As did the French and British and the Americans. Romantic artists embraced Sublime landscapes. The Sublime art movement consisted of many smaller schools that could be found in various regions across the globe. The Various Movements that Embraced Sublime Landscapes Kant’s concepts of the Sublime were not widely adopted by philosophers, but they had a significant impact on later writings and aesthetic thought.

As Kant noted, the Sublime also creates a sense of dissatisfaction, “emerging from the incapacity of vision in the aesthetic assessment of size to rise to its assessment of logic.” Kant talked of a “restlessness” that one feels in both transcendent experiences it shakes the soul, as compared to the serene sensation generated by the artwork of beauty. Portrait of Immanuel Kant (1768) Becker, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons “The irresistibility of nature’s strength surely makes us, regarded as beings of nature, acknowledge our physiological weakness, but it also exposes a potential for evaluating oneself as separate of the environment and greater than it, through which the soul in our individual continues to remain uneroded even when the life form being must submit to that influence and control,” Kant explained. The kinetic Sublime is similarly a sense of reason’s dominance over nature but through a distinct channel. The logical Sublime, therefore, is the impression of reason’s dominance over creation and human imagination. However, according to Kant, our capacity of reason steps in and helps us to understand the sensation of eternity before us. When one encounters the logical Sublime, one is confronted with the enormity of nature, and one’s mind cannot fully fathom the immensity. In his Critique of Judgment (1790), he claims two kinds of sublimity: logical sublimity and kinetic sublimity. Likewise, Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher, investigated the participant’s reaction to the Sublime, locating the source of the sensation within the human mind. Portrait of Edmund Burke (1729-1797) James Northcote, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons “The emotions generated by the vast and majestic in nature, when those causes work most forcefully, is amazement,” Burke wrote, “and amazement is the condition of the psyche in which all its actions are halted, with a sense of dread.” For Burke, joy was not as powerful an emotion as suffering, and he suggested that the Sublime, which he saw as our deepest emotion, was founded in dread, especially the fear caused by the prospect of dying. Burke’s thesis, as a logical Rationalist, is based on sensory input, and he goes through many emotions, including the enjoyable, attractive, and majestic. Portrait of Nicolas Boileau-Déspreaux (1636-1711) After Jean-Baptiste Santerre, Public domain, via Wikimedia CommonsĮdmund Burke, a philosopher, published the first significant essay on the Sublime in 1757, in which he attempted to rationally study human impulses. “The Sublime is not precisely saying anything which is established or proven, but a wonder, which overpowers one, hits one and causes one to experience,” stated Boileau in his own book on the aesthetic. Longinus, who was primarily interested in languages, did speak momentarily about the aesthetic Sublime in both wildlife and man-made artifacts in his opinion, vast scale and diversity may generate a sense of the Sublime. Longinus contended here that the presenter should seek to create emotion and move his audience rather than just convince them. It all started with Nicolas Boileau’s translation of On The Sublime (1674) by the ancient Greek Longinus. However, it was only in the Romantic era that the Sublime as an artistic notion gained traction throughout Europe. The depictions of Christ lifeless and suffering by Andrea Mantegna and Masaccio, as well as Raphael’s sketches and analyses of skeletons, inform us of the certainty of mortality and the unknowable – essential elements of the Sublime. It is during the Italian Renaissance that the initial concept started to arise. 3.6 Vir Heroicus Sublimis (1951) by Barnett Newman.3.5 Black Square (1913) by Kazimir Malevich.

3.4 The Chasm of the Colorado (1874) by Thomas Moran.

3.3 The Slave Ship (1840) by J.M.W Turner.

3.2 Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows (1831) by John Constable.

3.1 The Raft of the Medusa (1819) by Théodore Géricault.

2 The Various Movements that Embraced Sublime Landscapes.

1 An Introduction to Sublime Art History.