Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), one of the major artists of German romanticism, revived landscape painting in Germany, depicting through nature his own melancholy moods, pantheistic beliefs, and nationalistic feelings. Born on Sept. 5, 1774, in...

"THE WORLD MUST BE ROMANTIcized," the young German poet Novalis exclaimed in 1798. It was a call to give "the ordinary an elevated meaning, the commonplace a mysterious aspect, the familiar the dignity of the unfamiliar, the finite an appearance of infinity." For...

Caspar David Friedrich: he puts the important thing bang in the middle of the scene. It's revolutionary. It's just what, for the previous three centuries, European landscape painting had avoided doing. That avoidance was a way of saying that nature wasn't man- made. Nature...

It’s not often that an experienced critic finds himself confronting the work of an “unknown” painter—unknown, that is, to the critic—only to discover that he’s looking at the paintings of a master talent. But this was my experience upon visiting the exhibition of paintings by...

Few people play the zipper quite like Ken Butler. Tucking a microphone down his pants, the Brooklyn-based musician counter- rhythmically zips and unzips his fly to a soundtrack of pre-recorded beats. He plays other instruments: His head doubles as a bongo drum, and he “scratches”...