Ecoexistentialism in Caspar David Friedrich Works: An Analysis from the Perspective of Recent Cognitive Science Discoveries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24193/subbphil.2025.1.06Keywords:
Ecoexistentialism, Caspar David Friedrich, Cognitive science, nature, art, experiential selfAbstract
With this paper, I propose an interpretation of Caspar David Friedrich’s works on the 250th anniversary of his birth. Known as a romantic painter, Friedrich explored and cultivated our deep relationship with nature through his art. From the perspective of recent discoveries in the cognitive sciences, I will analyse the ingenuity of the techniques by which, using the vast and open landscape, but also the characters represented with their backs, the artist creates the right context in which the viewer has the feeling of dissolving his self in nature, the experience of identification with the elements around and above all, the living of the present sensation, through the cleavage of the self and the activation of the experiential self. In the works of Caspar David Friedrich, I identify aspects related to existentialism and, above all, a prefiguration of immersive art that generates such existential experiences about nature.
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