Interiors
"We want more than a mere photograph of nature. We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity. An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one's innermost heart." Edvard Munch was born in Løten, Norway on December 12, 1863, and he described this way his vision of the human need for art, beyond the mere representation. He saw art as the scream of the spirit.
While I’m mentally crossing his work it comes to me the song Cirrus Minor of the British group Pink Floyd. The song was composed by Roger Waters, as part of the soundtrack of the movie More directed by Barbet Schroeder in 1969 on drugs and sexual freedom. Its final verse is "Saw a crater in the sun, a thousand miles of moonlight later." The crater of the explosion of gestures and colors of Munch in the snowy environments, in the solitudes surrounded by icy looks eager to drink some of the one light that bathes their lives, the decline of the moon towards the Scandinavian ice.
Son of a doctor, he had a childhood marked by the tragic death of his mother and sister, victims of tuberculosis. Shortly after his father, a person of strong religious obsession, died too. The same imbalance that Munch saw as the source of his talent was strongly present in his family life. Once started in the artistic path, his frequent trips to Paris enabled him to know the current trends. Paul Gauguin seduced him especially as also did all the Impressionist and Postimpressionist movements. His early works caused stupor by its subjects, as well as his very personal style, the result of his personal tragedy, alcoholism, his difficult love life and his many trips. The Sick Child, Puberty, The Vampire or The Scream led him to become a very popular artist in Norway, with a really enthusiastic audience. Social themes and inner fears leave a work full of anxiety, as fearing the loss of life and the pain of existence.
In 1892 he moved to Germany where he lived for many years. It was precisely during those years when he painted The Scream, probably his best known and the best one in resuming his personal anguish. The silence of that painting becomes a material pain, a cry that can be felt physically, a palpable pain, a tangent helplessness, curve, undulating, the universal pendulum. The years of illness and addictions continue, as well as the extension of his art, collaborating on sets of important theater plays.
His return to Norway in 1909, is marked by the terrible nervous breakdown when his public success was peaking. He continued with his many trips to Germany and Denmark, and in 1918 decided to retire to rest for a while. Years later, an eye disease prevented him to continue working. The Nazi invasion and the Second War were hard years for Munch, being labeled as a degenerate artist by the German regime. Even so, he got to exhibit in New York in 1942, while reaching a global recognition. Finally, he died in 1944, only surrounded by the loneliness that had tormented him so much all his life, the force that had crossed stroke by stroke each of his paintings, the curve slope of a thin thread of life, afraid of breaking in the midst of discouragement. The scream of fear all we have inside.
Edvard Munch's selfportrait courtesy of Centre Pompidou de Paris
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