Magic of Silence

Florian Illies is a writer, editor and art historian.

"One of the most beautiful books I've read this year."Elke Heidenreich, Der Spiegel"A fascinating tale of the life and afterlife of the great Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, drawn with a careful and quiet hand."Alexander Nemerov, author of The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s"Caspar David Friedrich’s landscapes were full of melancholy and longing, quiet hope and a fierce love for his Northern Heimat. Too dark for his contemporaries, they sold poorly. Later generations found themselves in his paintings – always for their own reasons, but not always the right ones. Florian Illies’ sparkling arabesque - part fact, part fiction - now brings to life the silent magic of Friedrich’s Romanticism across time and space."Cordula Grewe, Indiana University Bloomington"Composed of a series of vignettes structured around the elements, The Magic of Silence takes the reader on an evocative journey through Friedrich’s life, work, and legacy. Bringing Friedrich’s landscapes into dialogue with future events the artist could have never anticipated, Illies captures the timelessness and enduring relevance of his paintings."Nina Amstutz, University of Oregon"Florian Illies has written an accessible book about the life and checkered afterlife of Friedrich and his art presented in a narrative text, often dialogic, based on biography and the observations of diverse subsequent commentators.  Structured as snapshots of intermittent moments throughout two centuries in chapters organized according to the four elements interpreted literally and metaphorically, the material combines information for the general reader as well as occasional little-known details for the specialist. Above all, Illies provides evidence that 'the more we learn about Friedrich and the history of his paintings, the more complicated it gets.'"Marsha Morton, Pratt Institute“A welcome appreciation of the greatest painter of German Romanticism.”Kirkus Reviews“sweeping and timely”The Critic“Very nearly all of Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings express silence, still air, stopped time. For those of us deprived of all three in our hurtling, distracted lives, his pictures are more vital than ever.”Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian“this is the kind of art book to which all art books should perhaps aspire… As an art historian, Illies has a vast depth of knowledge; as a writer, he has a lightness of touch and a useful sense of the ridiculous.”The Irish Times“Deploying his characteristically inventive, decidedly non-linear style, Illies’s book, ably translated by Tony Crawford, moves artfully between time and place — 1820s Dresden; 1930s Munich — to paint a fascinating portrait of the life and afterlife of the artist and his work.”The Financial Times“wonderfully anecdotal”New York Review of Books

• AcknowledgementsPrologue: Aboard the SailboatFireWaterEarthAirChronologyFurther Reading