I just started looking at the text for exercise 1.6 Staring into the contemporary abyss, and had to note a quote that adds to my thinking on the sublime:
In the early eighteenth century Joseph Addison described the notion of the sublime as something that ‘fills the mind with an agreeable kind of horror’. It was an idea feverishly explored by artists such as Turner, John Martin and Caspar David Friedrich, and further taken up by the American abstract painters Rothko and Barnett Newman.
Staring into the contemporary abyss
The contemporary sublime
Simon Morley
1 September 2010
Tate Etc. issue 20: Autumn 2010http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/staring-contemporary-abyss
I will be commenting further as part of exercise 1.6 but I wanted to keep this quote safe for reference as it is very relevant to the musings I had earlier this week.