The sublime

In his Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), Edmund Burke set the two apart: beauty comes from things small, smooth, and delicate; the sublime from vastness, infinity, and magnificence, and its root is fear, above all the fear of death. In the Critique of Judgment (1790), Immanuel Kant divided the sublime into the mathematical and the dynamical, and placed it in formless objects that suggest boundlessness. Romantic artists of the 19th century used the grandeur of nature to express the sublime; the critic John Ruskin held up Turner as the model. In 1961 the American critic Robert Rosenblum coined “the abstract sublime,” seeing the vast abstract paintings of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, and Still as heirs to the landscapes of the northern Romantics.

Step close and find the parts of the avalanche, the waves, or the steam that have almost no clear shape. Then look again from the far side of the room, and notice how small the people or ships in the picture are.

Does this picture draw you closer, or make you want to step back?