The characters depicted in Edvard Munchās paintings are rarely having a good time. Lamp-lit streets are thronged by haunted faces. Characters sit hunched over small tables in dim and dark bars, nursing glasses of wine, their gaze fixed on the middle distance. And then there is The Scream.
Even when, occasionally, the seductive femme fatale figures are expressing joy, itās more schadenfreude than innocent pleasure. They delight in cavorting with a new lover while their ex paramour skulks miserably in the background. Or else they are resplendently basking in their own physical charms while a rejected man stands sadly nearby.
Unsurprisingly, then, the majority of the paintings featured in Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen ā which opens at the Courtauld next month āĀ are sad scenes. By the Deathbed (1896), for example, shows a family assembled round a prone female figure, their eye sockets deep with misery, their faces gaunt and their mouths agape with wordless grief.
There is a purpose to this misery. In 1932, Munch wrote: āIn my art, I have tried to clarify life and its meaning for myself. I also intended to help others explain life for themselvesā. Art, then, was used by him as a form of therapy: a way of making sense of sadness and helping others to heal. Confronting us with our own angst and sorrows, he has a knack for reaching out to viewers of every background, in every age. He understands the nuances of relationships ā the petty jealousies, the spiteĀ ā and they manifest in his characters, who appear to us, the viewers, as all too human.
One of the first paintings you see as you enter into the exhibition, which is currently on in Bergen, is Man and Woman (1898). Two figures are seated in a bedroom: a woman sits back on the bed, nude, while the man sits with his head in his hands, in apparent torment. It is clear that a conversation has taken place, one that has upset the man; the woman is seductive, very much in charge in the relationship dynamic.
Munch was born to a bourgeois family in Christiania, the son of a doctor. Although by some measures he had a relatively privileged childhood, grief was at his heels. Both his mother and sister succumbed to tuberculosis, the latter at only 15 years old. Munch himself nearly died of a pulmonary attack as a child: as he coughed up blood, his relatives feared the worst. He survived, but was left with chronic bronchitis, and a permanently altered perception of the world.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe