Ragna Thiis Stang

The short review:
Aside from this book being big and absolutely beautiful, with 359 plates of Munch’s art, it contains a very well researched account of his life by Ragna Stang, a distinguished art historian and also daughter of Jens Thiis, who was an lifelong friend and important supporter of Munch. It’s one of the very best books on art I’ve ever read; I was blown away by it, and it’s easily five stars.

The long review:
While Munch is best known for “The Scream”, and of all his works perhaps that is the one that best illustrates the torment and angst in his life, his art goes far beyond that. There is a common thread running through his paintings, lithographs, and woodcuts, but he had a wide sweep of styles. He was a transitional painter, which I tend to like, from Naturalism and forms of Impressionism, to Symbolism and Mysticism, to sometimes (rightly I think) being referred to as one of the fathers of Expressionism. Lastly, as Gustav Schiefler put it, he “anticipated the doctrines of Cubism before Picasso”.

Yes, he was a symbolist, and yet he painted things he had personally experienced and lived through. He wanted to communicate the essence of life, the “truth experience”, or “art that springs from our very hearts”. As life is often troubled and ends inexorably in death, this comes through in his paintings, in ways that were not only direct, but timeless.

Munch suffered from deep feelings of anxiety and illness that he channeled into his art, without which he would have “been like a ship without a rudder”. He had friends and a connection to family, yet he often preferred to remain isolated, in torment particularly when young. His mother died when he was 5, and his favorite sister Sophie, a year older than he was, died when he was 14. His father would go through “almost insane bouts of religious obsession”, leading Munch scarred for life, and saying “sickness and insanity and death were the black angels that hovered over my cradle and have since followed me throughout my life.” These feelings are evident in the extraordinary works “The Sick Child” (1885-86) and “Spring” (1889).

And yet Munch never completely dissociated himself. Stang describes the story of the disagreement with his father over how long God could possibly punish the damned in hell (Munch: no more than a thousand years; Munch’s father: a thousand thousand years), followed by Munch (the younger) storming out of the house, and upon returning seeing his father kneeling at his bed, praying – thus leading to “Old Man Praying”. Despite that, he still honored father and home, and it was only after his father’s death that he began drifting into the mystical. His own personal beliefs eventually evolved to what is probably best described as pantheistic, believing in a hidden life force, but he always maintained some degree of respect for the religion of his father.

Similarly, he enjoyed being around bohemians, but it was always at a slight distance, while his new friends spoke of anarchism, free love, and severing ties to their families. Like many other great artists, Munch’s work was largely rejected early on, particularly in his home country Norway, and this left him a little bitter and also paranoid. He refused to marry, saying it would be criminal for him to do so, because of his self-professed “tendency towards insanity inherited from my mother and father.” And so he was always a bit isolated, despite having a few long friendships and supporters.

It’s always a bit stunning to read just how derisive criticism of artists was in their day, and with Munch it’s not exception. The masterpiece ‘The Sick Child’ was ripped apart, even by fellow artists, as “random blobs of colour…the ravings of a madman”, and “completely devoid of any spiritual meaning”, which is incomprehensible to me. The portrait of Jensen-Hjeell (1885) evoked similar scorn. When realist painter Gustav Wentzel shouted at Munch “Shame on you. I had no idea that you were going to start painting that kind of thing. That sort of rubbish.”, Munch quipped, “Well, we cannot all paint nails and twigs.”

An exhibition of Munch’s work also caused a scandal in Berlin, where Germans had not even recognized Impressionism yet (a big reason for which was the Franco-Prussian War), and for whom Liebermann and von Uhde were radicals, much less Munch. “There is no point in wasting words on Munch’s paintings, as they have got absolutely nothing to do with art.”, said one critic. And yet E. Gerard’s review of Munch in La Presse in 1897, starting with “Edvard Munch’s art cannot be immediately and instinctively understood, but nevertheless it grips us and stirs our imagination into a turmoil”, recognizing “Edvard Munch is a person of today, and as such he lives an intensely agitated inner life”, and ending with “Munch, by means of his skill as a painter, opens his soul to us, revealing its most secret corners” – it was this review that Munch clipped and would keep with him until he died.

The personal anecdotes and tidbits sprinkled throughout this book were excellent. We find that Munch was a gambler in Monte Carlo, with a “system” at roulette. The art that impressed him most deeply was Poe’s “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”, and Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” and “The Brothers Karamazov”.

There is quite a recollection for the woman in the portrait “Dagny Juell Przybyszewska”, 1893, the married woman whose home Munch visited with another friend, enjoying absinthe and piano, though later she died in a murder-suicide. His friend Hermann Schlittgen relates how Munch painted his portrait in a dingy hotel room, after having downed a bottle of port in the morning. We come to find that “The Vampire” was originally titled “Love and Pain” (Liebe und Schmerz), and in fact Munch said “in fact it is just a woman kissing a man on the neck.” Yes, just that, and yet, the pain and pathos of love coming through, and with the hair looking like blood, it’s easy to understand why the title evolved. This is accompanied by an Adolf Paul quote explaining how he came into the studio while Munch was working with a redheaded model, and with an inspiration from Munch, told to kneel down in front of her, and to place his head against her. These types of stories, often direct quotes from letters, really brought the people in the paintings to life.

One more. On “The Scream”, Munch said “I was walking along a road one evening – on the one side lay the city, and below me was the fjord. I was feeling tired and ill – I stood and looked out over the fjord. The sun went down – the clouds were stained red, as if with blood.
I felt as though the whole of nature was screaming – it seemed as though I could hear a scream. I painted that picture, painting the clouds like real blood. The colours screamed. The result was The Scream in the Frieze of Life.”

