The word forest is as constant in its etymology as it is in its symbiosis of man and animal. It means mhd. Wald, ahd. Wald and germ. walÞu- and can be traced back to the original meaning of tufts or foliage, branches. This gave rise to the term forest through generalisation. Outside of Germanic, this word can be compared with air. folt (fold), which means tuft of hair, foliage. The naming of lichens as "tree beard (lichen barbatus)" has also been handed down. This means that the interface between man and nature, implicitly forest, is already present in the meaning of the word. In general, it can be observed that the forest has a strong effect on people on an emotional level, quite apart from the benefits, by obviously appealing to supra-individual basic feelings (neuronal patterns). The reactions run through a wide individual spectrum. Ulrich Gebhard, who was able to prove a connection between the experience of nature and human health, sees the generally effective attraction in the ambivalence of the experience of nature. Moreover, even today our aesthetic needs are still largely satisfied by natural forms. Martin Seel has analysed the aesthetics of nature and described the three forms of aesthetic perception of nature as contemplation, correspondence and imagination. A blunting towards nature, which manifests itself in indifference or in allowing its destruction, can be seen as a process of degeneration in human society. Natural science also draws attention to the close connection between humans and their primeval forest habitat. The primeval forest is a sensory hell, it sharpens the senses in the tough struggle for survival. Humans probably owe their highly developed colour vision to the fact that they had to gain visual orientation in this green-brown, dull natural mass. Humans also owe the forest a special ability that is in demand in art, namely the ability to see shapes ahead of time, pareidolia. Thanks to psychophysiological measurements at the Krimml Waterfalls, a recent study by Joanneum Research in Graz, entitled The Heart Rhythm of the Landscape, has shown that the effect of the forest on people ranges from relaxing to activating:
"The physical and psychological reactions that occurred prove that the external space is reflected as an internally perceptible atmosphere and influences people's state of mind."
Authoritative forest images
Since ancient times, literature and visual art have reported on the forest as a part of the landscape. In this way, talented human hands have created visual repositories of knowledge that pass on the understanding of the forest of their epochs.
The first surviving pictorial representation of a forest is a work of book illumination:
Two superimposed images of a peaceful forest in spring on fol. 64 v. introduce the Carmina veris et amoris of the Carmina Burana. It is a parchment manuscript from the Benediktbeuren monastery in Upper Bavaria, today Codex Latinus Monacensis 4660 to 4660a, of the Bavarian State Library in Munich, 7.5 x 10.6 cm and 8.2 x 10.6 cm. According to current research, it was created around 1230 in the southern border region of the Austrian-Bavarian language area. The two forest depictions are considered to be the first autonomous forest pictures in Romanesque art. They consist of two superimposed pictorial fields with the typical tree abbreviations in a dense setting against a blue background. They illustrate the texts of the love songs, which are predominantly written in Latin and often associated with impressions of the mostly spring-like nature, and are located in the manuscript between Song 160 and Song 161, thus concluding the De Vere group of this section, as is repeatedly the task of the miniatures in this manuscript. The third verse of song 161 mentions in German a variety of birdsong ("aller slahte uogel schal") and the marvellous green forest ("grvone stat der schoene walt -"). These two images of nature are repeated in other songs and also seem to have inspired the two miniatures. The forest texts and their illustrations can generally be categorised with the above characteristics as belonging to the seasonal forest of courtly poetry. The depictions of birds in both forest pictures are taken from another song in the Carmina Burana, namely the Nomina auium. The quadrupeds appearing alongside the birds in the lower miniature, including the king of beasts, the lion, are taken from the song De nominibus Ferarum. Corrections and additions were made until the beginning of the 14th century. New bindings changed the sequence of leaves. The manuscript contains eight pen and ink drawings in black-brown and red ink, some of which are sparingly coloured with opaque colours. The upper field depicts a number of stylised tree-like plants on two thresholds against a blue background. In this symbiosis of imaginative natural ornamentation, many birds cavort in accordance with the wording. In the blue field below, the highly stylised tree abbreviations take on bizarre forms. The first pine cone tree with wrinkled rings in the bark bears five differently coloured scaly cones. Then an acanthus-like plant curls into numerous spirals. This is followed by a rosette tree with three heart-shaped leaves. Next to it, a tendril tree produces a silhouette tree and a rosette tree. The silhouette tree was developed in French glass painting in the 12th century. It has a dark background here, which particularly emphasises this part of the picture. According to the latest restoration analyses by the Department of Materials Science and Art Technology at the Institute for Conservation and Restoration at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, this part has not been altered retrospectively, but rather indicates a special feature in terms of content. It is the mask-like face in the spandrel next to it that symbolises paganism, see the tree next to Eve with heads in the painting of the wooden ceiling of St. Michael's in Hildesheim around 1200. A low rosette tree with heart leaves stands at the left edge of the picture. Animals can be seen in between: From left to right, a hare, two birds, a stag, two birds, two horses, a lion and three birds appear. The design of the vegetation is still largely distanced from the observation of nature. The illustrator uses stencil-like pattern forms. However, the dense composition and the variety of vegetation motifs correspond to the thicket of the forest. Furthermore, the depiction of the animals in striking contrast to the abstract flora is based on an already advanced natural observation, which makes them identifiable as species. The two forest pictures in Carmina burana, like the text, represent the literary type of the seasonal forest.
