The Romantic Spirit in German Art 1790-1990

This magnificent volume is a major reassessment of the Romantic impulse in German art, from the mystical, eerie landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich to Joseph Beuys's modernist utopian visions and Sigmar Polke's hallucinatory comedies. The catalogue of an exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery, it weds essays by British and German art historians and curators with 340 plates (185 in color). Beginning around 1800, Romantic artists sought a divine spirit in nature, yearned for fellowship and lost innocence and mapped the unity of the cosmos. This sweeping survey traces these themes from the Nazarene circle's medievalizing narrative pictures in the early 1800s to Bauhaus functionalism; from Arnold Bocklin's symbolist dreamscapes to Anselm Kiefer's myth-laden canvases; and in works by Philipp Otto Runge, Franz Marc, Otto Dix, Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, Georg Baselitz and others. (Oct.)