joseph scissorhands: Edvard Munch: Love and Angst

Edvard Munch - Madonna, 1895/1902

"The point is that one sees with different eyes at different times. This is why a motif can be seen in so many ways and this what makes art so interesting" - Edvard Munch.

I posted recently about my discovery of the work of Norwegian artist Harald Sohlberg (1869-1935), here, and lately visited the British Museum to catch this retrospective of the print output of the most famous of Norwegian artists - Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Whilst Sohlberg concentrated on spiritual aspects of the natural landscape, Munch chose to focus on the emotional landscapes of the human condition.There is much beautiful work here, and the exhibition succeeds because of its tight focus, and for being punctuated throughout with the print ouevre of Munch's contemporaries such as Degas, Gauguin, Redon etc. inviting comparison and looking at possible influences. It being Munch of course, there just had to be a version of The Scream, his most famous and ubiquitous work, and universal image of horror and angst. Munch explored a variety of printmaking techniques and revisited and reworked his favourite themes repeatedly. My favourites were the woodcuts in which he exploited the natural grains and textures of the wood and incorporated their pattern as a feature in his prints. Munch saw a fair amount of sadness and tragedy in his life and these themes of love, jealousy, anxiety, solitude, ageing and the spectre of death are expressed in his work as a kind of personal therapy and healing. Whilst at the British Museum do make the effort to go and see the work of another master of printmaking in the display - Rembrandt: thinking on paper, on show in Room 90, as well as Symbolist Prints. Munch knew many of the Symbolist artists, and their works were very influential on his print oeuvre.