The notion of the Alps as a magnificent natural spectacle is surprisingly recent. It was not until the eighteenth century that its craggy mountain ridges began to be seen as sublime and beautiful. Swiss landscape painter Caspar Wolf (1735–83) was one of the first to discover the then largely-unexplored Alps as a subject for art. Trained in Germany and Paris, Wolf was commissioned to produce a comprehensive series on the Swiss Alps, which he completed between 1773 and 1779. Working in his studio the artist created some 180 paintings from nature studies he had done outdoors. This publication demonstrates how he conveyed his observations according to his artistic concerns. In his dramatic compositions, paths are blocked by immense boulders, roaring streams of water and glaciers, or the view opens up to reveal giant panoramas observed by tiny, awestruck human figures.
"Shepherdess and Bathers in Front of a Waterfall" (1770 is reproduced from Caspar Wolf and the Aesthetic Conquest of Nature.
"Landscape Composition with St Beatus Cave" (undated, from the late 1700s) is reproduced from Caspar Wolf and the Aesthetic Conquest of Nature, Hatje Cantz's sophisticated new study of the eighteenth-century artist and explorer best known for his outrageous landscape paintings of the Swiss Alps. Published to accompany an exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel, the book begins with a 1991 Michel Houellebecq quotation inspired by the work of horror pioneer H.P. Lovecraft: "Here we are at a point where the extreme acuity of sensory perception is about to propel us into a philosophical perception of the world; in other words, here we are inside poetry." continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 8.75 x 9 in. / 232 pgs / 182 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $75.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $90 ISBN: 9783775738330 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 5/26/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Bodo Brinkmann, et al.
The notion of the Alps as a magnificent natural spectacle is surprisingly recent. It was not until the eighteenth century that its craggy mountain ridges began to be seen as sublime and beautiful. Swiss landscape painter Caspar Wolf (1735–83) was one of the first to discover the then largely-unexplored Alps as a subject for art. Trained in Germany and Paris, Wolf was commissioned to produce a comprehensive series on the Swiss Alps, which he completed between 1773 and 1779. Working in his studio the artist created some 180 paintings from nature studies he had done outdoors. This publication demonstrates how he conveyed his observations according to his artistic concerns. In his dramatic compositions, paths are blocked by immense boulders, roaring streams of water and glaciers, or the view opens up to reveal giant panoramas observed by tiny, awestruck human figures.
