ABSTRACT
The most renowned was Caspar David Friedrich, who embraced symmetry soon after being exposed to Runge's approach. Eerily faint symmetry echoes throughout this void. Schinkel would recognize Novalis's methods. Friedrich here offers a stark axis but also occlusion and/or effacement. This pulls nearer the screen's undercurrents. An axis is constructed, obstructed and finally effaced, though leaving it paradoxically present nonetheless. This recalls the complex game of opening and closing in hermeneutics. In Friedrich's painting, the likely theme is human transcendence toward a divine presence, coded visually in terms of how humanity's symmetrically upright posture formally allows embrace with him. Friedrich's frequent placement of crucifixes on axis also suggests specific meaning. The painted screen formats of Friedrich, though, suggest that buildings may also carry deeper and sharper existential messages. Friedrich's stumps give this issue focus: screens resist forward approach despite obsessive frontality.
