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Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch (/mʊŋk/ MUUNK,[1] Norwegian: [ˈɛ̀dvɑɖ ˈmʊŋk] ; 12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian painter. His 1893 work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most acclaimed images.

Edvard Munch
Munch in an undated photo
Born(1863-12-12)12 December 1863
Died23 January 1944(1944-01-23) (aged 80)
Oslo, Norway
NationalityNorwegian
Known forPainting and graphic artist
Notable work
MovementExpressionism, Symbolism

His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Studying at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania (today's Oslo), Munch began to live a bohemian life under the influence of the nihilist Hans Jæger, who urged him to paint his own emotional and psychological state ('soul painting'); from this emerged his distinctive style.

Travel brought new influences and outlets. In Paris, he learned much from Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, especially their use of color. In Berlin, he met the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, whom he painted, as he embarked on a major series of paintings he would later call The Frieze of Life, depicting a series of deeply-felt themes such as love, anxiety, jealousy and betrayal, steeped in atmosphere.

The Scream was conceived in Kristiania. According to Munch, he was out walking at sunset, when he 'heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature'. The painting's agonized face is widely identified with the angst of the modern person. Between 1893 and 1910, he made two painted versions and two in pastels, as well as a number of prints. One of the pastels would eventually command the fourth highest nominal price paid for a painting at auction.

Self-Portrait with Palette (1926). Currently on view at the Clark Art Institute

As his fame and wealth grew, his emotional state remained insecure. He briefly considered marriage, but could not commit himself. A mental breakdown in 1908 forced him to give up heavy drinking, and he was cheered by his increasing acceptance by the people of Kristiania and exposure in the city's museums. His later years were spent working in peace and privacy. Although his works were banned in Nazi-occupied Europe, most of them survived World War II, securing him a legacy.

Life edit

Childhood edit

Edvard Munch was born in a farmhouse in the village of Ådalsbruk in Løten, Norway, to Laura Catherine Bjølstad and Christian Munch, the son of a priest. Christian was a doctor and medical officer who married Laura, a woman half his age, in 1861. Edvard had an elder sister, Johanne Sophie, and three younger siblings: Peter Andreas, Laura Catherine, and Inger Marie. Laura was artistically talented and may have encouraged Edvard and Sophie. Edvard was related to the painter Jacob Munch and the historian Peter Andreas Munch.[2]

The family moved to Oslo (then called Christiania and renamed to Kristiania in 1877) in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress. Edvard's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, as did Munch's favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877.[3] After their mother's death, the Munch siblings were raised by their father and by their aunt Karen. Often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school, Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied. He was tutored by his school mates and his aunt. Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature, and entertained the children with vivid ghost-stories and the tales of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe.[4]

As Edvard remembered it, Christian's positive behavior towards his children was overshadowed by his morbid pietism. Munch wrote, "My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious—to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born."[5] Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior. The oppressive religious milieu, Edvard's poor health, and the vivid ghost stories helped inspire his macabre visions and nightmares; the boy felt that death was constantly advancing on him.[6] One of Munch's younger sisters, Laura, was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age. Of the five siblings, only Andreas married, but he died a few months after the wedding. Munch would later write, "I inherited two of mankind's most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption and insanity."[7]

Christian Munch's military pay was very low, and his attempts to develop a private side practice failed, keeping his family in genteel but perennial poverty.[3] They moved frequently from one cheap flat to another. Munch's early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors, and the individual objects, such as medicine bottles and drawing implements, plus some landscapes. By his teens, art dominated Munch's interests.[8] At 13, Munch had his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association, where he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school. He returned to copy the paintings, and soon he began to paint in oils.[9]

Mental health edit

 
Despair by Edvard Munch (1894) displays emotion that could be seen as related to dissociation or depression in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Edvard Munch had severe mental health difficulties during his lifetime. He is believed to have had Borderline Personality Disorder, a mental health disorder characterized by fear of abandonment, chronic feelings of emptiness, impulsive behavior, and various other symptoms.[10][11] Munch also displayed alcoholism, a trait often associated with impulsivity in BPD.[a]

Studies and influences edit

 
Self-Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895, Munch Museum, Oslo

In 1879, Munch enrolled in a technical college to study engineering, where he excelled in physics, chemistry and mathematics. He learned scaled and perspective drawing, but frequent illnesses interrupted his studies.[12] The following year, much to his father's disappointment, Munch left the college determined to become a painter. His father viewed art as an "unholy trade", and his neighbors reacted bitterly and sent him anonymous letters.[13] In contrast to his father's rabid pietism, Munch adopted an undogmatic stance towards art. He wrote his goal in his diary: "In my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself."[12]

In 1881, Munch enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design of Kristiania, one of whose founders was his distant relative Jacob Munch. His teachers were the sculptor Julius Middelthun and the naturalistic painter Christian Krohg.[14] That year, Munch demonstrated his quick absorption of his figure training at the academy in his first portraits, including one of his father and his first self-portrait. In 1883, Munch took part in his first public exhibition and shared a studio with other students.[15] His full-length portrait of Karl Jensen-Hjell, a notorious bohemian-about-town, earned a critic's dismissive response: "It is impressionism carried to the extreme. It is a travesty of art."[16] Munch's nude paintings from this period survive only in sketches, except for Standing Nude (1887). They may have been confiscated by his father.[17]

Impressionism inspired Munch from a young age.[18] During these early years, he experimented with many styles, including Naturalism and Impressionism. Some early works are reminiscent of Manet. Many of these attempts brought him unfavorable criticism from the press and garnered him constant rebukes by his father, who nonetheless provided him with small sums for living expenses.[16] At one point, however, Munch's father, perhaps swayed by the negative opinion of Munch's cousin Edvard Diriks (an established, traditional painter), destroyed at least one painting (likely a nude) and refused to advance any more money for art supplies.[19]

Munch also received his father's ire for his relationship with Hans Jæger, the local nihilist who lived by the code "a passion to destroy is also a creative passion" and who advocated suicide as the ultimate way to freedom.[20] Munch came under his malevolent, anti-establishment spell. "My ideas developed under the influence of the bohemians or rather under Hans Jæger. Many people have mistakenly claimed that my ideas were formed under the influence of Strindberg and the Germans ... but that is wrong. They had already been formed by then."[21] At that time, contrary to many of the other bohemians, Munch was still respectful of women, as well as reserved and well-mannered, but he began to give in to the binge drinking and brawling of his circle. He was unsettled by the sexual revolution going on at the time and by the independent women around him. He later turned cynical concerning sexual matters, expressed not only in his behavior and his art, but in his writings as well, an example being a long poem called The City of Free Love.[22]

After numerous experiments, Munch concluded that the Impressionist idiom did not allow sufficient expression. He found it superficial and too akin to scientific experimentation. He felt a need to go deeper and explore situations brimming with emotional content and expressive energy. Under Jæger's commandment that Munch should "write his life", meaning that Munch should explore his own emotional and psychological state, the young artist began a period of reflection and self-examination, recording his thoughts in his "soul's diary".[23] This deeper perspective helped move him to a new view of his art. He wrote that his painting The Sick Child (1886), based on his sister's death, was his first "soul painting", his first break from Impressionism. The painting received a negative response from critics and from his family, and caused another "violent outburst of moral indignation" from the community.[24]

Only his friend Christian Krohg defended him:

He paints, or rather regards, things in a way that is different from that of other artists. He sees only the essential, and that, naturally, is all he paints. For this reason Munch's pictures are as a rule "not complete", as people are so delighted to discover for themselves. Oh, yes, they are complete. His complete handiwork. Art is complete once the artist has really said everything that was on his mind, and this is precisely the advantage Munch has over painters of the other generation, that he really knows how to show us what he has felt, and what has gripped him, and to this he subordinates everything else.[25]

Munch continued to employ a variety of brushstroke techniques and color palettes throughout the 1880s and early 1890s, as he struggled to define his style.[26] His idiom continued to veer between naturalistic, as seen in Portrait of Hans Jæger, and impressionistic, as in Rue Lafayette. His Inger on the Beach (1889), which caused another storm of confusion and controversy, hints at the simplified forms, heavy outlines, sharp contrasts, and emotional content of his mature style to come.[27] He began to carefully calculate his compositions to create tension and emotion. While stylistically influenced by the Post-Impressionists, what evolved was a subject matter which was symbolist in content, depicting a state of mind rather than an external reality. In 1889, Munch presented his first one-man show of nearly all his works to date. The recognition it received led to a two-year state scholarship to study in Paris under French painter Léon Bonnat.[28]

Munch seems to have been an early critic of photography as an art form, and remarked that it "will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell!"[29]

Munch's younger sister Laura was the subject of his 1899 interior Melancholy: Laura. Amanda O'Neill says of the work, "In this heated claustrophobic scene Munch not only portrays Laura's tragedy, but his own dread of the madness he might have inherited."[30]

Paris edit

Munch arrived in Paris during the festivities of the Exposition Universelle (1889) and roomed with two fellow Norwegian artists. His picture Morning (1884) was displayed at the Norwegian pavilion.[31] He spent his mornings at Bonnat's busy studio (which included female models) and afternoons at the exhibition, galleries, and museums (where students were expected to make copies as a way of learning technique and observation).[32] Munch recorded little enthusiasm for Bonnat's drawing lessons—"It tires and bores me—it's numbing"—but enjoyed the master's commentary during museum trips.[33][34]

Munch was enthralled by the vast display of modern European art, including the works of three artists who would prove influential: Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—all notable for how they used color to convey emotion.[34] Munch was particularly inspired by Gauguin's "reaction against realism" and his credo that "art was human work and not an imitation of Nature", a belief earlier stated by Whistler.[35] As one of his Berlin friends said later of Munch, "he need not make his way to Tahiti to see and experience the primitive in human nature. He carries his own Tahiti within him."[36] Influenced by Gauguin, as well as the etchings of German artist Max Klinger, Munch experimented with prints as a medium to create graphic versions of his works. In 1896 he created his first woodcuts—a medium that proved ideal to Munch's symbolic imagery.[37] Together with his contemporary Nikolai Astrup, Munch is considered an innovator of the woodcut medium in Norway.[38]

In December 1889 his father died, leaving Munch's family destitute. He returned home and arranged a large loan from a wealthy Norwegian collector when wealthy relatives failed to help, and assumed financial responsibility for his family from then on.[39] Christian's death depressed him and he was plagued by suicidal thoughts: "I live with the dead—my mother, my sister, my grandfather, my father...Kill yourself and then it's over. Why live?"[40] Munch's paintings of the following year included sketchy tavern scenes and a series of bright cityscapes in which he experimented with the pointillist style of Georges Seurat.[41]

Berlin edit

 
Melancholy, 1891, oil, pencil and crayon on canvas, 73 × 101 cm, Munch Museum, Oslo
 
Munch in 1902, in the garden of his patron Max Linde in Lübeck; in the background is a cast of Auguste Rodin's sculpture The Age of Bronze.