Munch had women in his life, but as he refused to marry, this often created difficulties. His relationship with Tulla Larsen can be summarized in these two paintings:
The good: Mathilde (Tulla) Larsen, 1898
The bad: Sin (Nude with Red Hair), 1901

Similarly, his relationship with Eva Mudocci:
The good: Madonna (The Brooch), 1903
The bad: Salome, 1903

It was Larsen that, at the end of their relationship, threatened to shoot herself, and when the revolver went off accidentally, it severed the top two joints of one of the fingers on Munch’s left hand. The difficulties he had with women are shown in “Death of Marat”, 1907, where the impassive woman stands coolly over the bleeding Marat (Munch). His “The Fable of Alpha and Omega” is correctly criticized as being misogynistic; as with anyone, he should not be idealized.

With all of the personal drama unfolding as he wandered about Europe like a bit of vagabond, excessively drinking, and having feelings of persecution and isolation leading to depression, Munch eventually became unhinged. He was involved in brawls, including one in which he “ran amok and assaulted several complete strangers in a hotel in Hamburg.” His nervous breakdown in 1908, at the age of 45, would lead to confinement and shock therapy. He would actually emerge from this stronger than before, helped along mentally by broader acceptance as an artist in Norway, and by winning the Order of Olav award. You can see this in his paintings: compare “Self-Portrait at Clinic”, 1909, with “Self-Portrait with Wine Bottle”, 1906.

And yet Munch was never without strife. There was great controversy surrounding the competition to be selected as the artist for the Oslo University murals, which Munch was eventually awarded, leading to the absolutely brilliant painting “The Sun”, 1916.

He had a clear sympathy with socialism and worker’s rights, and his “Workers Returning Home” from 1913-15 seemed to friends a reflection of the “latest happenings in Russia”. In Paris and Berlin, most of the people he associated with were Radicals, and as his art was criticized by the bourgeoisie and the right wing press, he naturally seemed to fall in with the working man.

In these years, however, Munch seemed to arrive at a place of greater peace. Even “The Dance of Death” from 1915 has a calmness and a resignation to it. I thought it was interesting that towards the end of his life, he would paint the same subject on several canvases simultaneously, to allow for experimentation.

Near the end Munch would have a new set of German “art critics” to suffer: his work was branded degenerate by the Nazis, thrown out of German galleries, and sold to fund their war effort. As other great artists were subject to the same treatment this was less depressing to him, but when Norway became occupied by the Nazis when he was in his late seventies, his home and art studio were threatened. Panzers occupied surrounding farms, and anti-aircraft batteries were nearby. Munch painted on. However, an explosion of a munitions dump blew out all of the windows of his house, and in the aftermath Munch contracted bronchitis and passed away.

A fascinating man and great artist, always evolving, never boring. In his will he left all of his works to the city of Oslo, which makes me want to travel there. :) But I’m happy to have gotten this thorough treatment of his work, and to learn more about him.

My 20 favorites (this was hard):
Morning, 1884
The Sick Child, 1885-86
Spring, 1889
The Girl by the Window, 1891
Moonlight (Night in St. Cloud), 1893
The Kiss, 1892 (multiple), and 1895 (drypoint and aquatint)
The Voice, 1893
The Scream, 1893
Madonna, 1894-95
Puberty, 1894
Death and the Maiden, 1894
The Lonely One, 1896
Woman on the Beach, 1898
Girls on the Jetty, the 1899 version, as well as the 1920 woodcut
White Night, 1901
Madonna (The Brooch), 1903
Loving Couple in the Park, 1903-04
Self-Portrait with Wine Bottle, 1906
The Cliff at Kragero, 1910-14
The Sun, 1916

Quotes:
On being an artist:
“My art had its roots in my search for an explanation of life’s inconsistencies. Why was I not like other people? Why was I born, when I never asked to be? It was my rage at this injustice and my continual thinking about it that influenced all my art; these thoughts lay behind all my work, and without them my art would have been completely different.”

On art:
"A landscape will alter according to the mood of the person who sees it, and in order to represent that particular scene the artist will produce a picture that expresses his own personal feelings. It is these feelings which are crucial; nature is merely the means of conveying them. Whether the picture resembles nature or not is irrelevant, as a picture cannot be explained; the reason for its being painted in the first place was that the artist could find no other means of expressing what he saw. The finished work can only give a hint of what was in the artist's mind."

“I should depict the scene as I then saw it, but in a blue mist. This couple, at that moment, were not themselves: they were merely one link in the endless chain that joins one generation to the next. People should understand the sacred, awesome truth involved, and they should remove their hats as in a church. I ought to exhibit a whole group of such pictures. There should be no more painting of interiors, of people reading and women knitting. In future they should be of people who breathe, who feel emotions, who suffer and love.”

On communism:
“I believe in what the Russians are trying to do, they have got the chance now. During the French Revolution it was the bourgeoisie who were fighting for their rights, now it is the workers, which is just as it should be.”

On death:
“We do not pass away – the world passes away from us.”

“Flowers will grow up from my rotting corpse and I will live on in those blooms.”

On being a dreamer:
“I have lived the whole of my life partly in a dream world, partly in reality. People have realized this and have attacked my defenceless body like ravening wild animals, whilst my soul was wandering far away.”

On love:
“People’s souls are like planets. Like a star that appears out of the gloom and meets another star – they shine brightly for a moment and then disappear completely into the darkness. It is the same when a man and woman meet – they glide towards each other, the spark of love ignites and flares up, then they vanish, both going their own separate ways. Only a few come together in a flame that is large enough for them to become one.”

On sensitivity:
“Do not trespass on the sensitive areas of my mind. If you do, I warn you that I shall bare my fangs.”… (lisätietoja)