1 00:00:04,735 --> 00:00:06,730 We're in the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin 2 00:00:06,730 --> 00:00:08,819 and we're looking at a Caspar David Friedrich's 3 00:00:08,819 --> 00:00:10,382 The Abbey in the Oakwood. 4 00:00:10,382 --> 00:00:13,285 It's a large painting, and it was one of a pair 5 00:00:13,285 --> 00:00:15,495 that included "The Monk by the Sea." 6 00:00:15,495 --> 00:00:18,744 This is a very somber image and it really is 7 00:00:18,744 --> 00:00:21,486 a perfect example of the way Friedrich used landscape 8 00:00:21,486 --> 00:00:25,285 in order to represent issues of human life and 9 00:00:25,285 --> 00:00:26,974 of the Divine. 10 00:00:26,974 --> 00:00:29,118 That's right, and in this painting we see 11 00:00:29,118 --> 00:00:31,744 the ruins of an abbey, an old abbey 12 00:00:31,744 --> 00:00:36,786 and a procession of figures entering this ruined abbey, 13 00:00:36,786 --> 00:00:38,489 carrying a coffin. 14 00:00:38,489 --> 00:00:40,512 And so immediately we have a sense of the passage of time, 15 00:00:40,512 --> 00:00:43,762 of the transience of human existence... 16 00:00:43,762 --> 00:00:46,999 We're also looking at, it seems, the dead of winter, 17 00:00:46,999 --> 00:00:49,081 and perhaps it's sunset. 18 00:00:49,081 --> 00:00:51,851 If you look at the remnant of architecture that's left 19 00:00:51,851 --> 00:00:54,739 you have this, first of all, this very forlorn sense 20 00:00:54,739 --> 00:00:57,066 from the ruins themselves. 21 00:00:57,066 --> 00:01:00,502 You see this old lancet window that's fallen into disrepair. 22 00:01:00,502 --> 00:01:01,951 No glass remains. 23 00:01:01,951 --> 00:01:04,850 And you have a real sense of the grandeur of 24 00:01:04,850 --> 00:01:07,683 the original space, but now what's left is just 25 00:01:07,683 --> 00:01:11,513 the futility of human experience, the futility of human effort. 26 00:01:11,513 --> 00:01:16,884 And what we see is that nature is eternal, but what man 27 00:01:16,884 --> 00:01:19,267 creates is transient. 28 00:01:19,267 --> 00:01:22,269 You have the monks themselves going through their 29 00:01:22,269 --> 00:01:23,500 ancient ritual of burial. 30 00:01:23,500 --> 00:01:26,417 But you see the cemetery that surrounds them in the snow 31 00:01:26,417 --> 00:01:30,596 is not well tended, it's haphazard, and it seems to be, itself, 32 00:01:30,596 --> 00:01:32,184 falling into disrepair. 33 00:01:32,184 --> 00:01:35,720 The abbey refers back to the Medieval tradition, but that's 34 00:01:35,720 --> 00:01:36,988 now fallen away. 35 00:01:36,988 --> 00:01:39,666 Older than that, are the oak trees, 36 00:01:39,666 --> 00:01:41,890 which might have represented, for Friedrich, 37 00:01:41,890 --> 00:01:44,731 the Druidic traditions, the pre-Christian traditions, 38 00:01:44,731 --> 00:01:49,185 these truly ancient oaks, gnarled, and terrifying 39 00:01:49,185 --> 00:01:51,955 in their silhouettes, but that speak of a tradition, 40 00:01:51,955 --> 00:01:55,165 as witnesses, that are even older than Christianity. 41 00:01:55,165 --> 00:01:58,601 And then beyond that, the crescent moon, and the sky, 42 00:01:58,601 --> 00:02:01,433 when you were speaking, that's the nature that I was 43 00:02:01,433 --> 00:02:03,151 looking at that is permanent, 44 00:02:03,151 --> 00:02:05,999 that is trans-historical, that moves beyond even 45 00:02:05,999 --> 00:02:08,652 the growth and death of the trees. 