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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Authentic Dasein and the Anxious Uncanny Chapter 1: Kant and Munch: the Sublime in Nature “One doesn’t paint after nature - one takes from it.” ( Munch, 60) In his Private Journals , Munch once asked, “How should one paint true weeping after nature?” (Holland, 2) This was a question that truly puzzled him throughout his career.

The artist strived in his own way to “copy nature” (Munch, 89), but then added, “we certainly could not catch nature anyway - better to give the feeling - in oneself” (Munch, 89). Inspired by Paul Gauguin’s reaction against Realism and James Abbott McNeil Whistler, who once claimed that “art is not an imitation of nature,” Munch believed that nature should be transformed according to how the artist experiences it. Of Gauguin’s work, the poet Stephane Mallarmé once wrote, “[. .

] symbolism: to evoke an object bit by bit in order to show a mood” (Munson, 62). Art historians agree that Gauguin strived to develop “an aesthetic based on simplification of forms” (Munson, 62), a notion that becomes evident in Munch’s paintings. Munch’s art can also be seen in relation to Romanticism, which promoted imagination, emotion and genius, giving birth to an expressive theory of art during the late eighteenth century.

“According to this theory, art was seen as the means of portraying the unique, individual feelings and emotions of the artist” (Bourne, 1). The Romantics were evidently against all forms of mimesis: “There is no copying, there is no adaptation, there is no learning of the rules, [. . ] there is no structure which you must understand and adapt yourself to before you can proceed (Berlin, 119).

It was William Wordsworth who defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” (Abrams, 21). As an important precursor to Romanticism, Kant believed that the laws of nature are grounded in human reason (Routledge, 1). The exaltation of nature led Kant to the notion of the sublime.

In the Critique of Judgment , Kant wrote that “for the most part nature excites the Ideas of the sublime in its chaos or in its wildest and most irregular disorder and desolation, provided size and might are perceived” (104). He also added that “we must seek (a ground) for the Sublime merely in ourselves and in our attitude of thought which introduces sublimity into the representation of nature” (104).