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“Feel Art Again” is something we’ve done before in the magazine. To make sure you’re getting a steady diet of art education, we’re reviving it here on the blog. InternAndréa will be your guide – give her a polite round of applause. –Mangesh & Jason
In celebration of today’s Harvest Moon, we present you with Caspar David Friedrich’s “Two Men Contemplating the Moon.” A few fun facts:
1. Friedrich created several paintings with this same general theme and composition. The most well-known of the other versions is “Man and Woman Contemplating the Moon” (1824), which even features the same tree.
2. The first owner, Dr. Otto Friedrich Rosenberg, received the painting from the artist himself in exchange for medical attention. The good doctor can rest in peace knowing he received adequate payment for his skill; in 1999, Artemis Fine Arts (NY) purchased the painting at Christie’s (London) for £771,500 (~$1,277,000).
3. Friedrich is considered by many to be Germany’s greatest Romantic painter, although at the time of his death, he had been mostly forgotten. Only with the rise of Symbolism, in the late 19th century, did people begin to fully appreciate his work.
Comments (9)
Comment
I’m glad this feature is back… I can feel ‘art again! Kudos to InternAndréa! Keep up the good work!
posted by Terry on 9-26-2007 at 6:23 am
WOW! I’m glad to see someone posting about Caspar David Friedrich - he’s one of my favorite painters and very under-appreciated! My favorite painting is “Das Eis Meer”…maybe you should feature it some cold winter morning?
posted by Anthony on 9-26-2007 at 7:02 am
I’m with Terry. I little dose of artistic culture is a welcome addition to your already great webzine.
For your readers who would like a more intense dose of art they can also visit a fantastic (and content rich) European blog called Ursi’s blog: ursispaltenstein.ch/blog
Scroll down to the middle of your screen and select Archives sorted by categories on the left hand side. Look for the Illustrations and paintings category and enjoy !
posted by RAnnieB on 9-26-2007 at 8:28 am
This is the direct link to the category Illustration & Paintings of Ursi’s Blog, sort by latest first.
Enjoy!
www.ursispaltenstein.ch/blog/weblog.php?/C22/
posted by Tom on 9-26-2007 at 9:36 am
Thank you Tom,
For some reason the direct url was refused when I first tried to post my comment so I went about the long way to get to this section of Ursi’s blog :).
posted by RannieB on 9-26-2007 at 1:20 pm
This blog keeps getting better and better. It’s good to get regular exposure of art and culture out to the masses. Cheers to Andrea!
posted by heather on 9-26-2007 at 1:44 pm
His “Monk by the Sea” is one of the most beautiful paintings I’ve seen. It kind of reminds me of color field abstraction– which is crazy, cause he’s a good century ahead of it — and shows how very small we are in this world. That’s a lot create in one painting. Infiniteness on a finite medium? Pssht.
posted by lauren on 9-26-2007 at 8:36 pm
This painting really spoke to me. It reminds me of this great tree I like to climb on my campus.
(Andre-dre…congrats on the first post!)
posted by Amy :) on 10-2-2007 at 6:38 am
If you want to Google “Das Eis Meer” it is spelled (at least in Google) thusly: Das Eismeer (The Sea of Ice).
posted by Clyde on 10-4-2007 at 9:13 am