsberg, Munich 1998, p.75.
Image credit: Caspar David Friedrich, View of Arkona with Rising Moon, ca. 1805/06, brush in brown over pencil, 60.9 x 100 cm, Albertina, Vienna

Veröffentlicht am: 17.01.2024

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