• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.13-29
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• 2012

Art works reflect the spirit and aesthetic information of the times. More specially clothing shown in paintings indicates the phases of the times and contains the aesthetic values of the era. The purpose of this study is to examine the characteristics of German Romantic Era on male and female clothing style represented in Caspar David Friedrich's paintings. The study aims to highlight the following: First, German romanticism ironically gives conceptual importance but high value to freedom of inner self and imaginative sensitivity of human beings. Second, the paintings of Friedrich show the consistency with nature through human beings' inner self and transcendency ultimately expressing religious ideals paradoxically. Third, the characteristics of male and female clothing style shown in Friedrich's paintings are considered religious, contemplative, paradoxical, transcendental, conceptual, political, grass-roots oriented, and female liberating. Female clothing reflects simple empire-style, while male clothing shows romantic style of people's leaders, reflecting the political features in those days.

• Journal of the Korea Fashion and Costume Design Association
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.91-107
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• 2013

Aesthetic values reflecting the phases of the time are well represented in the clothing styles in paintings. Especially, modern German romantic artists' ideologies on the essence of nature and life are reflected in the figures of paintings. This paper aims at finding out how the sublime beauty of German romantic clothing styles is represented in the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich. The research is summarized as follows. First, the German romanticism led the modern romanticism and was especially enthusiastic about the sublime beauty of arts. Second, the sublime means the exaltation of passionately soaring souls and has the mysterious transcendence that unpleasant feeling is elevated to pleasant feeling inside men who are so feeble compared with vast nature. Third, the male and female clothing styles in his paintings represent the religious, contemplative, paradoxical, transcendental, liberating sublime beauties of the German romanticism. Accordingly, a study on the sublime beauty of the German romantic clothing styles will renew the interpretation and aesthetic values of early modern clothing.