By 1892, Munch formulated his characteristic, and original, Synthetist style, as seen in Melancholy (1891), in which color is the symbol-laden element. Considered by the artist and journalist Christian Krohg as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist, Melancholy was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo.[42] In 1892, Adelsteen Normann, on behalf of the Union of Berlin Artists, invited Munch to exhibit at its November exhibition,[43] the society's first one-man exhibition. However, his paintings evoked bitter controversy (dubbed "The Munch Affair"), and after one week the exhibition closed.[43] Munch was pleased with the "great commotion", and wrote in a letter: "Never have I had such an amusing time—it's incredible that something as innocent as painting should have created such a stir."[44]

In Berlin, Munch became involved in an international circle of writers, artists and critics, including the Swedish dramatist and leading intellectual August Strindberg, whom he painted in 1892.[45] He also met Danish writer and painter Holger Drachmann, whom he painted in 1898. Drachmann was 17 years Munch's senior and a drinking companion at Zum schwarzen Ferkel (At the Black Piglet) in 1893–94.[46] In 1894 Drachmann wrote of Munch: "He struggles hard. Good luck with your struggles, lonely Norwegian."[47]

During his four years in Berlin, Munch sketched out most of the ideas that would be comprised in his major work, The Frieze of Life, first designed for book illustration but later expressed in paintings.[48] He sold little, but made some income from charging entrance fees to view his controversial paintings.[49]

His other paintings, including casino scenes, show a simplification of form and detail which marked his early mature style.[50] Munch also began to favor a shallow pictorial space and a minimal backdrop for his frontal figures. Since poses were chosen to produce the most convincing images of states of mind and psychological conditions, as in Ashes, the figures impart a monumental, static quality. Munch's figures appear to play roles on a theatre stage (Death in the Sick-Room), whose pantomime of fixed postures signify various emotions; since each character embodies a single psychological dimension, as in The Scream, Munch's men and women began to appear more symbolic than realistic. He wrote, "No longer should interiors be painted, people reading and women knitting: there would be living people, breathing and feeling, suffering and loving."[51]

The Scream edit

 
The Scream (1893), National Gallery, Oslo

The Scream exists in four versions: two pastels (1893 and 1895) and two paintings (1893 and 1910). There are also several lithographs of The Scream (1895 and later).[citation needed]

The 1895 pastel sold at auction on 2 May 2012 for US$119,922,500, including commission. It is the most colorful of the versions[52] and is distinctive for the downward-looking stance of one of its background figures. It is also the only version not held by a Norwegian museum.[citation needed]

The 1893 version was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and was recovered. The 1910 painting was stolen in 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo, but recovered in 2006 with limited damage.[citation needed]

The Scream is Munch's most famous work, and one of the most recognizable paintings in all art. It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man.[51] Painted with broad bands of garish color and highly simplified forms, and employing a high viewpoint, it reduces the agonized figure to a garbed skull in the throes of an emotional crisis.[citation needed]

With this painting, Munch met his stated goal of "the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self".[53] Munch wrote of how the painting came to be: "I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous, infinite scream of nature."[54] He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, "for several years I was almost mad... You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood... After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again."[55]

In 2003, comparing the painting with other great works, art historian Martha Tedeschi wrote:

Whistler's Mother, Wood's American Gothic, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch's The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer. These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture.[56]

Frieze of Life—A Poem about Life, Love and Death edit

 
Although it is a highly unusual representation, this painting might be of the Virgin Mary. Whether the painting is specifically intended as a representation of Mary is disputed. Munch used more than one title, including both Loving Woman and Madonna.[57][b]

In December 1893, Unter den Linden in Berlin was the location of an exhibition of Munch's work, showing, among other pieces, six paintings entitled Study for a Series: Love. This began a cycle he later called the Frieze of Life—A Poem about Life, Love and Death. Frieze of Life motifs, such as The Storm and Moonlight, are steeped in atmosphere. Other motifs illuminate the nocturnal side of love, such as Rose and Amelie and Love and Pain. In Death in the Sickroom, the subject is the death of his sister Sophie, which he re-worked in many future variations. The dramatic focus of the painting, portraying his entire family, is dispersed in the separate and disconnected figures of sorrow. In 1894, he enlarged the spectrum of motifs by adding Anxiety, Ashes, Madonna and Women in Three Stages (from innocence to old age).[59]

Around the start of the 20th century, Munch worked to finish the "Frieze". He painted a number of pictures, several of them in bigger format and to some extent featuring the Art Nouveau aesthetics of the time. He made a wooden frame with carved reliefs for the large painting Metabolism (1898), initially called Adam and Eve. This work reveals Munch's pre-occupation with the "fall of man" and his pessimistic philosophy of love. Motifs such as The Empty Cross and Golgotha (both c. 1900) reflect a metaphysical orientation, and also reflect Munch's pietistic upbringing. The entire Frieze was shown for the first time at the secessionist exhibition in Berlin in 1902.[60]

"The Frieze of Life" themes recur throughout Munch's work but he especially focused on them in the mid-1890s. In sketches, paintings, pastels and prints, he tapped the depths of his feelings to examine his major motifs: the stages of life, the femme fatale, the hopelessness of love, anxiety, infidelity, jealousy, sexual humiliation, and separation in life and death.[61] These themes are expressed in paintings such as The Sick Child (1885), Love and Pain (retitled Vampire; 1893–94), Ashes (1894), and The Bridge. The latter shows limp figures with featureless or hidden faces, over which loom the threatening shapes of heavy trees and brooding houses. Munch portrayed women either as frail, innocent sufferers (see Puberty and Love and Pain) or as the cause of great longing, jealousy and despair (see Separation, Jealousy, and Ashes).

Munch often uses shadows and rings of color around his figures to emphasize an aura of fear, menace, anxiety, or sexual intensity.[62] These paintings have been interpreted as reflections of the artist's sexual anxieties, though it could also be argued that they represent his turbulent relationship with love itself and his general pessimism regarding human existence.[63] Many of these sketches and paintings were done in several versions, such as Madonna, Hands and Puberty, and also transcribed as wood-block prints and lithographs. Munch hated to part with his paintings because he thought of his work as a single body of expression. So to capitalize on his production and make some income, he turned to graphic arts to reproduce many of his paintings, including those in this series.[64] Munch admitted to the personal goals of his work but he also offered his art to a wider purpose, "My art is really a voluntary confession and an attempt to explain to myself my relationship with life—it is, therefore, actually a sort of egoism, but I am constantly hoping that through this I can help others achieve clarity."[65]

While attracting strongly negative reactions, in the 1890s Munch began to receive some understanding of his artistic goals, as one critic wrote, "With ruthless contempt for form, clarity, elegance, wholeness, and realism, he paints with intuitive strength of talent the most subtle visions of the soul."[66] One of his great supporters in Berlin was Walther Rathenau, later the German foreign minister, who strongly contributed to his success.

Landscapes and Nature edit

 
From Thuringerwald, 1905, oil on canvas. The work depicts a sinuous cut through the forest with a fleshy earth that harkens back to a physical connection to the viewer. Currently on exhibit in Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth at the Clark Art Institute

Despite over half of his painted works being landscapes, Munch is rarely seen as a landscape artist. However, Munch had a fixation on several elements of nature that resulted in recurrent motifs throughout his work. The shoreline and the forest are both significant settings of Munch's work. A focus on Munch's use of nature to convey emotion is the topic of Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth at the Clark Art Institute.

Paris, Berlin and Kristiania edit

 
The Sick Child (1907)

In 1896, Munch moved to Paris, where he focused on graphic representations of his Frieze of Life themes. He further developed his woodcut and lithographic technique. Munch's Self-Portrait with Skeleton Arm (1895) is done with an etching needle-and-ink method also used by Paul Klee.[67] Munch also produced multi-colored versions of The Sick Child, concerning tuberculosis, which sold well, as well as several nudes and multiple versions of Kiss (1892).[67] In May 1896, Siegfried Bing held an exhibition of Munch's work inside Bing's Maison de l'Art Nouveau. The exhibition displayed 60 works, including The Kiss, The Scream, Madonna, The Sick Child, The Death Chamber, and The Day After. Bing's exhibition helped to introduce Munch to a French audience.[68] Still, many of the Parisian critics still considered Munch's work "violent and brutal" even if his exhibitions received serious attention and good attendance.[69] His financial situation improved considerably and, in 1897, Munch bought himself a summer house facing the fjords of Kristiania, a small fisherman's cabin built in the late 18th century, in the small town of Åsgårdstrand in Norway. He dubbed this home the "Happy House" and returned here almost every summer for the next 20 years.[70] It was this place he missed when he was abroad and when he felt depressed and exhausted. "To walk in Åsgårdstrand is like walking among my paintings—I get so inspired to paint when I am here".

 
Harald Nørregaard (with his wife, painted by Munch in 1899, National Gallery) was one of Munch's closest friends since adolescence, adviser and lawyer.[71]

In 1897 Munch returned to Kristiania, where he also received grudging acceptance—one critic wrote, "A fair number of these pictures have been exhibited before. In my opinion these improve on acquaintance."[70] In 1899, Munch began an intimate relationship with Tulla Larsen, a "liberated" upper-class woman. They traveled to Italy together and upon returning, Munch began another fertile period in his art, which included landscapes and his final painting in "The Frieze of Life" series, The Dance of Life (1899).[72] Larsen was eager for marriage, but Munch was not. His drinking and poor health reinforced his fears, as he wrote in the third person: "Ever since he was a child he had hated marriage. His sick and nervous home had given him the feeling that he had no right to get married."[73] Munch almost gave in to Tulla, but fled from her in 1900, also turning away from her considerable fortune, and moved to Berlin.[73] His Girls on the Jetty[clarification needed], created in 18 different versions, demonstrated the theme of feminine youth without negative connotations.[64] In 1902, he displayed his works thematically at the hall of the Berlin Secession, producing "a symphonic effect—it made a great stir—a lot of antagonism—and a lot of approval."[74] The Berlin critics were beginning to appreciate Munch's work even though the public still found his work alien and strange.

The good press coverage gained Munch the attention of influential patrons Albert Kollman and Max Linde. He described the turn of events in his diary, "After 20 years of struggle and misery forces of good finally come to my aid in Germany—and a bright door opens up for me."[75] However, despite this positive change, Munch's self-destructive and erratic behavior led him first to a violent quarrel with another artist, then to an accidental shooting in the presence of Tulla Larsen, who had returned for a brief reconciliation, which injured two of his fingers. Munch later sawed a self-portrait depicting him and Larsen in half as a consequence of the shooting and subsequent events.[76] She finally left him and married a younger colleague of Munch. Munch took this as a betrayal, and he dwelled on the humiliation for some time to come, channeling some of the bitterness into new paintings.[77] His paintings Still Life (The Murderess) and The Death of Marat I, done in 1906–07, clearly reference the shooting incident and the emotional after-effects.[78]

In 1903–04, Munch exhibited in Paris where the coming Fauvists, famous for their boldly false colors, likely saw his works and might have found inspiration in them. When the Fauves held their own exhibit in 1906, Munch was invited and displayed his works with theirs.[79] After studying the sculpture of Rodin, Munch may have experimented with plasticine as an aid to design, but he produced little sculpture.[80] During this time, Munch received many commissions for portraits and prints which improved his usually precarious financial condition.[81] In 1906, he painted the screen for an Ibsen play in the small Kammerspiele Theatre located in Berlin's Deutsches Theater, in which the Frieze of Life was hung. The theatre's director Max Reinhardt later sold it; it is now in the Berlin Nationalgalerie.[82] After an earlier period of landscapes, in 1907 he turned his attention again to human figures and situations.[83]

Breakdown and recovery edit

 
Munch in 1933

In the autumn of 1908, Munch's anxiety, compounded by excessive drinking and brawling, had become acute. As he later wrote, "My condition was verging on madness—it was touch and go."[84] Subject to hallucinations and feelings of persecution, he entered the clinic of Daniel Jacobson. The therapy Munch received for the next eight months included diet and "electrification" (a treatment then fashionable for nervous conditions, not to be confused with electroconvulsive therapy).[85] Munch's stay in hospital stabilized his personality, and after returning to Norway in 1909, his work became more colorful and less pessimistic. Further brightening his mood, the general public of Kristiania finally warmed to his work, and museums began to purchase his paintings. He was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St. Olav "for services in art".[86] His first American exhibit was in 1912 in New York.[87]

