Olafur Eliasson and The Sublime
To understand ‘the Sublime’ we must first look at the 1757 treatise by Edmund Burke, A
Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, which
Simon Morley among others assert was the first complete philosophical exploration
separating the Beautiful and the Sublime into their own categories. Morley cites that Burke
declared that ‘‘the sublime’ was ‘the strongest passion’1, and he belittled the importance of
the beautiful, claiming that it was merely an instance of prettiness. The sublime experience,
on the other hand, had the power to transform the self. He was interested in what happened
when the individual was confronted with something overwhelming and threatening to their
own existence and how this fear could be pleasurable. Making reference to the overlap
between pain and pleasure in moments of terror, Burke writes that this ‘always produces
delight when it does not press close.’2 Phillips described this in the introduction to Burke, he
suggested, ‘This kind of ‘delight’, in a dubious distinction, is not exactly a pleasure because it
‘turns on pain’; delight is produced when ‘the idea of pain and danger’ is staged, thereby
providing the sufficient distance.’3
In 1790 Immanuel Kant looked to expand on theories previously explored by Burke. Phillips
affirmed that both treatises ‘share what was to become a fundamental modern preoccupation;
for Burke and Kant the Sublime was a way of thinking about excess as the key to a new kind
of subjectivity.’4 Although Kant shifted his focus on our consciousness and our negative
experiences of limits through sublime moments. Kant writes:
The feeling of the sublime is at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the
inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to
1
Morley Simon, The Sublime, MIT Press, 2010, 15
Burke Edmund, A philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757,.xxi
3
Phillips Adam, Edmund Burke: A philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful, Oxford University Press, 1990, xxi
4
Phillips Adam, Edmund Burke: A philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful, Oxford University Press, 1990, ix
2
1
its estimation of reason, and a simultaneous awakened pleasure, arising from
this very judgement of the inadequacy of sense of being in accord with ideas
of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law.5
In his treatise, The Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant defines aesthetic judgements as
subjective including both taste and pleasure; the beautiful and judgements of cognitive and
rational; the sublime. Placing the focus point on where reason reaches its limits, as Morley
affirms, ‘He thereby shifted the analysis towards the impact and consequence of the sublime
was essentially about a negative experience of limits.’6 Kul-Want references this same point
as he argues that ‘Kant’s theory of the sublime...:it proposes that the experience exceeds
thought, and that there are no adequate concept in the subject’s understanding for synthesis
with the unpresentable.’ 7 Like Burke, Kant firmly separates the Beautiful from the Sublime,
although Kant’s focus is firmly placed on cognition and the recognition of limits of the mind.
He states: ‘‘For the feeling of the Sublime brings with it as its characteristic feature
a movement of the mind bound up with the judging of the object, while in the case of the
Beautiful taste presupposes and maintains the mind in restful contemplation.’8On this point
Kul-Want affirms that, ‘…. Kant suggested that the world is an indeterminate reality
consisting of no more than a projection of our own thoughts and categorise.’9 The emphasis
on Kant’s success in the ability to categories and analyse the unpresentable; the sublime, was
key to the development to further studies of aesthetics as well as objectivity.
