The Sublime as a concept has its origins in ancient Greek philosophy and is prevalent throughout various points of art history, but is most commonly associated with the Romantic art of the 18th and 19th centuries. The romanticists’ focus on the vast expanses of the natural world provided an ideal framework for expressions of the Sublime.

However, explorations of the Sublime have existed and continue to exist well beyond the scope of 19th century romanticism. While artists such as Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner are still rightly cited for their contributions to understanding the Sublime in a romantic context, the Sublime has also been explored more contemporarily in the abstract. While the Sublime can certainly be understood through the endless landscapes explored by Frederic Edwin Church, so too can it be felt through the imposingly immense yet disconcertingly minimalist canvases of Barnett Newman. Even more recently the Sublime has started to become explored in relation to the digital, with the ever-growing expanses of the virtual world providing a relatively new avenue for understanding humanity’s relationship to that which feels larger than us.