As part of his recovery, Jacobson advised Munch to only socialize with good friends and avoid drinking in public. Munch followed this advice and in the process produced several full-length portraits of high quality of friends and patrons—honest portrayals devoid of flattery.[88] He also created landscapes and scenes of people at work and play, using a new optimistic style—broad, loose brushstrokes of vibrant color with frequent use of white space and rare use of black—with only occasional references to his morbid themes. With more income Munch was able to buy several properties giving him new vistas for his art and he was finally able to provide for his family.[89]

The outbreak of World War I found Munch with divided loyalties, as he stated, "All my friends are German but it is France I love."[90] In the 1930s, his German patrons, many Jewish, lost their fortunes and some their lives during the rise of the Nazi movement.[91] Munch found Norwegian printers to substitute for the Germans who had been printing his graphic work.[92] Given his poor health history, during 1918 Munch felt himself lucky to have survived a bout of the Spanish flu, the worldwide pandemic of that year.[93]

Later years edit

 
Munch's grave at the Cemetery of Our Saviour in Oslo

Munch spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his nearly self-sufficient estate in Ekely, at Skøyen, Oslo.[94] Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life, including several in which he used his work horse "Rousseau" as a model.[95] Without any effort, Munch attracted a steady stream of female models, whom he painted as the subjects of numerous nude paintings. He likely had sexual relationships with some of them.[96] Munch occasionally left his home to paint murals on commission, including those done for the Freia chocolate factory.[97]

To the end of his life, Munch continued to paint unsparing self-portraits, adding to his self-searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of takes on his emotional and physical states. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled Munch's work "degenerate art" (along with that of Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Gauguin and many other modern artists) and removed his 82 works from German museums.[98] Adolf Hitler announced in 1937, "For all we care, those pre-historic Stone Age culture barbarians and art-stutterers can return to the caves of their ancestors and there can apply their primitive international scratching."[99]

In 1940, the Germans invaded Norway and the Nazi party took over the government. Munch was 76 years old. With nearly an entire collection of his art in the second floor of his house, Munch lived in fear of a Nazi confiscation. Seventy-one of the paintings previously taken by the Nazis had been returned to Norway through purchase by collectors (the other 11 were never recovered), including The Scream and The Sick Child, and they too were hidden from the Nazis.[100]

Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944, about a month after his 80th birthday. His Nazi-orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer, a kind of appropriation of the independent artist.[101] The city of Oslo bought the Ekely estate from Munch's heirs in 1946; his house was demolished in May 1960.[102]

Legacy edit

 
Munch Museum, Oslo
 
Munch Museum, Oslo

From my rotting body,
flowers shall grow
and I am in them
and that is eternity.

Edvard Munch[103]

When Munch died, his remaining works were bequeathed to the city of Oslo, which built the Munch Museum at Tøyen (it opened in 1963). The museum holds a collection of approximately 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings, and 18,000 prints, the broadest collection of his works in the world.[104] The Munch Museum serves as Munch's official estate;[104] it has been active in responding to copyright infringements as well as clearing copyright for the work, such as the appearance of Munch's The Scream in a 2006 M&M's advertising campaign.[105] The U.S. copyright representative for the Munch Museum and the Estate of Edvard Munch is the Artists Rights Society.[106]

Munch's art was highly personalized and he did little teaching. His "private" symbolism was far more personal than that of other Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau and James Ensor. Munch was still highly influential, particularly with the German Expressionists, who followed his philosophy, "I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of Man's urge to open his heart."[51] Many of his paintings, including The Scream, have universal appeal in addition to their highly personal meaning.

Munch's works are now represented in numerous major museums and galleries in Norway and abroad. His cabin, "the Happy House", was given to the municipality of Åsgårdstrand in 1944; it serves as a small Munch Museum. The inventory has been maintained exactly as he left it.

One version of The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery in 1994. In 2004, another version of The Scream, along with one of Madonna, was stolen from the Munch Museum in a daring daylight robbery. These were all eventually recovered, but the paintings stolen in the 2004 robbery were extensively damaged. They have been meticulously restored and are on display again. Three Munch works were stolen from the Hotel Refsnes Gods in 2005; they were shortly recovered, although one of the works was damaged during the robbery.[107]

In October 2006, the color woodcut Two people. The lonely (To mennesker. De ensomme) set a new record for his prints when it was sold at an auction in Oslo for 8.1 million kroner (US$1.27 million equivalent to $1,800,000 in 2022). It also set a record for the highest price paid in auction in Norway.[108] On 3 November 2008, the painting Vampire set a new record for his paintings when it was sold for US$38,162,000 (equivalent to $51,900,000 in 2022) at Sotheby's New York.

Munch's image appears on the Norwegian 1,000-kroner note, along with pictures inspired by his artwork.[109]

In February 2012, a major Munch exhibition, Edvard Munch. The Modern Eye, opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; the exhibition was opened by Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway.[110][111]

In May 2012, The Scream sold for US$119.9 million (equivalent to $152,800,000 in 2022), and is the second most expensive artwork ever sold at an open auction. (It was surpassed in November 2013 by Three Studies of Lucian Freud, which sold for US$142.4 million).[112]

In 2013, four of Munch's paintings were depicted in a series of stamps by the Norwegian postal service, to commemorate in 2014 the 150th anniversary of his birth.[113]

On 14 November 2016 a version of Munch's The Girls on the Bridge sold for US$54.5 million (equivalent to $66,500,000 in 2022) at Sotheby's, New York, making it the second highest price achieved for one of his paintings.[114]

In April 2019 the British Museum hosted the exhibition, Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, comprising 83 artworks and including a rare original print of The Scream.[115]

In May 2022 the Courtauld Gallery hosted the exhibition, Edvard Munch. Masterpieces from Bergen, showcasing 18 paintings from Norwegian industrialist Rasmus Meyer's collection.[116]

In June 2023 the Clark Art Institute hosted the exhibition Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth. It is the first exhibit in the United States to focus on how Munch used nature to convey deeper meaning in his painting. Trembling Earth features more than 75 works, many from the Munchmuseet's collection, and over 40 paintings and prints from rarely seen private collections.[117]

In September 2023, the Berlinische Galerie Museum for Modern Art hosted an exhibition Edvard Munch. Magic of the North in collaboration with the Munch Museum Oslo. The exhibition includes around 80 works by Edvard Munch, supplemented by works by other artists who shaped the idea of the north and the modern art scene on the Spree in Berlin at the end of the 19th century.[118]

In November 2023, the Museum Barberini in Potsdam also hosted an exibition Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth in collaboration with the Munch Museum Oslo. The exhibition overlaps the Berlinische Galerie exhibition by eight weeks, both exhibitions are under the joint patronage of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and His Majesty King Harald V of Norway. The exhibition includes more than 110 loans from other institutions.[119]

University Aula edit

 
The Aula featuring History (left), The Sun (front), Alma Mater (right), smaller paintings on corners

In 1911 the final competition for the decoration of the large walls of the University of Oslo Aula (assembly hall) was held between Munch and Emanuel Vigeland. The episode is known as the "Aula controversy". In 1914 Munch was finally commissioned to decorate the Aula and the work was completed in 1916. This major work in Norwegian monumental painting includes 11 paintings covering 223 m2 (2,400 sq ft). The Sun, History and Alma Mater are the key works in this sequence. Munch declared: "I wanted the decorations to form a complete and independent world of ideas, and I wanted their visual expression to be both distinctively Norwegian and universally human". In 2014 it was suggested that the Aula paintings have a value of at least 500 million kroner.[120][121]

Major works edit

 
Life by Munch, at the Rådhuset (City Hall) in Oslo. The room is called The Munch room.

Selected works edit

Nudes edit

Self-portraits edit

Landscapes edit

Photographs edit

See also edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ "Borderline Personality Disorder". NIMH. from the original on 22 March 2016. Retrieved 16 March 2016.
  2. ^ Munch is not famous for religious artwork and was not known as a Christian. The affinity to Mary might be intended nevertheless, as an emphasis on the beauty and perfection of his friend Dagny Juel-Przybyszewska, the model for the work, and an expression of his worship of her as an ideal of womanhood.[58](1894, oil on canvas, 90 cm × 68 cm (35+12 in × 26+34 in), Munch Museum, Oslo)

References edit

Citations edit

  1. ^ Wells 2008.
  2. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 15
  3. ^ a b Eggum 1984, p. 16
  4. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 17
  5. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 2
  6. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 19
  7. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 137
  8. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 22
  9. ^ Prideaux 2005, pp. 22–23
  10. ^ Aarkrog 1990.
  11. ^ Wylie 1980, pp. 413–443.
  12. ^ a b Prideaux 2005, p. 35
  13. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 40
  14. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 41
  15. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 34
  16. ^ a b Prideaux 2005, p. 34
  17. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 41
  18. ^ "Kiss by the Window by Edvard Munch". www.edvard-munch.org. from the original on 3 October 2021. Retrieved 3 October 2021.
  19. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 43
  20. ^ Prideaux 2005, pp. 71, 74
  21. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 71
  22. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 72
  23. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 83
  24. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 88
  25. ^ Eggum 1984, pp. 52–53
  26. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 46
  27. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 59
  28. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 55
  29. ^ Berman 1986, p. 106.
  30. ^ O'Neill 1996, p. 44
  31. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 49
  32. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 108
  33. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 110
  34. ^ a b Eggum 1984, p. 61
  35. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 9
  36. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 12
  37. ^ "The Graphic Works and Prints of Edvard Munch". I. B. Tauris Blog. 6 August 2012. from the original on 13 January 2016. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  38. ^ "Nikolai Astrup". KODE. Art Museums of Bergen. 11 January 2016. from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 11 January 2016.
  39. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 114
  40. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 115
  41. ^ Eggum 1984, pp. 64–68
  42. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 75
  43. ^ a b Prideaux 2005, pp. 135–137
  44. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 91
  45. ^ Morehead 2019, pp. 19–34.
  46. ^ Munch 2005, p. 119
  47. ^ Munch 2005, p. 7
  48. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 77
  49. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 153
  50. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 79
  51. ^ a b c Eggum 1984, p. 10
  52. ^ Vogel 2012.
  53. ^ Faerna 1995, p. 16
  54. ^ Faerna 1995, p. 17
  55. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 152
  56. ^ MacDonald 2003, p. 80.
  57. ^ Bischoff 2000, p. 42.
  58. ^ Gerner 1993.
  59. ^ Faerna 1995, p. 28
  60. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 211
  61. ^ Eggum 1984, pp. 116–118
  62. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 122
  63. ^ Faerna 1995, p. 6
  64. ^ a b Faerna 1995, p. 5
  65. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 118
  66. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 121
  67. ^ a b Eggum 1984, p. 141
  68. ^ Weisberg, Gabriel P. (1986). Art Nouveau Bing. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. pp. 112–115. ISBN 0-8109-1486-7.
  69. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 152
  70. ^ a b Eggum 1984, p. 153
  71. ^ Thiis 1933, p. 279.
  72. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 168
  73. ^ a b Eggum 1984, p. 174
  74. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 176
  75. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 181
  76. ^ Thorpe 2019.
  77. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 183
  78. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 214
  79. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 190
  80. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 195
  81. ^ Eggum 1984, pp. 196, 203
  82. ^ Bernau 2005, pp. 65–78.
  83. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 228
  84. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 236
  85. ^ Eggum 1984, pp. 235–236
  86. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 239
  87. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 373
  88. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 240
  89. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 259
  90. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 285
  91. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 288
  92. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 290
  93. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 299
  94. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 291
  95. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 292
  96. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 297
  97. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 374
  98. ^ Eggum 1984, p. 287
  99. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 313
  100. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 319
  101. ^ Prideaux 2005, p. 328
  102. ^ Altern 1961, pp. 5–19.
  103. ^ Thompson & Sorvig 2008, p. 30.
  104. ^ a b . Munch Museum. Archived from the original on 19 May 2012. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  105. ^ Masterfoods USA (21 August 2006). "M&M's® Responds to Consumer Demand and Introduces the Fun Way to Eat Dark Chocolate" (Press release). PR Newswire. from the original on 13 July 2012. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  106. ^ . Artists Represented. Artists Rights Society. Archived from the original on 6 February 2015. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  107. ^ Gibbs 2005.
  108. ^ . Aftenposten. 27 December 2006. Archived from the original on 12 October 2007. Retrieved 25 December 2007.
  109. ^ "1000-krone note". Notes and coins. Norges Bank. from the original on 20 May 2012. Retrieved 6 May 2012.
  110. ^ Crown Princess Mette-Marit opens Munch exhibition on YouTube. 11 February 2012. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  111. ^ "Edvard Munch. The Modern Eye" (Press release). e-flux. 2012. from the original on 17 May 2013. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  112. ^ Jones 2013.
  113. ^ "Munchs "Skrik" blir frimerke". Dagbladet (in Norwegian). NTB. 13 February 2013. from the original on 17 February 2013. Retrieved 17 February 2013.
  114. ^ . Sotheby's. Archived from the original on 30 January 2018. Retrieved 29 January 2018.
  115. ^ "Edvard Munch: Love and Angst review – 'Ripples of trauma hit you like a bomb'". the Guardian. 8 April 2019. from the original on 21 January 2021. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  116. ^ "Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen review – a magical misery tour". the Guardian. 29 May 2022. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
  117. ^ "Edvard Munch". www.clarkart.edu. Retrieved 16 June 2023.
  118. ^ https://berlinischegalerie.de/ausstellungen/vorschau/edvard-munch/
  119. ^ "Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth". Retrieved 18 November 2023.
  120. ^ "Edvard Munch i Universitetets aula". University of Oslo. 3 January 2013. from the original on 29 November 2014. Retrieved 15 November 2014.
  121. ^ Universitas, 29 October 2014.[full citation needed]