At the beginning of the Middle Ages, Central Europe was covered by almost endless, dense primeval forests with a ground cover of 90 per cent. Progressive colonisation caused considerable losses to the forest. At the end of the early Middle Ages, the proportion of forest was still eighty per cent. It had already shrunk to thirty per cent and was still declining. The first records of a timber industry date back to the 13th century. It became really important in the late Middle Ages. Spruce and fir grew in the south-eastern low mountain ranges of Europe and were used as timber for roof trusses. Pine was found east of the Elbe. Oak provided the central timber. Iron and glassworks, salt works and lime kilns also consumed vast quantities of wood. "The decline of the forests in Germany was so great that Luther complained that Germany would lack three necessary qualities before Judgement Day: good, honest friends, good coin and wild wood." (Held, Schneider). In the 15th and 16th centuries, the landlords issued forestry regulations to protect the forests. Forestry officials monitored them. The protection of the yew tree was enforced.
The forest also played a significant legal and sociological role. The medieval forest, the 'unland', still legally referred to as 'nemus' by the Romans and in the early Middle Ages, was not an ownerless grey area. The word 'forest' was originally a legal term, derived from the Latin 'foresta', and first appeared in the laws of the Lombards and in Charlemagne's capitularies. It referred to the royal game reserves. The word 'silva' meant a royal garden enclosed by walls. The 'forestis silva' was the open forest.
Many also followed the guiding principle that forest air makes you free. Forest and freedom belonged together in the Middle Ages. The force field of the forest was also felt by the mystics, who merged religion and nature. St Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) emphasised this in an epistle to Heinrich Murdach: "Believe me, I have experienced it: You will find more in the woods than in the books!" (Brinckmann).
During the Middle Ages, the forest was also discovered as a place of adventure. Hunting played a decisive role. A driven hunt and bird trapping with a glue rod are recorded in the Reiner Musterbuch, Vienna ÖNB, Cod. 507, fol. 2 r. and 2 v. at the beginning of the 13th century in the depictions of the professions of the middle classes with increasing naturalistic visualisation.
This free zone of the forest also became a symbolic place of activity for the pre-Reformation Anabaptist movement, which had emerged among the working classes in the Netherlands. Their meetings and sermons were held in the forest. This was a clear expression of their distance from the Catholic Church.
A further step towards the naturalistic image of the forest was taken in the Italian artistic landscape of the Quattrocento, with Florence playing a pioneering role, where people generally began to harmonise their visual habits with the pictorial space. The Renaissance emphasised depictions that were as true to nature as possible.
This corresponds to the Adoration in the Forest by the Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi, which he created for the chapel of the Palazzo Medici around 1459, oil on poplar, 127 x 116 cm, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie. The Christ Child lies on the forest floor, depicted in great detail with lush flowers and grasses. Symbolic lilies, carnations, fern fronds, coltsfoot, hawkweed and white wild roses can be identified botanically despite their symbolic value. A naturalistic goldfinch refers to Christ. Mary kneels before the child. The delicate veil of her robe connects the two. It is an iconography of its own, in which she holds a prayer and adores the child. The change of location from Bethlehem to the Cisalpine forest is also innovative. God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit hover above him, protecting and blessing him. The rays of divine light touch the mossy forest floor, which is crossed by a stream. On the dark surface, they create small, iridescent, steaming tongues of flame around the child. The boy St John and St Bernard are reverently added, forming compositional building blocks to an oval figurative form. The artist incorporates astonishing details belonging to forestry work into the composition, which can also be interpreted in terms of content. The mood of the picture is significantly enhanced by the dense, dusky mixed forest, which fills the entire picture plane and is on the way to achieving natural proportions. It still grows in nature to the south-east of Florence.
