The Art Institute of Chicago
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Becoming Edvard Munch:
Influence, Anxiety, and Myth
February 14 to April 26, 2009

Curated by Jay Clarke
Media Representation: Erin Hogan, Chai Lee, Carla Kessler

Susan Weinrebe
February 14, 2009

If ever an artist provoked comment and conjecture, it would be Edvard Munch. However, if one thinks his notorious painting, The Scream, is representative of his oeuvre, then the Art Institute’s latest exhibition coup, Becoming Edvard Munch, demonstrates that sensational presentations have expressed only one facet of this painter and his many genres.

“Why is it,” Jay Clarke, curator of the exhibit asked, “do we only know this particular, macabre side of the artist? Where is the madman?” After reading hundreds of pieces of his correspondence, she had to conclude, “He just wasn’t there!” So, gathering evidence like any good detective solving a mystery, Ms. Clarke looked to Munch’s (pronounced Moonk’s) frequent travels and likely proximity to contemporary artists during his journeys. What she discovered were the opportunities and influences that aligned Munch’s canny feel for public promotion with his chameleon-like shifts in themes and techniques.

An exhaustive 17 gallery tour, each with its own theme, among them: Isolation and Influence, Melancholy, The Interior, The Street, The Dance of Life, Sexuality and Ambivalence, and The Femme Fatale, juxtaposes the spectrum of Munch’s art with examples of his peers. Such partnering encourages the viewer to look from one work to another, examining and comparing techniques and themes, and, in so doing, discerning an arc of mutual inspiration. Thus, one can compare paintings of young women posed in fields, lanes, water’s edge, and skies of a summer’s day and note that while Munch employed the methods used by Claude Monet and Erik Werenskiold, among others, his individual voice evolved. Where Auguste Rodin sculpted The Kiss, Munch worked that timeless pose of entwined lovers in his own variations of woodcuts and oil, over and over again, showing a man and woman melding into each other’s bodies in a near yin/yang expression of passion.

Views of bustling street activity along the boulevards of Paris, with color and motion, portraying the throb of urban life and growing population, all demonstrate that Munch, Monet, Caillebotte, and fellow Impressionists had the opportunity to see what each of them saw and, moreover, to be informed by each artist’s fascination with the same subject. Indeed, the vantage point from which a subject is viewed, the self-framing of a print by an arm, instrument, or design, the image of theatrical lighting coming from footlights, and the absinthe-tinged skin painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, all seem to have been applied along the way by Munch, even in his own rather mysterious Self-Portrait with Cigarette.

Yet, as intriguing as are the influences and popular themes shared by fellow artists at the fin de siècle, Edvard Munch was an original. Battling depression and alcoholism for years, until finally achieving a lasting cure, his art can’t help but reflect some of that internal struggle. That struggle cohabited with his artistic vision, apart from his personal misery. Despite his travails, Munch was nothing but vastly prolific and successful. He won lucrative commissions over the course of his life and, in his bequests, Oslo, Norway received over 1,000 paintings, in excess of 15,000 prints and 4,500 watercolors. His art encompassed folksy regional views of rural life, national mythology, portraits, public murals, and more.

Like many of our current cultural icons, who employ agents to keep their names in the forefront of the news, Munch realized that any publicity is good publicity. So, when a brouhaha arose over his “scandalous” work hung in a German show, he capitalized on the notoriety to collect entrance fees to see what some thought depraved, besides any income from paintings sold! Most fascinating among the choices in this show of over 150 pieces, are those which are unsettling on some level and which could, taken each by each, be fine grist for commentary.

Madonna, the lithograph of a gorgeous, seductive woman, self-framed by swimming sperm and a very annoyed-looking fetus in one corner, is such an example. The spectacle of family gathered at a deathbed scene, is not only heartbreaking and disturbing, sheltered as most of us are from life’s end, but it calls for discussion about changing mores, modern health, and grief. Round-eyed faces, bilious green-hued skin and pus-colored skies in a painting showing pedestrians crowding toward the viewer, provokes visceral disturbance. A social commentary could be built around that one piece. And, of course, there is The Scream. Although the original is never allowed to leave its home in Norway, a print, owned by the Art Institute, illustrates why Munch has the power to pique, move, and ultimately mirror human elements that both terrify and compel across time and culture. Think of the image of a Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack, the same expression on her face as in Geschrei (the German translation of “The Scream”), and an immediate connection links with Munch’s diary entry: “I felt the great scream go through nature.”

It’s best not to attempt the entirety of Becoming Edvard Munch in one visit, unless you want to be drained emotionally and bereft of vocabulary when you reach the last gallery. Bring a friend with whom you can discuss what you see and return another day to test your impressions. The exhibition is only showing at The Art Institute and it is not to be missed.

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
Kiss by the Window, 1892. Oil on canvas.
The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo,
NG.M.02812 (C) 2008 The Munch Museum /
The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
Summer Night’s Dream: The Voice, 1893.
Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Ernest Wadsworth Longfellow Fund,
59.301 (C) 2008 The Munch Museum/
The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
Rue de Rivoli, 1891. Oil on canvas.
Harvard Art Museum, Fogg Art Museum,
gift of Rudolf Serkin (C) 2008
The Munch Museum /The Munch-Ellingsen Group/
Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
Madonna, 1895. Lithograph in black ink
with additions in brush and red, green, blue, black,
and yellow watercolor on mottled gray-blue wove paper,
laid down on heavyweight white wove paper
The Art Institute of Chicago, Print and Drawing Department
Purchase Fund (C) 2008 The Munch Museum/
The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895. Oil on canvas.
The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo,
NG.M.00470 (C) 2008 The Munch Museum/
The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
The Scream, 1895. Lithograph in black ink on cream card.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Clarence Buckingham Collection
(C) 2008 The Munch Museum/
The Munch-Ellingsen Group/Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944).
The Girl by the Window, 1893. Oil on canvas.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Searle Family Trust
and Goldabelle McComb Finn endowments;
Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection (C) 2008
The Munch Museum/The Munch-Ellingsen Group /
Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

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Anne M. Nordhaus-Bike and Jay Clarke
Courtesy of Susan Weinrebe

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For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net