General sources edit

  • Aarkrog, T (1990). Edvard Munch: The Life of a Person with Borderline Personality as Seen Through His Art [Edvard Munch, et livsløb af en grænsepersonlighed forstået gennem hans billeder]. Danmark: Lundbeck Pharma A/S. ISBN 978-8798352419.
  • Altern, Arne (1961). "Tanker omkring et nedrevet hus". St. Hallvard.
  • Berman, Patricia G., ed. (1986). Edvard Munch: Mirror Reflections. West Palm Beach, FL: Norton Gallery & School of Art. OCLC 757178143.
  • Bernau, Nikolaus (2005). "Wo hing Munchs Lebens-Fries? Zu dem Bau der Kammerspiele und ihrem berühmtesten Schmuck". In Koberg, Roland; Stegemann, Bernd; Thomsen, Henrike (eds.). Blätter des Deutschen Theaters. Berlin: Max Reinhard, Das Deutsche Theater.
  • Bischoff, Ulrich (2000). Edvard Munch: 1863–1944. Taschen. ISBN 3-8228-5971-0. from the original on 24 October 2021. Retrieved 28 December 2019.
  • Chipp, Herschel B. (1968). Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. p. 114. ISBN 0-520-05256-0.
  • Eggum, Arne (1984). Munch, Edvard (ed.). Edvard Munch: Paintings, Sketches, and Studies. New York, NY: C.N. Potter. p. 305. ISBN 0-517-55617-0. from the original on 4 June 2021. Retrieved 20 August 2019.
  • Faerna, José María (1995). Munch. New York, NY: Harry N. Abrams. p. 16. ISBN 0-8109-4694-7.
  • Gerner, Cornelia (1993). Die "Madonna" in Edvard Munchs Werk – Frauenbilder und Frauenbild im ausgehenden 19. Jahrhundert. Knut Brynhildsvoll, Literaturverlag Norden Mark Reinhard, Morsbach. ISBN 978-3-927153-40-0.
  • Gibbs, Walter (10 March 2005). "Arts, Briefly; Munch Theft Confessions". The New York Times. from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 4 March 2010.
  • Jones, Jonathan (12 November 2013). "Why Francis Bacon Deserves to Beat The Scream's record-breaking Pricetag". the Guardian. from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 18 May 2014.
  • MacDonald, Margaret F., ed. (2003). Whistler's Mother: An American Icon. Burlington, VT: Lund Humphries. ISBN 0-85331-856-5.
  • Morehead, Allison (2019). "Hands, Dissection, and Embodied Seeing: Strindberg and Munch". In Schroeder, Jonathan; Westerstahl Stenport, Anna; Szalczer, Eszter (eds.). August Strindberg and Visual Culture: The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Image, Text and Theatre. Bloomsbury. doi:10.5040/9781501338038.ch-002. ISBN 978-1-5013-3800-7. S2CID 192530363.
  • Munch, Edvard (2005). Holland, J. Gill (ed.). The Private Journals of Edvard Munch: We Are Flames Which Pour Out of the Earth. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-19814-6.
  • O'Neill, Amanda (1996). The Life and Works of Munch. Bristol: Parragon Book Service. ISBN 0-7525-1690-6.
  • Prideaux, Sue (2005). Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12401-9.
  • Thiis, Jens (1933). Edvard Munch og hans samtid. Slekten, livet og kunsten, geniet. Oslo: Gyldendal. OCLC 637507959. from the original on 1 August 2020. Retrieved 12 September 2019.
  • Thompson, J. William; Sorvig, Kim (2008). Sustainable Landscape Construction: A Guide to Green Building Outdoors (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Island Press. ISBN 978-1-59726-142-5.
  • Thorpe, Vanessa (7 April 2019). "Edvard Munch 'reunited' with fiancée for British Museum show". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. from the original on 7 April 2019. Retrieved 8 April 2019.
  • Vogel, Carol (17 September 2012). "Munch's 'Scream' to Hang for Six Months at MoMA". The New York Times. from the original on 23 December 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  • Wells, John (2008). Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (3rd ed.). Pearson Longman. ISBN 978-1-4058-8118-0.
  • Wylie, H.W. (1980). "Edvard Munch". The American Imago; A Psychoanalytic Journal for the Arts and Sciences. Johns Hopkins University Press. 37 (4): 413–443. JSTOR 26303797. PMID 7008567.

Further reading edit

  • Black, Peter; Bruteig, Magne, eds. (2009). Edvard Munch: Prints. London: Philip Wilson. ISBN 978-0-85667-677-2. Catalogue of exhibition at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, University of Glasgow and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin.
  • Clarke, Jay (2014). "Munch on Paper". Print Quarterly. 31: 237–243.
  • Dolnick, Edward (2005). The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 0-06-053118-5. Recounts the 1994 theft of The Scream from Norway's National Gallery in Oslo, and its eventual recovery
  • Heller, Reinhold, ed. (1984). Munch: His Life and Work. London: Murray. ISBN 0-7195-4116-6.
  • Morehead, Allison (2014). "Lithographic and Biological Error in Edvard Munch's Women in the Hospital". Print Quarterly. 31: 308–315.
  • Schiefler, Gustav (1907). Verzeichnis des Graphischen Werks Edvard Munchs bis 1906 (in German). Berlin: B. Cassirer. OCLC 39789318.
  • Schiefler, Gustav (1927). Das Graphische Werk von Edvard Munch: 1906–1926 (in German). Berlin: Euphorion Verlag. OCLC 638113186.
  • Woll, Gerd (2009). Edvard Munch: Complete Paintings: Catalogue Raisonné. Vol. 4. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-09345-0.

External links edit

  • Edvard Munch at the Museum of Modern Art
  • Oslo goes high on ‘Old Munch
  • Munch at Olga's Gallery—large online collection of Munch's works (over 200 paintings)
  • Munch at artcyclopedia
  • Edvard Munch at WikiGallery.org
  • Exhibition "Edvard Munch L'oeil moderne"—Centre Pompidou, Paris 2011
  • Edvard Munch at Norway's National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design