46 00:02:08,652 --> 00:02:10,748 Certainly of the architecture of Man's efforts. 47 00:02:10,748 --> 00:02:14,749 The moon having no sense of the cosmos, even beyond 48 00:02:14,749 --> 00:02:16,802 the seasons of the Earth. 49 00:02:16,802 --> 00:02:19,679 That's right, and so you have this sense of human time, 50 00:02:19,679 --> 00:02:21,929 you have this sense of nature's time, 51 00:02:21,929 --> 00:02:24,601 and then you have this sense of the time of God's space. 52 00:02:24,601 --> 00:02:27,880 And in fact, if there's any optimism in this image, 53 00:02:27,880 --> 00:02:29,321 it is that moon. 54 00:02:29,321 --> 00:02:32,570 It is the faintest crescent, and it might wane even more 55 00:02:32,570 --> 00:02:35,116 and become a New Moon, but then it will regenerate 56 00:02:35,116 --> 00:02:37,313 and there is this possibility for rebirth. 57 00:02:37,313 --> 00:02:39,150 You mentioned that it's the dead of winter, 58 00:02:39,150 --> 00:02:40,649 but spring will come. 59 00:02:40,649 --> 00:02:44,132 And so even if it seems quite distant now, in this sort of 60 00:02:44,132 --> 00:02:47,815 bleak twilight, there is this sense that there will be renewal. 61 00:02:47,815 --> 00:02:51,336 So we may have a suggestion of resurrection 62 00:02:51,336 --> 00:02:55,412 in the cycles of the moon, we have the crosses that are 63 00:02:55,412 --> 00:02:59,571 a part of the cemetery, we have the cross that forms part of 64 00:02:59,571 --> 00:03:03,771 the ruin of the abbey, and that suggestion of resurrection. 65 00:03:03,771 --> 00:03:07,037 I think what's so interesting about Friedrich is that 66 00:03:07,037 --> 00:03:10,751 he's imbuing a landscape with this very, 67 00:03:10,751 --> 00:03:15,262 very serious meaning, almost the way that, in the past, 68 00:03:15,262 --> 00:03:18,421 people have looked to the iconography of 69 00:03:18,421 --> 00:03:23,061 Christian paintings, Friedrich is looking for modern language 70 00:03:23,061 --> 00:03:27,629 with which to express these trans-historical human feelings, 71 00:03:27,629 --> 00:03:31,297 contemplating our role in the universe, and trying to make 72 00:03:31,297 --> 00:03:35,237 sense of all those layers of time that you referred to before. 73 00:03:35,237 --> 00:03:38,763 That's exactly right. Friedrich is finding a new way of 74 00:03:38,763 --> 00:03:41,154 representing these eternal issues, and it makes sense that 75 00:03:41,154 --> 00:03:44,280 he would have to, because this is now the beginning of the 76 00:03:44,280 --> 00:03:47,400 19th century. Friedrich is now living in a rational culture, 77 00:03:47,400 --> 00:03:50,985 and the idea of using the iconography of the Renaissance, 78 00:03:50,985 --> 00:03:53,482 or even of the Baroque, would feel implausible. 79 00:03:53,482 --> 00:03:54,579 It wouldn't make sense. 80 00:03:54,579 --> 00:03:58,149 And so Friedrich, this artist who was trained in Copenhagen, 81 00:03:58,149 --> 00:04:01,252 who grew up in Greifswald, which was then part of Sweden, 82 00:04:01,252 --> 00:04:03,234 on the Southern coast of the Baltic, 83 00:04:03,234 --> 00:04:06,498 is looking towards the very extreme, cold 84 00:04:06,498 --> 00:04:08,788 Northern lanscape, as a way of expressing 85 00:04:08,788 --> 00:04:10,917 these ideas of the eternal.