Edvard Munch–Trembling Earth
Clark Art Institute
Williamstown, MA
Through October 15, 2023
[Click for full-sized images]
Do you recognize the above image? Of course you do; The Scream is one of the most famous images in Western art history. Perhaps you’re wondering why it’s not in color like the one you used to hang in your college dorm room around finals time. Contrary to popular myth, artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) made several versions of this 1893 work, including woodcuts and drawings. The one you see is part of a new exhibition of 75 Munch works at the Clark.
How about this next painting? It’s also Munch and it doesn’t really fit with perceptions that the Norwegian Munch was a painter whose acid greens and subdued colors reflected the gloomy nature of the artist. You’re not wrong to think Munch was often wracked by anxiety, but that was not the full measure of the man. As an adult, he admitted that his formative years were marked by “sickness, insanity, and death.” He also studied nihilism, lived in a climate that could be foreboding, and battled depression. Yet he also found great beauty and inspiration in nature. That’s the central concept of Trembling Earth and, if you want to see it, you have to go to Williamstown, Massachusetts, as the Clark is the only place it will be on view.
The exhibit is arranged in six rooms themed by things that inspired Munch, including the forest, cultivated land, and seascapes. As such, the only other iconic work you’ll see is a version of Ashes (above). What will surprise most attendees, though, is that, though many Munch efforts are suffused with the weaker light of Scandinavia, his overall palette was frequently brighter and more vivid than you might have thought.
Munch spent much of his time in Oslo–called Kristiana in his
day–but he also had a country home 100 kilometers south of the city. His home
was surrounded by flowers and orchards were filled with fruits. In short, Munch
had a deep appreciation for the natural world.
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| Starry Night |
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| Two Horses |
To be sure, his world was rocked by the death of a beloved sister and the postmortem revelation that his father left behind crippling debt but there were also stimulating experiences. He traveled to Berlin on occasion, but a key moment came when he went to Paris in 1889, the year the world’s fair showcased the then-new Eiffel Tower. That didn’t inspire Munch nearly as much as Impressionism and paintings he saw from a failed Dutch expatriate: Vincent Van Gogh. Bet you didn’t know that Munch also painted a canvas titled Starry Night. You can also see Impressionism’s impact on Munch in the thickness of the paint he knifed onto some of his paintings.
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| Note continuation of hair into beach and sky |
Munch was not really an Impressionist (nor was Van Gogh.) His work is generally lumped with Expressionism–especially German art and late Van Gogh–and Symbolists like Paul Gauguin. A quick primer: Impressionism focuses on light, Expressionism on inner feelings, and Symbolism on the mystical. And, yes, they often overlap. Munch often painted human figures from behind or as stylized. I’ve often wondered if that’s because he wasn’t particularly good with realistic faces, but that’s pure speculation on my part.
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| Melancholy |
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| Two Women |
As for the tortured Munch, he obtained fame and money around 1902, but it didn’t serve him well. He drank too much, brawled, and had a nervous breakdown in 1908. Anxiety and melancholy make frequent appearances in his art and even benign titles such as Two Women evokes Egon Schiele’s Death and the Maiden. Munch lived through the 1918 flu epidemic and worried that the Nazis would confiscate his art during World War II. When the latter did not happen and fascist collaborators held a political funeral for Munch who died just before the war ended, rumors circulated that Munch was a sympathizer. That view is soaked in more doubt than evidence.
We do know, though, that Munch struggled to maintain mental stability. The above painting might give tongue-in-cheek confirmation of his imbalance in that he painted nude bathers at the seaside. Swimming naked in Norway? It was considered healthful. And you thought diving into the waters of Maine was crazy! Some of these works are actually Expressionist in character; others a nod to precocious Post-Impressionists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, another artist Munch admired.
It may be a stretch to force fit Munch into a framework of 21st century environmentalism, but the skinny is that Trembling Earth challenges us to reconsider what we think of Munch. You would do well to make travel plans that include a trip to the Clark.
Rob Weir
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