None other than Albrecht Dürer made a significant contribution to forest painting at the end of the Middle Ages. The watercolour and opaque colour painting The Pond in the Forest, c. 1496 (W 114), 26.2 x 36.5 (37.4) cm, monogram A D by another hand, verso: Fragment Sky at Nightfall. London, The British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, is an early autonomous landscape painting and also an atmospheric landscape. It belongs to the genre of graphic art, but is also effective for painting due to its painterly quality, which is carried by the compositionally activated colouring of bright watercolours and opaque paints. A barrier of marshy ground borders the deep blue water in the foreground. Dark areas indicate marshy dips. The green of the ground vegetation glows phosphorescently due to the interspersion of blue colour spots. Delicate reeds cover the shore zone. A few clods of earth line the pond on the left. On the right, it is bordered by a foothill. The viewer's gaze continues to follow the shore. On the right, they come to a light-coloured sandy bay. Two furrowed tree stumps with a spur stand alone there. Behind them lies the light edge zone of a grove of red pines with dark green treetops. It becomes increasingly dense in the depth of the picture. On the opposite bank, seven ruined trees stand on a small hill. Their trunks are frayed at mid-height, as can be seen in storm damage. Bare hills are visible in the background. The small shore flows into a brown plain in the background. The horizon glows above. Orange streaks of light are activated in their luminosity by the complementary contrast to the grey-blue water surface and the sinewy grey-blue cloud bank. For a long time, this piece of nature could not be determined topographically by the relevant research. Nuremberg researchers recognised Dürer's waters in the Weißensee in Erlenstegen Forest and thus made a decisive localisation, which is recognised in specialist circles. The area, which was incorporated into Nuremberg in 1899 and has an extensive conifer forest, still has a sand dune today and is a rare growth zone for the endangered silver grass, a tuft of which can be seen in the foreground of the watercolour on the left. However, the watercolour also contains other topographical references, namely to the lakes of Trentino, which Dürer travelled through and whose natural sights he depicted, such as the earth pyramids of Segonzzano in the Hieronymus painting. Nearby is the Lago Santo, a high mountain lake, to which the view of a landscape is also fitting, visible between the storm break, and also the traces of the storm that caused Dürer to take the higher route. To sum up, Dürer's watercolour of a pond in the forest is based on a specific Franconian natural motif (pond with red pines and silver grass), which he combines with impressions of his Dürer Trail in Trentino.
The Danube style painter Albrecht Altdorfer created even more forest. His small-format painting Saint George in the Forest 1510, painted in the manner of a miniature on parchment, labelled on the second tree trunk from the right with the monogram AA (connected) and the date 1510, parchment on limewood, 28.2 x 22.5 cm, Munich, Alte Pinakothek, is considered one of the major works of Old German painting and an initial work of landscape depiction with the German forest. St George has ridden through a dense deciduous forest on a narrow path and reached the forest foothills, which provide a narrow space for the action. Oak leaves (Quercus petraea) are recognisable. The bush-like growth of the foliage crowns is reminiscent of beech trees (Fagus sylvatica). This is the so-called hall forest with long, columnar trunk forms and dense canopies of the beech-oak forest type, which grows on sandy and silicate soils in the plains and lower mountain regions of Central Europe. Examples include the Rothwald in the optimal phase of the primeval forest with unevenly aged mixed stands, the Teutoburg Forest near Bad Iburg, a beech forest of the Luzulo-Fagenion and the Galio rotundifolii-Abietetum, a montane stage of the Bavarian Alps. The concentrated existence of the flora fights for space and yet remains squeezed into the picture plane. This creates an extraordinary tension. It harbours dangers that the saint must now conquer. The challenge lurks at the exit of this world of its own in the form of the dragon growing out of the chaotic vegetation. Knight and beast appear neither impetuous nor foreign bodies in the impenetrable jungle as an interface between man and nature. The plume of George's helmet blends intensely with the avalanche of leaves. The dragon connects with the forest floor. This merging of individual forms with structural harmonisation of form led to my renaming of the Danube style as Structurism. The opponents appear level-headed. Good and evil meet without contrast. The small view into a mountainous distant landscape creates spatial tension. Nevertheless, its distant power is greatly diminished by the intertwining treetops high above it. As a result, it looks like a tiny, refreshing bubble in this breathtaking natural spectacle. Its compressed thicket belongs to the literary type of the wild forest, as it is characterised as an impenetrable primeval forest with dangerous inhabitants. As a landscape of meaning, it also brings the events into the Germanic forest, as the growth of trees makes clear. The design mode is deliberately retrospective, which can certainly be understood as a national historically underpinned identification. In this way, the medieval symbolic landscape also becomes effective in the true-to-life landscape. Altdorfer transplants the knight from the Cappadocian family, who, as a hero of virtue representing bravery, trust in God and the following of Christ, was particularly revered in the imperial cities around 1500, to his homeland and merges him with the heroes of medieval literature. It is reminiscent of Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, who was expelled from the Round Table and cursed by the Grail messenger Kundrie after his failure at the Grail Castle; he then flees into the wilderness and undergoes a decisive development.
