Romance and Art

This is my favourite painting.

I don't pretend to know very much about art, but I loved this the moment I saw it. Friedrich was a Swedish-German romantic painter of the 19th century whose work is either stunning or risible and rarely anything in between. It makes me a bit uncomfortable -- there is a smack of the Wagner Tutonic Aryan master race about a lot of his work -- or perhaps that is just historical hindsight. And much of his work references Christian beliefs -- although I actually think there is a profound pagan sensibility about almost all of it, almost as if he didn't notice, but couldn't help it.

I am not sure why I love this particular painting -- perhaps it is the gothic romanticism of the work, the heroic male figure with his back to the viewer (seen yet not revealed, something of a motif in his work) or even just the beautiful image of the traveller high above the mountains, which makes you wonder who he is and where he has been. Whatever the reason, it is wonderful, inspiring, beautiful work, cinematic enough to be (deliberately?) referenced in Rob Roy (which is a better movie than the critics thought it was). I have deep reservations about the sensibilities the artist's work seems to inspire and reference, but I still love this painting more than any other.

Maybe that's what good art is about -- making you love it whilst making you uncomfortable about loving it.