[Rick Mullin]

Avoid New York City between now and May 11, if only to avoid being drawn in to "Casper David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. What can be worse than heavy-handed Romanticism?

Thanks,
Rick

[Rick Mullin]

It seems to be impossible to pick fights in "Art Museum." ~,:^)

[Jim Moonan]

.
Ha! I suppose romanticism can gum up museum traffic. What little I've seen of his work gives me a sense of his proclivity for injecting spiritual landscapes as overlay to physical landscapes. Whatever gets you through the night.

I made it into the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here in Boston this past weekend to see The Hanging Nasturtiums display from the balcony windows in the courtyard. Friedrich would have had a field day.

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[Rick Mullin]

I haven't been to the Gardner in a long time.... maybe not even since the famous theft. I need to get back to Boston.

My comments above are a bit facetious. I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from seeing the exhibit. My feeling is that his paintings are dominated by an ambient layering of colors to create an atmosphere that ends in a restrictive view of nature, over which, as you note, he lays on the romance. Turner and Constable were working at about the same time. Compare and discuss. ~,:^)