SUNDAY REVIEW / ART STUDIES IN RUCKENFIGUREN

"Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818" is a classic example of the romantic painting style called Ruckenfiguren. By Caspar David Friedrich. 

Notes and images from the public domain.

Rückenfiguren is a German term that translates to "figures seen from behind." It refers to a compositional element often used in visual art and photography particularly in Romanticism, where a figure is depicted from behind, looking out over a landscape, scene, or vista. 

This technique invites the viewer to adopt the perspective of the figure, creating a sense of shared contemplation or emotional resonance with the scene. 

 Key Characteristics of Rückenfiguren: 

--Perspective: The figure serves as an intermediary between the viewer and the artwork, drawing the viewer into the scene. 

--Mystery and Universality: By showing the figure from behind, their identity is obscured, allowing viewers to project themselves into the scene. 

--Romantic Tradition: Popularized by German Romantic artists like Caspar David Friedrich, Rückenfiguren evoke themes of the sublime, nature's grandeur, and introspection. 

Painting: [Above], for example, in Friedrich's famous painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (1818), the lone figure seen from behind gazing over a foggy landscape is a quintessential Rückenfigur. The technique enhances the emotional and meditative connection between the viewer and the painting. 

Engraving: Early Ruckenfiguren is seen in works such as Albrecht Dürer’s 1497 engraving Four Naked Women and Jan Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (ca. 1667). In the former, the titular women, perhaps practicing a form of witchcraft, close their ranks and encircle a skull lying on the floor. While just a single figure is turned fully away, the others gaze inward — in fact, it is only the skull’s vacant sockets that meet our gaze, as if to say: “I can see what you cannot, and at what cost?”. These bodies’ enclosure creates what art historian Lionel Cust calls an atmosphere of “obscure import” and “mysterious significance”, the group of women cultivating “enigmatical meaning, which perhaps Dürer would alone be able to explain”. 

Early Photography: "Marie Jordan's back" by George Hendrik Brietner Shortening the duration of an artist’s model’s pose, photography also offered new opportunities for the Rückenfigur. In the Dutch photographer George Hendrik Breitner’s nude photographs of Marie Jordan’s back, we experience the frisson of voyeuristic looking. 

Modern Photography: And, the same goes for 21st-century photographer Vincent Perez's classic play on images in mirrors, mingling a photographer's image with a double Ruckenfiguren of his subjects.