In the sensuous Baroque era, the independent thematic genre of the forest painting emerged at the end of the 16th century, building on the constant progress of forest depiction in Europe. Lucas van Valckenborch's Angler at a Forest Pond, 1590, oil on canvas, 47 x 56 cm, signature, inscribed lower left 15LVV90 (VV intertwined), Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, paves the way for this type of painting, which appeared fully developed a few years later in the work of Gillis van Coninxloo. The two artistic landscapes of Italy and the Netherlands developed a condensed, close-up image of the forest in a mutual exchange, whereby the north had to overcome the world landscape with added spatial cells. The twilight darkness and the thicket of the forest around this pond are vividly and naturally depicted. The representational quality of the details is reminiscent of Dürer's forest pond. The giant trees with their bulging trunks and densely leafy crowns symbolise the period in which they were created. Two quiet lanes lead left and right into the centre and background. The water features shown also break up the closely spaced deciduous trees of different growth stages. In the foreground, the angler in Spanish court costume with bright whitish colouring looks towards the viewer. It is the artist himself, unusually dressed in elite clothing, who presents himself as a nature-loving angler. This exceptional context for a self-portrait can probably be interpreted as his commitment to a refreshing sojourn in nature. Only the bright face stands out from this natural frame and corresponds with the natural, low light source in the background, which probably indicates an early morning hour due to the bluish colouring. The artist is confronted with a hunting party on the hunt for big game, passing by on the left bank of the pond, with a hunter and two hounds closest to him. It appears to be a stately hunting party with which he is not unfamiliar. At this time, Valckenborch was a chamber painter in the service of Archduke Matthias, governor of the Spanish Hereditary Lands, who was staying in Linz after his resignation. This forest landscape can therefore be located in Old Austria, perhaps in the Danube floodplains around Linz: "The painting was probably created during his stay in Linz and is an important precursor to the forest painting found in Coninxloo eight years later." (Franz).
During the Romantic period, the forest image took on a new meaning. Caspar David Friedrich's early painting Cross in the Mountains, the so-called Tetschen Altarpiece, 1807/08, oil on canvas, 115 x 110 cm, Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, elevates the forest to an expression of a new religious approach to nature. The ornate gilded frame by sculptor Christian Gottlieb Kühn displays traditional Christian symbolism. A sheaf of ears and a vine tendril symbolise the Eucharist around the eye of God, complemented by a five-piece group of angels in the lower frame. The round-arched upper end, which merges into a pointed arch and is formed by palm branches, is crowned by a natural symbol, namely the evening star. The painting takes a different and new approach. The cross in the mountains is defined by a characteristic rock formation, the highest end of which does not form a peak but appears to be broken off at an angle towards the bottom. This rock is the supporting element as the basis of faith for the actual peak of the composition, namely the crucifix with its metal corpus, which reaches the highest point in the picture. It is turned at an angle towards the celestial space, which covers it with streaked, curved, grey and purple clouds. Ivy climbs up the cross. Twelve conifers, described by Friedrich himself as fir trees (Hinz), surround this natural altar as dark silhouettes. He also sees them as people persevering in faith, probably also symbolising the apostles through their number of twelve. The statics of these tall conifers, with no wind to move their tops, correspond with the rock and the crucifix. Christ is not depicted in the picture in the flesh, but is represented as his image in the most precious metal. He is thus distanced from this materiality. In the description of his own painting, Friedrich mentions a sun that sank with an old world in which God still walked the earth: "This sun sank, and the earth could no longer grasp the departing light." (Hinz). (Hinz). It only shines in the Christ of the cross like the gold of the evening red, which is distributed by five radial rays. The last axis of these spokes of light is only vaguely visible. The picture can also be interpreted with these key words of the artist. The dark, silhouetted surface of the rock, which is repeatedly condemned by the Ramdohr critique, symbolises the darkening of the world after God has departed. It forms the antithesis to the light of heaven, which Christ now brings to mankind in pictorial form. The painting is a metaphor of a distant existence, infinitely static and also iconic in this stylistic image - a "landscape of symbols" of Romanticism with its associated formal quality of flatness. In addition to the Christian pictorial canon, the individual forms contain individually developed symbols with ontological questions, but also political intentions "as ciphers, some of which are linked to the idea of a coincidence between the people and rough but healthy nature". (Held, Schneider), so this well-known painting also shows a forward-looking interface between man and nature. Thus, in this forest icon, an innovative forest of ideas was created that distances itself from the impression of nature alone.
