“I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean, and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man...”
William Wordsworth.
Studying the Romanticists has been very important to forming the contextual background of my dissertation. The romanticists mark an era of the secularization of society which changed our perception of the world. With the removal of religion from centralising of our ideas of the world, morals and art; art was able to diversify, allowing art to be made which glorified the artists skill rather than its religious ideology.
During my dissertation writing on the romanticists I have considered figures such as Rousseau, Wordsworth, Ruskin and Immanuel Kant among others. This has allowed me to draw many ideas out which are also very relevant to my current art practice and provide me which a theoretical framework through which to consider the ideas I am questioning.
One notion which I have found particularly relevant is the poetic work of William Wordsworth and William Blake and their ideas on the importance of imagination and the natural world. Blake's assertion of innocence and experience, particularly in regards to childhood experience, is of great interest me. As a child we are free to experience the world for sensory experiences which are free of the logic of adult life and it can be these first experiences which fuel our imagination later in life. As particular to the experiences of Blake as a child in industrial London.
Turner's paintings offer a insight into the sublime and awe which Wordsworth was also fascinated to experience, feeling the awesome power of nature. Turner's paintings, particularly his ship paintings, show the immense power of nature over the fragile human life. As waves crash around boats the ship appears at the mercy of the sea, likely to break at any moment. It is these experiences which remind us of the sublime power and beauty of the natural world. Turner challenged himself to not only paint these spectacles, but to experience them first hand so he was not only painting what convention told him but of his real experiences at the mercy of the sea.
The above image shows a recent experience of which I felt the overwhelming sense of awe. This took place on the Dorset coast line. Climbing down to hidden rocky cove I was amazed by the patterned rock formations on the rock faces which surrounded me. The intricate powers which had been crafted by the passing of time and the continuous erosion from the sea water appeared so perfect it was overwhelming that they were naturally formed. Then looking out to sea the battering waves and brisk wind furiously danced and crashed. This experience of being tiny and weak in comparison to the strong formidable nature around me was staggering. Had the tide suddenly changed I would have been in great danger being in a isolated cove with a steep climb back up the safe ground. I was able to catch a glimpse of the ideas which the romanticists furiously wanted to portray as these experiences free us of social and moral constraints allowing us to experience the world around us.
However these photographs which I took of this moment in time, summarize the crisis of these experiences in modern society as we reduce these awe inspiring experiences to still images which remove all sense of power and motion from the moment. Therefore in modern society we are faced with a question of how we can experience the sublime?
In a attempt to seek answers to this question I have read this essay by Phillip Shaw on Modernism and the Sublime. I felt this offered interesting insights for how modern art addresses this question and this is one concluding phrase which I found I could particularly relate to : "It may be that sublimity consists in nothing more than ‘the movement of desire’: in our desire to know what is beyond the painted veil; in the ‘feeling that something “lost” must be recovered’." (Shaw, 2013).
Essay: Philip Shaw, ‘Modernism and the Sublime’, in Nigel Llewellyn and Christine Riding (eds.), The Art of the Sublime, January 2013, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/philip-shaw-modernism-and-the-sublime-r1109219, accessed 07 December 2014.