edvard, munch, film, film, muunk, norwegian, ˈɛ, dvɑɖ, ˈmʊŋk, december, 1863, january, 1944, norwegian, painter, 1893, work, scream, become, western, most, acclaimed, images, munch, undated, photoborn, 1863, december, 1863Ådalsbruk, løten, sweden, norwaydied23. For the film see Edvard Munch film Edvard Munch m ʊ ŋ k MUUNK 1 Norwegian ˈɛ dvɑɖ ˈmʊŋk 12 December 1863 23 January 1944 was a Norwegian painter His 1893 work The Scream has become one of Western art s most acclaimed images Edvard MunchMunch in an undated photoBorn 1863 12 12 12 December 1863Adalsbruk Loten Sweden NorwayDied23 January 1944 1944 01 23 aged 80 Oslo NorwayNationalityNorwegianKnown forPainting and graphic artistNotable workThe Scream Madonna The Sick ChildMovementExpressionism SymbolismHis childhood was overshadowed by illness bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family Studying at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania today s Oslo Munch began to live a bohemian life under the influence of the nihilist Hans Jaeger who urged him to paint his own emotional and psychological state soul painting from this emerged his distinctive style Travel brought new influences and outlets In Paris he learned much from Paul Gauguin Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec especially their use of color In Berlin he met the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg whom he painted as he embarked on a major series of paintings he would later call The Frieze of Life depicting a series of deeply felt themes such as love anxiety jealousy and betrayal steeped in atmosphere The Scream was conceived in Kristiania According to Munch he was out walking at sunset when he heard the enormous infinite scream of nature The painting s agonized face is widely identified with the angst of the modern person Between 1893 and 1910 he made two painted versions and two in pastels as well as a number of prints One of the pastels would eventually command the fourth highest nominal price paid for a painting at auction Self Portrait with Palette 1926 Currently on view at the Clark Art InstituteAs his fame and wealth grew his emotional state remained insecure He briefly considered marriage but could not commit himself A mental breakdown in 1908 forced him to give up heavy drinking and he was cheered by his increasing acceptance by the people of Kristiania and exposure in the city s museums His later years were spent working in peace and privacy Although his works were banned in Nazi occupied Europe most of them survived World War II securing him a legacy Contents 1 Life 1 1 Childhood 1 2 Mental health 1 3 Studies and influences 1 4 Paris 1 5 Berlin 1 6 The Scream 1 7 Frieze of Life A Poem about Life Love and Death 1 8 Landscapes and Nature 1 9 Paris Berlin and Kristiania 1 10 Breakdown and recovery 1 11 Later years 2 Legacy 2 1 University Aula 3 Major works 4 Selected works 4 1 Nudes 4 2 Self portraits 4 3 Landscapes 4 4 Photographs 5 See also 6 Notes 7 References 7 1 Citations 7 2 General sources 8 Further reading 9 External linksLife editChildhood edit Edvard Munch was born in a farmhouse in the village of Adalsbruk in Loten Norway to Laura Catherine Bjolstad and Christian Munch the son of a priest Christian was a doctor and medical officer who married Laura a woman half his age in 1861 Edvard had an elder sister Johanne Sophie and three younger siblings Peter Andreas Laura Catherine and Inger Marie Laura was artistically talented and may have encouraged Edvard and Sophie Edvard was related to the painter Jacob Munch and the historian Peter Andreas Munch 2 The family moved to Oslo then called Christiania and renamed to Kristiania in 1877 in 1864 when Christian Munch was appointed medical officer at Akershus Fortress Edvard s mother died of tuberculosis in 1868 as did Munch s favorite sister Johanne Sophie in 1877 3 After their mother s death the Munch siblings were raised by their father and by their aunt Karen Often ill for much of the winters and kept out of school Edvard would draw to keep himself occupied He was tutored by his school mates and his aunt Christian Munch also instructed his son in history and literature and entertained the children with vivid ghost stories and the tales of the American writer Edgar Allan Poe 4 As Edvard remembered it Christian s positive behavior towards his children was overshadowed by his morbid pietism Munch wrote My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious to the point of psychoneurosis From him I inherited the seeds of madness The angels of fear sorrow and death stood by my side since the day I was born 5 Christian reprimanded his children by telling them that their mother was looking down from heaven and grieving over their misbehavior The oppressive religious milieu Edvard s poor health and the vivid ghost stories helped inspire his macabre visions and nightmares the boy felt that death was constantly advancing on him 6 One of Munch s younger sisters Laura was diagnosed with mental illness at an early age Of the five siblings only Andreas married but he died a few months after the wedding Munch would later write I inherited two of mankind s most frightful enemies the heritage of consumption and insanity 7 Christian Munch s military pay was very low and his attempts to develop a private side practice failed keeping his family in genteel but perennial poverty 3 They moved frequently from one cheap flat to another Munch s early drawings and watercolors depicted these interiors and the individual objects such as medicine bottles and drawing implements plus some landscapes By his teens art dominated Munch s interests 8 At 13 Munch had his first exposure to other artists at the newly formed Art Association where he admired the work of the Norwegian landscape school He returned to copy the paintings and soon he began to paint in oils 9 Mental health edit nbsp Despair by Edvard Munch 1894 displays emotion that could be seen as related to dissociation or depression in Borderline Personality Disorder Edvard Munch had severe mental health difficulties during his lifetime He is believed to have had Borderline Personality Disorder a mental health disorder characterized by fear of abandonment chronic feelings of emptiness impulsive behavior and various other symptoms 10 11 Munch also displayed alcoholism a trait often associated with impulsivity in BPD a Studies and influences edit nbsp Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm 1895 Munch Museum OsloIn 1879 Munch enrolled in a technical college to study engineering where he excelled in physics chemistry and mathematics He learned scaled and perspective drawing but frequent illnesses interrupted his studies 12 The following year much to his father s disappointment Munch left the college determined to become a painter His father viewed art as an unholy trade and his neighbors reacted bitterly and sent him anonymous letters 13 In contrast to his father s rabid pietism Munch adopted an undogmatic stance towards art He wrote his goal in his diary In my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself 12 In 1881 Munch enrolled at the Royal School of Art and Design of Kristiania one of whose founders was his distant relative Jacob Munch His teachers were the sculptor Julius Middelthun and the naturalistic painter Christian Krohg 14 That year Munch demonstrated his quick absorption of his figure training at the academy in his first portraits including one of his father and his first self portrait In 1883 Munch took part in his first public exhibition and shared a studio with other students 15 His full length portrait of Karl Jensen Hjell a notorious bohemian about town earned a critic s dismissive response It is impressionism carried to the extreme It is a travesty of art 16 Munch s nude paintings from this period survive only in sketches except for Standing Nude 1887 They may have been confiscated by his father 17 Impressionism inspired Munch from a young age 18 During these early years he experimented with many styles including Naturalism and Impressionism Some early works are reminiscent of Manet Many of these attempts brought him unfavorable criticism from the press and garnered him constant rebukes by his father who nonetheless provided him with small sums for living expenses 16 At one point however Munch s father perhaps swayed by the negative opinion of Munch s cousin Edvard Diriks an established traditional painter destroyed at least one painting likely a nude and refused to advance any more money for art supplies 19 Munch also received his father s ire for his relationship with Hans Jaeger the local nihilist who lived by the code a passion to destroy is also a creative passion and who advocated suicide as the ultimate way to freedom 20 Munch came under his malevolent anti establishment spell My ideas developed under the influence of the bohemians or rather under Hans Jaeger Many people have mistakenly claimed that my ideas were formed under the influence of Strindberg and the Germans but that is wrong They had already been formed by then 21 At that time contrary to many of the other bohemians Munch was still respectful of women as well as reserved and well mannered but he began to give in to the binge drinking and brawling of his circle He was unsettled by the sexual revolution going on at the time and by the independent women around him He later turned cynical concerning sexual matters expressed not only in his behavior and his art but in his writings as well an example being a long poem called The City of Free Love 22 After numerous experiments Munch concluded that the Impressionist idiom did not allow sufficient expression He found it superficial and too akin to scientific experimentation He felt a need to go deeper and explore situations brimming with emotional content and expressive energy Under Jaeger s commandment that Munch should write his life meaning that Munch should explore his own emotional and psychological state the young artist began a period of reflection and self examination recording his thoughts in his soul s diary 23 This deeper perspective helped move him to a new view of his art He wrote that his painting The Sick Child 1886 based on his sister s death was his first soul painting his first break from Impressionism The painting received a negative response from critics and from his family and caused another violent outburst of moral indignation from the community 24 Only his friend Christian Krohg defended him He paints or rather regards things in a way that is different from that of other artists He sees only the essential and that naturally is all he paints For this reason Munch s pictures are as a rule not complete as people are so delighted to discover for themselves Oh yes they are complete His complete handiwork Art is complete once the artist has really said everything that was on his mind and this is precisely the advantage Munch has over painters of the other generation that he really knows how to show us what he has felt and what has gripped him and to this he subordinates everything else 25 Munch continued to employ a variety of brushstroke techniques and color palettes throughout the 1880s and early 1890s as he struggled to define his style 26 His idiom continued to veer between naturalistic as seen in Portrait of Hans Jaeger and impressionistic as in Rue Lafayette His Inger on the Beach 1889 which caused another storm of confusion and controversy hints at the simplified forms heavy outlines sharp contrasts and emotional content of his mature style to come 27 He began to carefully calculate his compositions to create tension and emotion While stylistically influenced by the Post Impressionists what evolved was a subject matter which was symbolist in content depicting a state of mind rather than an external reality In 1889 Munch presented his first one man show of nearly all his works to date The recognition it received led to a two year state scholarship to study in Paris under French painter Leon Bonnat 28 Munch seems to have been an early critic of photography as an art form and remarked that it will never compete with the brush and the palette until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell 29 Munch s younger sister Laura was the subject of his 1899 interior Melancholy Laura Amanda O Neill says of the work In this heated claustrophobic scene Munch not only portrays Laura s tragedy but his own dread of the madness he might have inherited 30 Paris edit Munch arrived in Paris during the festivities of the Exposition Universelle 1889 and roomed with two fellow Norwegian artists His picture Morning 1884 was displayed at the Norwegian pavilion 31 He spent his mornings at Bonnat s busy studio which included female models and afternoons at the exhibition galleries and museums where students were expected to make copies as a way of learning technique and observation 32 Munch recorded little enthusiasm for Bonnat s drawing lessons It tires and bores me it s numbing but enjoyed the master s commentary during museum trips 33 34 Munch was enthralled by the vast display of modern European art including the works of three artists who would prove influential Paul Gauguin Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec all notable for how they used color to convey emotion 34 Munch was particularly inspired by Gauguin s reaction against realism and his credo that art was human work and not an imitation of Nature a belief earlier stated by Whistler 35 As one of his Berlin friends said later of Munch he need not make his way to Tahiti to see and experience the primitive in human nature He carries his own Tahiti within him 36 Influenced by Gauguin as well as