'Cut' human-nature interface
In the 20th century, society gradually abandoned its close alliance with nature and thus its nature-based recognisable value in the visual arts on the way to abstraction.
The depiction of the forest in the visual arts was to continue along branching paths after these striking stages of development discussed here. It appears within the framework of abstraction, dissolving in its aura, or socio-politically in the solidifying forest of tree columns by Georg Philipp Wörlen in the first half of the 20th century and finally in Anselm Kiefer's historical search for traces in contemporary art.
The collective conscience has recognised the cracks in the human-nature interface caused by industrial growth and the striving for power late in the 21st century, but with a mindset of sustainability, and has counteracted them. The forest is one of the archetypes of the landscape with permanence, which industrialised man has been able to violate with his increasing demand for space, but has not yet been able to displace. Thus, this theme has a secure place in the visual arts, not always at the front, but always with a deep meaning, which should promote sustainable thoughts and a mindful way of life in dealing with nature. It has survived the fact that the natural relationship to the forest habitat was lost in the 20th century and the human-nature interface mutated into the human-technology interface. Visual art also provides an example of this with Alexander Rodchenko's photograph The Pine Tree in Pushkin Forest from 1925. The artist's comment, which has been passed down to us, has a socially analytical effect: "If I reproduce a tree photographed from the bottom up, similar to an industrial object, a chimney, it is a revolution in the eyes of the philistine [...]. In this way I expand our idea of ordinary, everyday objects." (Busch). This captured tree also takes a stand, but now in favour of industrial madness, which transforms the living tree into a dead, pollutant-spewing object, an unhealthy and terrifying metamorphosis. How few may have understood this warning message of a forest dieback orchestrated by human greed?
In contrast, a not uncontroversial renaissance of the myth of the Hercynian forest can be observed in the work of the great German painter-philosopher Anselm Kiefer from the 1970s onwards. In his innovative treatise Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama dedicates a chapter on the dying of the forest to this artist. Kiefer ultimately uses the interplay of pathos and irony to extract new, acceptable thematic solutions with a connection to identity from historically charged content, such as the German forest: "Through his art, Kiefer seeks to come to terms with German traumas with the aim of recognising what has long been repressed. He approaches the much-abused myths of the German, his forest, his enemies, in order to find out where they come from and what is to be rejected as their fatal after-history, their misuse in the Third Reich." (Lehmann). His diptych from 1971, Head in the Forest, 1971, oil on canvas, 230 x 100 cm, Lütjensee, Collection Dr Günther Gercken, clearly echoes Dürer's Weiher im Walde and brings it into a modern discussion of history. The apocalyptic view of nature that Dürer's watercolour represents is actualised for Kiefer in an era that was responsible for mass destruction.
The German forest is characterised by the world wars. The human spirit is no longer in harmony with this nature, but hangs over it like a sword of Damocles. The interface between man and nature is menacingly called into question. The elements have been robbed of their natural balance by man's ruthless grasp. The fire could easily become a devastating conflagration. The almost visionary apocalyptic mood introduced by Albrecht Dürer in his watercolour was intensified many times over and man was called to account.
Following this drastic 'cut', the large-scale artistic event in Klagenfurt (Austria) For Forest, a temporary art intervention by installation artist Klaus Littmann with the creation of a forest in the Wörthersee Stadium, and the accompanying supporting programme, including the Touch Wood exhibition, attempted to establish a new relationship between contemporary society and the topic of forests and nature in 2019 and to draw attention to climate change caused by human activity.
