Simon Lindner completed his MA studies in art history in Berlin with a thesis on Marcel Duchamp’s multiple Boîte-en-valise, focusing on the concept of play. During his studies, he worked as a research assistant at the Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques (Humboldt University of Berlin) and in the Leibniz Research Cluster “translocations” (Technical University of Berlin). After graduating, he spent research stays at Harvard University and Humboldt University and completed a traineeship in the nonfiction editorial department of the publishing house C. H. Beck. He joined the eikones Graduate School in fall of 2023.

Care for the Landscape: Caspar David Friedrich’s Cultural Techniques

The emergence of Caspar David Friedrich’s self-reflective painting has so far been explained primarily in terms of the history of ideas. In contrast, this dissertation project examines the cultural techniques that Friedrich appropriated in his art and represented through figures such as the fisherman and the wanderer. These include, on the one hand, the modern methods of landscape regulation and economy developed during the Enlightenment, and on the other hand, the older tradition of pastoral guidance and self-examination that reaches back to the Middle Ages. The sources left behind by these practices—police ordinances, maps, travel guides, and devotional literature—have largely been neglected in Friedrich scholarship. By methodologically linking image analysis, cultural technique research, and the history of religion, the project opens up a new perspective on the relationship between Friedrich’s work and its discursive and social conditions.