the etchings of German artist Max Klinger Munch experimented with prints as a medium to create graphic versions of his works In 1896 he created his first woodcuts a medium that proved ideal to Munch s symbolic imagery 37 Together with his contemporary Nikolai Astrup Munch is considered an innovator of the woodcut medium in Norway 38 In December 1889 his father died leaving Munch s family destitute He returned home and arranged a large loan from a wealthy Norwegian collector when wealthy relatives failed to help and assumed financial responsibility for his family from then on 39 Christian s death depressed him and he was plagued by suicidal thoughts I live with the dead my mother my sister my grandfather my father Kill yourself and then it s over Why live 40 Munch s paintings of the following year included sketchy tavern scenes and a series of bright cityscapes in which he experimented with the pointillist style of Georges Seurat 41 Berlin edit nbsp Melancholy 1891 oil pencil and crayon on canvas 73 101 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Munch in 1902 in the garden of his patron Max Linde in Lubeck in the background is a cast of Auguste Rodin s sculpture The Age of Bronze By 1892 Munch formulated his characteristic and original Synthetist style as seen in Melancholy 1891 in which color is the symbol laden element Considered by the artist and journalist Christian Krohg as the first Symbolist painting by a Norwegian artist Melancholy was exhibited in 1891 at the Autumn Exhibition in Oslo 42 In 1892 Adelsteen Normann on behalf of the Union of Berlin Artists invited Munch to exhibit at its November exhibition 43 the society s first one man exhibition However his paintings evoked bitter controversy dubbed The Munch Affair and after one week the exhibition closed 43 Munch was pleased with the great commotion and wrote in a letter Never have I had such an amusing time it s incredible that something as innocent as painting should have created such a stir 44 In Berlin Munch became involved in an international circle of writers artists and critics including the Swedish dramatist and leading intellectual August Strindberg whom he painted in 1892 45 He also met Danish writer and painter Holger Drachmann whom he painted in 1898 Drachmann was 17 years Munch s senior and a drinking companion at Zum schwarzen Ferkel At the Black Piglet in 1893 94 46 In 1894 Drachmann wrote of Munch He struggles hard Good luck with your struggles lonely Norwegian 47 During his four years in Berlin Munch sketched out most of the ideas that would be comprised in his major work The Frieze of Life first designed for book illustration but later expressed in paintings 48 He sold little but made some income from charging entrance fees to view his controversial paintings 49 His other paintings including casino scenes show a simplification of form and detail which marked his early mature style 50 Munch also began to favor a shallow pictorial space and a minimal backdrop for his frontal figures Since poses were chosen to produce the most convincing images of states of mind and psychological conditions as in Ashes the figures impart a monumental static quality Munch s figures appear to play roles on a theatre stage Death in the Sick Room whose pantomime of fixed postures signify various emotions since each character embodies a single psychological dimension as in The Scream Munch s men and women began to appear more symbolic than realistic He wrote No longer should interiors be painted people reading and women knitting there would be living people breathing and feeling suffering and loving 51 The Scream edit Main article The Scream nbsp The Scream 1893 National Gallery OsloThe Scream exists in four versions two pastels 1893 and 1895 and two paintings 1893 and 1910 There are also several lithographs of The Scream 1895 and later citation needed The 1895 pastel sold at auction on 2 May 2012 for US 119 922 500 including commission It is the most colorful of the versions 52 and is distinctive for the downward looking stance of one of its background figures It is also the only version not held by a Norwegian museum citation needed The 1893 version was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo in 1994 and was recovered The 1910 painting was stolen in 2004 from the Munch Museum in Oslo but recovered in 2006 with limited damage citation needed The Scream is Munch s most famous work and one of the most recognizable paintings in all art It has been widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of modern man 51 Painted with broad bands of garish color and highly simplified forms and employing a high viewpoint it reduces the agonized figure to a garbed skull in the throes of an emotional crisis citation needed With this painting Munch met his stated goal of the study of the soul that is to say the study of my own self 53 Munch wrote of how the painting came to be I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set suddenly the sky turned as red as blood I stopped and leaned against the fence feeling unspeakably tired Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord My friends went on walking while I lagged behind shivering with fear Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature 54 He later described the personal anguish behind the painting for several years I was almost mad You know my picture The Scream I was stretched to the limit nature was screaming in my blood After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again 55 In 2003 comparing the painting with other great works art historian Martha Tedeschi wrote Whistler s Mother Wood s American Gothic Leonardo da Vinci s Mona Lisa and Edvard Munch s The Scream have all achieved something that most paintings regardless of their art historical importance beauty or monetary value have not they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture 56 Frieze of Life A Poem about Life Love and Death edit nbsp Although it is a highly unusual representation this painting might be of the Virgin Mary Whether the painting is specifically intended as a representation of Mary is disputed Munch used more than one title including both Loving Woman and Madonna 57 b In December 1893 Unter den Linden in Berlin was the location of an exhibition of Munch s work showing among other pieces six paintings entitled Study for a Series Love This began a cycle he later called the Frieze of Life A Poem about Life Love and Death Frieze of Life motifs such as The Storm and Moonlight are steeped in atmosphere Other motifs illuminate the nocturnal side of love such as Rose and Amelie and Love and Pain In Death in the Sickroom the subject is the death of his sister Sophie which he re worked in many future variations The dramatic focus of the painting portraying his entire family is dispersed in the separate and disconnected figures of sorrow In 1894 he enlarged the spectrum of motifs by adding Anxiety Ashes Madonna and Women in Three Stages from innocence to old age 59 Around the start of the 20th century Munch worked to finish the Frieze He painted a number of pictures several of them in bigger format and to some extent featuring the Art Nouveau aesthetics of the time He made a wooden frame with carved reliefs for the large painting Metabolism 1898 initially called Adam and Eve This work reveals Munch s pre occupation with the fall of man and his pessimistic philosophy of love Motifs such as The Empty Cross and Golgotha both c 1900 reflect a metaphysical orientation and also reflect Munch s pietistic upbringing The entire Frieze was shown for the first time at the secessionist exhibition in Berlin in 1902 60 The Frieze of Life themes recur throughout Munch s work but he especially focused on them in the mid 1890s In sketches paintings pastels and prints he tapped the depths of his feelings to examine his major motifs the stages of life the femme fatale the hopelessness of love anxiety infidelity jealousy sexual humiliation and separation in life and death 61 These themes are expressed in paintings such as The Sick Child 1885 Love and Pain retitled Vampire 1893 94 Ashes 1894 and The Bridge The latter shows limp figures with featureless or hidden faces over which loom the threatening shapes of heavy trees and brooding houses Munch portrayed women either as frail innocent sufferers see Puberty and Love and Pain or as the cause of great longing jealousy and despair see Separation Jealousy and Ashes Munch often uses shadows and rings of color around his figures to emphasize an aura of fear menace anxiety or sexual intensity 62 These paintings have been interpreted as reflections of the artist s sexual anxieties though it could also be argued that they represent his turbulent relationship with love itself and his general pessimism regarding human existence 63 Many of these sketches and paintings were done in several versions such as Madonna Hands and Puberty and also transcribed as wood block prints and lithographs Munch hated to part with his paintings because he thought of his work as a single body of expression So to capitalize on his production and make some income he turned to graphic arts to reproduce many of his paintings including those in this series 64 Munch admitted to the personal goals of his work but he also offered his art to a wider purpose My art is really a voluntary confession and an attempt to explain to myself my relationship with life it is therefore actually a sort of egoism but I am constantly hoping that through this I can help others achieve clarity 65 While attracting strongly negative reactions in the 1890s Munch began to receive some understanding of his artistic goals as one critic wrote With ruthless contempt for form clarity elegance wholeness and realism he paints with intuitive strength of talent the most subtle visions of the soul 66 One of his great supporters in Berlin was Walther Rathenau later the German foreign minister who strongly contributed to his success Landscapes and Nature edit nbsp From Thuringerwald 1905 oil on canvas The work depicts a sinuous cut through the forest with a fleshy earth that harkens back to a physical connection to the viewer Currently on exhibit in Edvard Munch Trembling Earth at the Clark Art InstituteDespite over half of his painted works being landscapes Munch is rarely seen as a landscape artist However Munch had a fixation on several elements of nature that resulted in recurrent motifs throughout his work The shoreline and the forest are both significant settings of Munch s work A focus on Munch s use of nature to convey emotion is the topic of Edvard Munch Trembling Earth at the Clark Art Institute Paris Berlin and Kristiania edit nbsp The Sick Child 1907 In 1896 Munch moved to Paris where he focused on graphic representations of his Frieze of Life themes He further developed his woodcut and lithographic technique Munch s Self Portrait with Skeleton Arm 1895 is done with an etching needle and ink method also used by Paul Klee 67 Munch also produced multi colored versions of The Sick Child concerning tuberculosis which sold well as well as several nudes and multiple versions of Kiss 1892 67 In May 1896 Siegfried Bing held an exhibition of Munch s work inside Bing s Maison de l Art Nouveau The exhibition displayed 60 works including The Kiss The Scream Madonna The Sick Child The Death Chamber and The Day After Bing s exhibition helped to introduce Munch to a French audience 68 Still many of the Parisian critics still considered Munch s work violent and brutal even if his exhibitions received serious attention and good attendance 69 His financial situation improved considerably and in 1897 Munch bought himself a summer house facing the fjords of Kristiania a small fisherman s cabin built in the late 18th century in the small town of Asgardstrand in Norway He dubbed this home the Happy House and returned here almost every summer for the next 20 years 70 It was this place he missed when he was abroad and when he felt depressed and exhausted To walk in Asgardstrand is like walking among my paintings I get so inspired to paint when I am here nbsp Harald Norregaard with his wife painted by Munch in 1899 National Gallery was one of Munch s closest friends since adolescence adviser and lawyer 71 In 1897 Munch returned to Kristiania where he also received grudging acceptance one critic wrote A fair number of these pictures have been exhibited before In my opinion these improve on acquaintance 70 In 1899 Munch began an intimate relationship with Tulla Larsen a liberated upper class woman They traveled to Italy together and upon returning Munch began another fertile period in his art which included landscapes and his final painting in The Frieze of Life series The Dance of Life 1899 72 Larsen was eager for marriage but Munch was not His drinking and poor health reinforced his fears as he wrote in the third person Ever since he was a child he had hated marriage His sick and nervous home had given him the feeling that he had no right to get married 73 Munch almost gave in to Tulla but fled from her in 1900 also turning away from her considerable fortune and moved to Berlin 73 His Girls on the Jetty clarification needed created in 18 different versions demonstrated the theme of feminine youth without negative connotations 64 In 1902 he displayed his works thematically at the hall of the Berlin Secession producing a symphonic effect it made a great stir a lot of antagonism and a lot of approval 74 The Berlin critics were beginning to appreciate Munch s work even though the public still found his work alien and strange The good press coverage gained Munch the attention of influential patrons Albert Kollman and Max