Runge’s art also centered upon the world of nature and its relation to the cycle of human life through its perpetual process of emergence and decay. The cold light of the waxing moon, moody indigo sky, and lifeless trees offer a painted reverie about death, and the passage of time. His haunting A Walk at Dusk (about 1830–35) features a cloaked man walking in moonlight, contemplating a megalithic tomb. Friedrich, a loner, found his inspiration in vast, empty landscapes that he used as vehicles for ruminating on death, the mystery of human life, and the human spirit. This concept received its greatest expression in the work of Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774–1840) and Philipp Otto Runge (German, 1777–1810), both of whom are prominently featured in the exhibition. The transcendent domination of nature over human life was perhaps the most important defining theme of German Romantic art in the early 19th century. This exhibition offers our visitors a rare insight into this fascinating and increasingly influential period in the history of art through works that are by turns dark and brooding, exhilarating and affirming.” German Romantic drawings, paintings, and prints are rare in this country, and we are fortunate to have extraordinary riches in Los Angeles, not only at the J. Paul Getty Museum and Getty Research Institute, but also in local private collections. “It is still, however, less well known than its rival movements in nineteenth-century art-Neoclassicism and, later, French Impressionism. “The romantic movement of nineteenth-century art was defined above all by German artists, composers, and writers, and it is they who gave it the most explicitly spiritual expression, as a way of seeing, representing and understanding nature as the primal and defining force of life,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. Art reflected the spirit of the age (Zeitgeist in German), and this influential notion held sway throughout the 19th century.īringing together objects from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Research Institute, and distinguished private collections, Zeitgeist: Art in the Germanic World, 1800–1900, on view February 10–May 17, 2015, at the Getty Center, features German, Austrian, and Czech drawings, paintings, and prints that spectacularly reflect this transformative age. The writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the Industrial Revolution, the formal unification of Germany, and the rise of psychoanalysis all shaped modern life and its representations in art.
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