One of the canonical applications of ‘the sublime’ in the Romantic period, Caspar David
Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818) (fig. 1), affirms Gorra, ‘seems to
5
Kant Immanuel, Critique of Judgement ,1790; trans. J.J Meredith, Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973, 106
6
Morley Simon, The Sublime, MIT Press, 2010, 16
7
Kul- Want Christopher, Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Poster modernists; A Critical Readers, Columbia
University Press, 2007, 4
8
Kant Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement, 1790; trans. J.J Meredith, Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1973, 101-105
9
Kul-Want Christopher, Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Poster modernists; A Critical Readers, Columbia
University Press, 2007, 4
2
encapsulate the whole of European Romanticism; an image of the Kantian sublime, as if in
gazing out at this white and formless haze the wanderer were peering into the murky deep of
his own mind.’10 The sense of unease created by the jagged rocks and the wanderer standing
on the edge of a high peak, gives the viewer the implication of a sharp, long, fatal drop. Using
Rückenfigur Friedrich allows the viewer to place themselves in the position of the wanderer,
allowing them to contemplate the vastness and expanse of nature and their own limitations as
human. Kant referred to moment of realisation of the sublimity within nature as the moment:
The mind feels itself *moved* in the representation of the Sublime in nature;
whilst in the aesthetical judgments about the Beautiful it is in *restful*
contemplation…. in the immensity of nature, we find our own limitation…
making us recognize our own physical impotence, as beings of nature… yet it
discloses to us… faculty of judging independently of, and superior to,
nature… It is man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore
does not yield to danger, but rather goes to face it vigorously with the most
complete deliberation11
The rolling fog engulfing the jagged mountainous landscape as quickly as it releases them,
shows the power of nature in all its elements. The viewer is brought to a point (the end of the
road) and can only watch on as they realise, as Weiskel explains:
Either mind or object is suddenly in excess—and then both are, since their
relation has become radically indeterminate…. the mind recovers the balance
of outer and inner by constituting a fresh relation between itself and the object
such that the very indeterminacy which erupted…’ in the moment of
sublimity, ‘is taken as symbolising the mind’s relation to a transcendent
order.12
The role of the sublime within Romanticism, ‘emerged as a response to the disillusionment
with the Enlightenment values of reason and order in the aftermath of the French Revolution
10
Gorra Michael, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels Through Germany, Princeton University Press 2009, xxi
Kant Immanuel, The Critique of Judgement, 1790; trans. J.J Meredith, Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 1973, 24
12
Weiskel Thomas, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence, KeatsShelley Association of America Inc., 1978, 23
11
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of 1789.’13 Weiskel stated that, ‘Locke had removed the soul from the circuit of analogical
relations in which it had been installed, thereby decisively displacing the locus of order.’,
arguing the case of empiricism. Therefore, the natural sublime asserts Weiskel, ‘was a
response to the darker implications of Locke’s psychology and what that psychology
represented of changes in perception.’14 This became the key point of reference and escape
for artists during the Romantic period, dealing with ideas around ‘the sublime’.
Illustrations
Figure 1
Caspar David Friedrich,
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818),
oil on canvas,
Hamburg, Germany
Taken From; www.artble.com, Accessed 04/04/2017
13
The Met Museum: Romanticism, Accessed 19/03/2017,
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm
14
Weiskel Thomas, The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of Transcendence, The John
Hopkins University Press, 1976, 14
4
Bibliography
BAL, Mieke
Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, San Francisco Museum of Modern
Art,2007.
BURKE, Edmund
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime
and Beautiful, 1757.
BIRNBAUM, Danie Olafur Eliasson, Phaidon, 2007.
ELIASSON, Olafur
Olafur Eliasson, Phaidon, 2002.
GORRA, Michael
The Bells in Their Silence: Travels Through Germany, Princeton
University Press, 2009.
GROSENICK, Uta and
RIEMSCHNEIDER,
Burkhard
GRYNSZTEJN,
Madeleine
KANT, Immanuel
KUL- WANT,
Readers,
Christopher
MORLEY, Simon
PHILLIPS, Adam
WEISKEL, Thomas
BELL, Julian
Art Now, Taschen, 2002.
Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, Thames and Hudson, 2007.
Critique of Judgement ,1790; trans. J.J Meredith, Oxford and New
York:
Oxford University Press, 1973.
Philosophers on Art from Kant to the Poster modernists; A Critical
Columbia University Press, 2007.
The Sublime, MIT Press, 2010.
Edmund Burke: A philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful, Oxford University Press, 1990.
The Romantic Sublime: Studies in the Structure and Psychology of
Transcendence Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976.
The Art of The Sublime: The contemporary Sublime,
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/the-sublime/the-contemporarysublime-r1109224, Accessed 10/03/2017.
CALLEY GALITZ, The Met Museum: Romanticism, Accessed 19/03/2017,
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm.
Kathryn
5
All the images in this paper have been sourced from the following web
pages:
Figure 1 - Caspar David Friedrich, Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818), oil on canvas, 95 cm x
75 cm Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany
Taken From; www.artble.com, Accessed 04/04/2017
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