Linde He described the turn of events in his diary After 20 years of struggle and misery forces of good finally come to my aid in Germany and a bright door opens up for me 75 However despite this positive change Munch s self destructive and erratic behavior led him first to a violent quarrel with another artist then to an accidental shooting in the presence of Tulla Larsen who had returned for a brief reconciliation which injured two of his fingers Munch later sawed a self portrait depicting him and Larsen in half as a consequence of the shooting and subsequent events 76 She finally left him and married a younger colleague of Munch Munch took this as a betrayal and he dwelled on the humiliation for some time to come channeling some of the bitterness into new paintings 77 His paintings Still Life The Murderess and The Death of Marat I done in 1906 07 clearly reference the shooting incident and the emotional after effects 78 In 1903 04 Munch exhibited in Paris where the coming Fauvists famous for their boldly false colors likely saw his works and might have found inspiration in them When the Fauves held their own exhibit in 1906 Munch was invited and displayed his works with theirs 79 After studying the sculpture of Rodin Munch may have experimented with plasticine as an aid to design but he produced little sculpture 80 During this time Munch received many commissions for portraits and prints which improved his usually precarious financial condition 81 In 1906 he painted the screen for an Ibsen play in the small Kammerspiele Theatre located in Berlin s Deutsches Theater in which the Frieze of Life was hung The theatre s director Max Reinhardt later sold it it is now in the Berlin Nationalgalerie 82 After an earlier period of landscapes in 1907 he turned his attention again to human figures and situations 83 Breakdown and recovery edit nbsp Munch in 1933In the autumn of 1908 Munch s anxiety compounded by excessive drinking and brawling had become acute As he later wrote My condition was verging on madness it was touch and go 84 Subject to hallucinations and feelings of persecution he entered the clinic of Daniel Jacobson The therapy Munch received for the next eight months included diet and electrification a treatment then fashionable for nervous conditions not to be confused with electroconvulsive therapy 85 Munch s stay in hospital stabilized his personality and after returning to Norway in 1909 his work became more colorful and less pessimistic Further brightening his mood the general public of Kristiania finally warmed to his work and museums began to purchase his paintings He was made a Knight of the Royal Order of St Olav for services in art 86 His first American exhibit was in 1912 in New York 87 As part of his recovery Jacobson advised Munch to only socialize with good friends and avoid drinking in public Munch followed this advice and in the process produced several full length portraits of high quality of friends and patrons honest portrayals devoid of flattery 88 He also created landscapes and scenes of people at work and play using a new optimistic style broad loose brushstrokes of vibrant color with frequent use of white space and rare use of black with only occasional references to his morbid themes With more income Munch was able to buy several properties giving him new vistas for his art and he was finally able to provide for his family 89 The outbreak of World War I found Munch with divided loyalties as he stated All my friends are German but it is France I love 90 In the 1930s his German patrons many Jewish lost their fortunes and some their lives during the rise of the Nazi movement 91 Munch found Norwegian printers to substitute for the Germans who had been printing his graphic work 92 Given his poor health history during 1918 Munch felt himself lucky to have survived a bout of the Spanish flu the worldwide pandemic of that year 93 Later years edit nbsp Munch s grave at the Cemetery of Our Saviour in OsloMunch spent most of his last two decades in solitude at his nearly self sufficient estate in Ekely at Skoyen Oslo 94 Many of his late paintings celebrate farm life including several in which he used his work horse Rousseau as a model 95 Without any effort Munch attracted a steady stream of female models whom he painted as the subjects of numerous nude paintings He likely had sexual relationships with some of them 96 Munch occasionally left his home to paint murals on commission including those done for the Freia chocolate factory 97 To the end of his life Munch continued to paint unsparing self portraits adding to his self searching cycle of his life and his unflinching series of takes on his emotional and physical states In the 1930s and 1940s the Nazis labeled Munch s work degenerate art along with that of Picasso Klee Matisse Gauguin and many other modern artists and removed his 82 works from German museums 98 Adolf Hitler announced in 1937 For all we care those pre historic Stone Age culture barbarians and art stutterers can return to the caves of their ancestors and there can apply their primitive international scratching 99 In 1940 the Germans invaded Norway and the Nazi party took over the government Munch was 76 years old With nearly an entire collection of his art in the second floor of his house Munch lived in fear of a Nazi confiscation Seventy one of the paintings previously taken by the Nazis had been returned to Norway through purchase by collectors the other 11 were never recovered including The Scream and The Sick Child and they too were hidden from the Nazis 100 Munch died in his house at Ekely near Oslo on 23 January 1944 about a month after his 80th birthday His Nazi orchestrated funeral suggested to Norwegians that he was a Nazi sympathizer a kind of appropriation of the independent artist 101 The city of Oslo bought the Ekely estate from Munch s heirs in 1946 his house was demolished in May 1960 102 Legacy edit nbsp Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Munch Museum OsloFrom my rotting body flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity Edvard Munch 103 When Munch died his remaining works were bequeathed to the city of Oslo which built the Munch Museum at Toyen it opened in 1963 The museum holds a collection of approximately 1 100 paintings 4 500 drawings and 18 000 prints the broadest collection of his works in the world 104 The Munch Museum serves as Munch s official estate 104 it has been active in responding to copyright infringements as well as clearing copyright for the work such as the appearance of Munch s The Scream in a 2006 M amp M s advertising campaign 105 The U S copyright representative for the Munch Museum and the Estate of Edvard Munch is the Artists Rights Society 106 Munch s art was highly personalized and he did little teaching His private symbolism was far more personal than that of other Symbolist painters such as Gustave Moreau and James Ensor Munch was still highly influential particularly with the German Expressionists who followed his philosophy I do not believe in the art which is not the compulsive result of Man s urge to open his heart 51 Many of his paintings including The Scream have universal appeal in addition to their highly personal meaning Munch s works are now represented in numerous major museums and galleries in Norway and abroad His cabin the Happy House was given to the municipality of Asgardstrand in 1944 it serves as a small Munch Museum The inventory has been maintained exactly as he left it One version of The Scream was stolen from the National Gallery in 1994 In 2004 another version of The Scream along with one of Madonna was stolen from the Munch Museum in a daring daylight robbery These were all eventually recovered but the paintings stolen in the 2004 robbery were extensively damaged They have been meticulously restored and are on display again Three Munch works were stolen from the Hotel Refsnes Gods in 2005 they were shortly recovered although one of the works was damaged during the robbery 107 In October 2006 the color woodcut Two people The lonely To mennesker De ensomme set a new record for his prints when it was sold at an auction in Oslo for 8 1 million kroner US 1 27 million equivalent to 1 800 000 in 2022 It also set a record for the highest price paid in auction in Norway 108 On 3 November 2008 the painting Vampire set a new record for his paintings when it was sold for US 38 162 000 equivalent to 51 900 000 in 2022 at Sotheby s New York Munch s image appears on the Norwegian 1 000 kroner note along with pictures inspired by his artwork 109 In February 2012 a major Munch exhibition Edvard Munch The Modern Eye opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt the exhibition was opened by Mette Marit Crown Princess of Norway 110 111 In May 2012 The Scream sold for US 119 9 million equivalent to 152 800 000 in 2022 and is the second most expensive artwork ever sold at an open auction It was surpassed in November 2013 by Three Studies of Lucian Freud which sold for US 142 4 million 112 In 2013 four of Munch s paintings were depicted in a series of stamps by the Norwegian postal service to commemorate in 2014 the 150th anniversary of his birth 113 On 14 November 2016 a version of Munch s The Girls on the Bridge sold for US 54 5 million equivalent to 66 500 000 in 2022 at Sotheby s New York making it the second highest price achieved for one of his paintings 114 In April 2019 the British Museum hosted the exhibition Edvard Munch Love and Angst comprising 83 artworks and including a rare original print of The Scream 115 In May 2022 the Courtauld Gallery hosted the exhibition Edvard Munch Masterpieces from Bergen showcasing 18 paintings from Norwegian industrialist Rasmus Meyer s collection 116 In June 2023 the Clark Art Institute hosted the exhibition Edvard Munch Trembling Earth It is the first exhibit in the United States to focus on how Munch used nature to convey deeper meaning in his painting Trembling Earth features more than 75 works many from the Munchmuseet s collection and over 40 paintings and prints from rarely seen private collections 117 In September 2023 the Berlinische Galerie Museum for Modern Art hosted an exhibition Edvard Munch Magic of the North in collaboration with the Munch Museum Oslo The exhibition includes around 80 works by Edvard Munch supplemented by works by other artists who shaped the idea of the north and the modern art scene on the Spree in Berlin at the end of the 19th century 118 In November 2023 the Museum Barberini in Potsdam also hosted an exibition Edvard Munch Trembling Earth in collaboration with the Munch Museum Oslo The exhibition overlaps the Berlinische Galerie exhibition by eight weeks both exhibitions are under the joint patronage of German President Frank Walter Steinmeier and His Majesty King Harald V of Norway The exhibition includes more than 110 loans from other institutions 119 University Aula edit nbsp The Aula featuring History left The Sun front Alma Mater right smaller paintings on cornersIn 1911 the final competition for the decoration of the large walls of the University of Oslo Aula assembly hall was held between Munch and Emanuel Vigeland The episode is known as the Aula controversy In 1914 Munch was finally commissioned to decorate the Aula and the work was completed in 1916 This major work in Norwegian monumental painting includes 11 paintings covering 223 m2 2 400 sq ft The Sun History and Alma Mater are the key works in this sequence Munch declared I wanted the decorations to form a complete and independent world of ideas and I wanted their visual expression to be both distinctively Norwegian and universally human In 2014 it was suggested that the Aula paintings have a value of at least 500 million kroner 120 121 Major works edit nbsp Life by Munch at the Radhuset City Hall in Oslo The room is called The Munch room Main article List of paintings by Edvard Munch 1885 1886 The Sick Child 1892 Evening on Karl Johan 1893 The Scream 1894 Ashes 1894 Despair 1894 Woman in Three Stages 1894 1895 Madonna 1894 1896 Melancholy 1895 Puberty 1895 Self Portrait with Cigarette 1895 Death in the Sickroom 1899 1900 The Dance of Life 1899 1900 The Dead Mother 1903 Village in Moonlight 1940 1942 Self Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed Selected works edit nbsp Ashes 1894 oil on canvas 120 5 cm 141 cm 47 1 2 in 55 1 2 in Nasjonalgalleriet Oslo nbsp The Dance of Life 1899 1900 oil on canvas 126 cm 191 cm 49 1 2 in 75 in Nasjonalgalleriet Oslo nbsp At the Roulette Table in Monte Carlo 1892 74 5 cm 116 cm 29 1 4 in 45 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Death in the Sickroom 1893 134 cm 160 cm 52 3 4 in 63 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Starry Night 1893 135 6 cm 140 cm 53 1 2 in 55 in J Paul Getty Museum nbsp Anxiety 1894 94 cm 74 cm 37 in 29 1 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Despair 1894 92 cm 72 5 cm 36 1 4 in 28 1 2 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Love and Pain Vampire 1895 91 cm 109 cm 35 3 4 in 43 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Death in the Sickroom c 1895 oil on canvas 150 cm 168 cm 59 in 66 in Nasjonalgalleriet Oslo nbsp Separation 1896 96 cm 127 cm 37 3 4 in 50 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp The Voice Summer Night 1896 90 cm 119 cm 35 1 2 in 46 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Red and White 1899 1900 93 cm 129 cm 36 1 2 in 50 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Golgotha 1900 oil on canvas Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Kiss IV 1902 woodcut print on wood 47 cm 47 cm 18 1 2 in 18 1 2 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Four Girls in Asgardstrand 1903 87 cm 111 cm 34 1 4 in 43 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp The Brooch Eva Mudocci 1903 lithograph print on paper 76 cm 53 2 cm 30 in 21 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Portrait of Friedrich Nietzsche 1906 Thiel Gallery Stockholm nbsp Jealousy 1907 75 cm 98 cm 29 1 2 in 38 1 2 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp The Sun 1910 1911 450 cm 772 cm 177 1 4 in 304 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Galloping Horse 1910 12 148 cm 120 cm 58 1 4 in 47 1 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp The Yellow Log 1912 129 5 cm 159 5 cm 51 in 62 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Workers on their Way Home 1913 14 227 cm 201 cm 89 1 4 in 79 1 4 in Munch Museum OsloNudes edit nbsp The Hands 1893 oil on canvas 91 x 77 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Puberty 1894 1895 oil on canvas 151 5 x 110 cm National Gallery Norway nbsp Lady From the Sea detail 1896 oil on canvas 100 cm 320 cm 39 1 2 in 126 in nbsp Metabolism 1898 1899 172 cm 142 cm 67 3 4 in 56 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Death of Marat I 1907 150 x 199 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Bathing Men 1907 1908 oil on canvas 206 x 227 5 cm Ateneum Helsinki nbsp Weeping Woman 1907 1909 oil on canvas private collection nbsp Morning Yawn 1913 oil on canvas 108 98 cm Art Museums of Bergen nbsp Weeping Nude 1913 1914 110 cm 135 cm 43 1 4 in 53 1 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Model by the Wicker Chair 1919 1921 oil on canvas 122 5 100 cm Munch Museum OsloSelf portraits edit nbsp Self Portrait 1882 26 cm 19 cm 10 1 4 in 7 1 2 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait in Hell 1903 82 cm 66 cm 32 1 4 in 26 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait with Brushes 1904 197 cm 91 cm 77 1 2 in 35 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait with a Bottle of Wine 1906 110 cm 120 cm 43 1 4 in 47 1 4 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait with the Spanish Flu 1919 oil on canvas 150 x 131 cm National Gallery Norway nbsp Self Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed c 1940 1943 Munch Museum OsloLandscapes edit nbsp Small Lake with Boat 1880 oil on paper on board 12 x 18 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp From Sandviken c 1882 oil on cardboard 20 x 25 cm Flaten Art Museum nbsp From Saxegardsgate c 1882 oil on canvas Lillehammer Art Museum Lillehammer nbsp Sketch for Ashes 1894 oil on canvas Bergen Kunstmuseum nbsp Train Smoke 1900 84 cm 109 cm 33 in 43 in Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Shore with Red House 1904 oil on canvas 69 109 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Landscape at the Sea 1918 oil on canvas 120 9 x 160 Kunstmuseum Basel nbsp Starry Night 1922 1924 oil on canvas 120 5 x 100 cm Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Winter Night Ekely 1930 1931 oil on canvasPhotographs edit nbsp Self Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemunde 1907 Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Edvard Munch at the Beach in Warnemunde 1907 Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait a la Marat 1908 09 Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Self Portrait Somewhere on the Continent I 1906 Munch Museum Oslo nbsp Portrait at 26 years nbsp Portrait of Edvard Munch 1902 nbsp Portrait of Edvard Munch nbsp Munch in 1912 nbsp Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemunde 1907 photograph Munch Museum OsloSee also editEdvard Munch a 1974 biographical filmNotes edit Borderline Personality Disorder NIMH Archived from the original on 22 March 2016 Retrieved 16 March 2016 Munch is not famous for religious artwork and was not known as a Christian The affinity to Mary might be intended nevertheless as an emphasis on the beauty and perfection of his friend Dagny Juel Przybyszewska the model for the work and an expression of his worship of her as an ideal of womanhood 58 1894 oil on canvas 90 cm 68 cm 35 1 2 in 26 3 4 in Munch Museum Oslo References editCitations edit Wells 2008 Eggum 1984 p 15 a b Eggum 1984 p 16 Prideaux 2005 p 17 Prideaux 2005 p 2 Prideaux 2005 p 19 Eggum 1984 p 137 Eggum 1984 p 22 Prideaux 2005 pp 22 23 Aarkrog 1990 Wylie 1980 pp 413 443 a b Prideaux 2005 p 35 Prideaux 2005 p 40 Prideaux 2005 p 41 Eggum 1984 p 34 a b Prideaux 2005 p 34 Eggum 1984 p 41 Kiss by the Window by Edvard Munch www edvard munch org Archived from the original on 3 October 2021 Retrieved 3 October 2021 Eggum 1984 p 43 Prideaux 2005 pp 71 74 Prideaux 2005 p 71 Prideaux 2005 p 72 Prideaux 2005 p 83 Prideaux 2005 p 88 Eggum 1984 pp 52 53 Eggum 1984 p 46 Eggum 1984 p 59 Eggum 1984 p 55 Berman 1986 p 106 O Neill 1996 p 44 Prideaux 2005 p 49 Eggum 1984 p 108 Prideaux 2005 p 110 a b Eggum 1984 p 61 Eggum 1984 p 9 Eggum 1984 p 12 The Graphic Works and Prints of Edvard Munch I B Tauris Blog 6 August 2012 Archived from the original on 13 January 2016 Retrieved 11 January 2016 Nikolai Astrup KODE Art Museums of Bergen 11 January 2016 Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 Retrieved 11 January 2016 Prideaux 2005 p 114 Prideaux 2005 p 115 Eggum 1984 pp 64 68 Eggum 1984 p 75 a b Prideaux 2005 pp 135 137 Eggum 1984 p 91 Morehead 2019 pp 19 34 Munch 2005 p 119 Munch 2005 p 7 Eggum 1984 p 77 Prideaux 2005 p 153 Eggum 1984 p 79 a b c Eggum 1984 p 10 Vogel 2012 Faerna 1995 p 16 Faerna 1995 p 17 Prideaux 2005 p 152 MacDonald 2003 p 80 Bischoff 2000 p 42 Gerner 1993 Faerna 1995 p 28 Prideaux 2005 p 211 Eggum 1984 pp 116 118 Eggum 1984 p 122 Faerna 1995 p 6 a b Faerna 1995 p 5 Eggum 1984 p 118 Eggum 1984 p 121 a b Eggum 1984 p 141 Weisberg Gabriel P 1986 Art Nouveau Bing New York Harry N Abrams Inc pp 112 115 ISBN 0 8109 1486 7 Eggum 1984 p 152 a b Eggum 1984 p 153 Thiis 1933 p 279 Eggum 1984 p 168 a b Eggum 1984 p 174 Eggum 1984 p 176 Eggum 1984 p 181 Thorpe 2019 Eggum 1984 p 183 Eggum 1984 p 214 Eggum 1984 p 190 Eggum 1984 p 195 Eggum 1984 pp 196 203 Bernau 2005 pp 65 78 Eggum 1984 p 228 Eggum 1984 p 236 Eggum 1984 pp 235 236 Eggum 1984 p 239 Prideaux 2005 p 373 Eggum 1984 p 240 Eggum 1984 p 259 Prideaux 2005 p 285 Prideaux 2005 p 288 Prideaux 2005 p 290 Prideaux 2005 p 299 Prideaux 2005 p 291 Prideaux 2005 p 292 Prideaux 2005 p 297 Prideaux 2005 p 374 Eggum 1984 p 287 Prideaux 2005 p 313 Prideaux 2005 p 319 Prideaux 2005 p 328 Altern 1961 pp 5 19 Thompson amp Sorvig 2008 p 30 a b The Museum and the collection Munch Museum Archived from the original on 19 May 2012 Retrieved 6 May 2012 Masterfoods USA 21 August 2006 M amp M s Responds to Consumer Demand and Introduces the Fun Way to Eat Dark Chocolate Press release PR Newswire Archived from the original on 13 July 2012 Retrieved 6 May 2012 Our Most Frequently Requested Artists Artists Represented Artists Rights Society Archived from the original on 6 February 2015 Retrieved 6 May 2012 Gibbs 2005 Noen hoyere Aftenposten 27 December 2006 Archived from the original on 12 October 2007 Retrieved 25 December 2007 1000 krone note Notes and coins Norges Bank Archived from the original on 20 May 2012 Retrieved 6 May 2012 Crown Princess Mette Marit opens Munch exhibition on YouTube 11 February 2012 Retrieved 16 June 2013 Edvard Munch The Modern Eye Press release e flux 2012 Archived from the original on 17 May 2013 Retrieved 16 June 2013 Jones 2013 Munchs Skrik blir frimerke Dagbladet in Norwegian NTB 13 February 2013 Archived from the original on 17 February 2013 Retrieved 17 February 2013 Munch Masterpiece Propels Evening Sale Sotheby s Archived from the original on 30 January 2018 Retrieved 29 January 2018 Edvard Munch Love and Angst review Ripples of trauma hit you like a bomb the Guardian 8 April 2019 Archived from the original on 21 January 2021 Retrieved 21 January 2021 Edvard Munch Masterpieces from Bergen review a magical misery tour the Guardian 29 May 2022 Retrieved 2 October 2022 Edvard Munch www clarkart edu Retrieved 16 June 2023 https berlinischegalerie de ausstellungen vorschau edvard munch Edvard Munch Trembling Earth Retrieved 18 November 2023 Edvard Munch i Universitetets aula University of Oslo 3 January 2013 Archived from the original on 29 November 2014 Retrieved 15 November 2014 Universitas 29 October 2014 full citation needed General sources edit Aarkrog T 1990 Edvard Munch The Life of a Person with Borderline Personality as Seen Through His Art Edvard Munch et livslob af en graensepersonlighed forstaet gennem hans billeder Danmark Lundbeck Pharma A S ISBN 978 8798352419 Altern Arne 1961 Tanker omkring et nedrevet hus St Hallvard Berman Patricia G ed 1986 Edvard Munch Mirror Reflections West Palm Beach FL Norton Gallery amp School of Art OCLC 757178143 Bernau Nikolaus 2005 Wo hing Munchs Lebens Fries Zu dem Bau der Kammerspiele und ihrem beruhmtesten Schmuck In Koberg Roland Stegemann Bernd Thomsen Henrike eds Blatter des Deutschen Theaters Berlin Max Reinhard Das Deutsche Theater Bischoff Ulrich 2000 Edvard Munch 1863 1944 Taschen ISBN 3 8228 5971 0 Archived from the original on 24 October 2021 Retrieved 28 December 2019 Chipp Herschel B 1968 Theories of Modern Art A Source Book by Artists and Critics Berkeley CA University of California Press p 114 ISBN 0 520 05256 0 Eggum Arne 1984 Munch Edvard ed Edvard Munch Paintings Sketches and Studies New York NY C N Potter p 305 ISBN 0 517 55617 0 Archived from the original on 4 June 2021 Retrieved 20 August 2019 Faerna Jose Maria 1995 Munch New York NY Harry N Abrams p 16 ISBN 0 8109 4694 7 Gerner Cornelia 1993 Die Madonna in Edvard Munchs Werk Frauenbilder und Frauenbild im ausgehenden 19 Jahrhundert Knut Brynhildsvoll Literaturverlag Norden Mark Reinhard Morsbach ISBN 978 3 927153 40 0 Gibbs Walter 10 March 2005 Arts Briefly Munch Theft Confessions The New York Times Archived from the original on 22 June 2011 Retrieved 4 March 2010 Jones Jonathan 12 November 2013 Why Francis Bacon Deserves to Beat The Scream s record breaking Pricetag the Guardian Archived from the original on 12 October 2014 Retrieved 18 May 2014 MacDonald Margaret F ed 2003 Whistler s Mother An American Icon Burlington VT Lund Humphries ISBN 0 85331 856 5 Morehead Allison 2019 Hands Dissection and Embodied Seeing Strindberg and Munch In Schroeder Jonathan Westerstahl Stenport Anna Szalczer Eszter eds August Strindberg and Visual Culture The Emergence of Optical Modernity in Image Text and Theatre Bloomsbury doi 10 5040 9781501338038 ch 002 ISBN 978 1 5013 3800 7 S2CID 192530363 Munch Edvard 2005 Holland J Gill ed The Private Journals of Edvard Munch We Are Flames Which Pour Out of the Earth Madison WI University of Wisconsin Press ISBN 0 299 19814 6 O Neill Amanda 1996 The Life and Works of Munch Bristol Parragon Book Service ISBN 0 7525 1690 6 Prideaux Sue 2005 Edvard Munch Behind the Scream New Haven CT Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 12401 9 Thiis Jens 1933 Edvard Munch og hans samtid Slekten livet og kunsten geniet Oslo Gyldendal OCLC 637507959 Archived from the original on 1 August 2020 Retrieved 12 September 2019 Thompson J William Sorvig Kim 2008 Sustainable Landscape Construction A Guide to Green Building Outdoors 2nd ed Washington DC Island Press ISBN 978 1 59726 142 5 Thorpe Vanessa 7 April 2019 Edvard Munch reunited with fiancee for British Museum show The Observer ISSN 0029 7712 Archived from the original on 7 April 2019 Retrieved 8 April 2019 Vogel Carol 17 September 2012 Munch s Scream to Hang for Six Months at MoMA The New York Times Archived from the original on 23 December 2016 Retrieved 15 February 2017 Wells John 2008 Longman Pronunciation Dictionary 3rd ed Pearson Longman ISBN 978 1 4058 8118 0 Wylie H W 1980 Edvard Munch The American Imago A Psychoanalytic Journal for the Arts and Sciences Johns Hopkins University Press 37 4 413 443 JSTOR 26303797 PMID 7008567 Further reading editBlack Peter Bruteig Magne eds 2009 Edvard Munch Prints London Philip Wilson ISBN 978 0 85667 677 2 Catalogue of exhibition at the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery University of Glasgow and the National Gallery of Ireland Dublin Clarke Jay 2014 Munch on Paper Print Quarterly 31 237 243 Dolnick Edward 2005 The Rescue Artist A True Story of Art Thieves and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece New York NY HarperCollins Publishers ISBN 0 06 053118 5 Recounts the 1994 theft of The Scream from Norway s National Gallery in Oslo and its eventual recovery Heller Reinhold ed 1984 Munch His Life and Work London Murray ISBN 0 7195 4116 6 Morehead Allison 2014 Lithographic and Biological Error in Edvard Munch s Women in the Hospital Print Quarterly 31 308 315 Schiefler Gustav 1907 Verzeichnis des Graphischen Werks Edvard Munchs bis 1906 in German Berlin B Cassirer OCLC 39789318 Schiefler Gustav 1927 Das Graphische Werk von Edvard Munch 1906 1926 in German Berlin Euphorion Verlag OCLC 638113186 Woll Gerd 2009 Edvard Munch Complete Paintings Catalogue Raisonne Vol 4 London Thames amp Hudson ISBN 978 0 500 09345 0 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Edvard Munch nbsp Wikiquote has quotations related to Edvard Munch Edvard Munch at the Museum of Modern Art Oslo goes high on Old Munch Munch at Olga s Gallery large online collection of Munch s works over 200 paintings Munch at artcyclopedia Edvard Munch at WikiGallery org Exhibition Edvard Munch L oeil moderne Centre Pompidou Paris 2011 Edvard Munch at Norway s National Museum of Art Architecture and Design Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Edvard Munch amp oldid 1188157470, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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