Edvard Munch: A to Z E-Book

Ulf Küster

• Herausgeber: Hatje Cantz Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 59

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Edvard Munch – A Master of Emotion and Existential Angst Best known for The Scream, Munch's art captured the struggles of the human psyche in a way that resonates across generations. His works form a unique "soul diary," chronicling inner turmoil, fear, and profound melancholy. In this volume of the Hatje Cantz A–Z series, Munch's life and work are explored through 26 concise and engaging themes, from "Anxiety" to "Ghosts" and "Revolver" to "Zoo." This book offers surprising insights into Munch's personal and universal artistic expressions, highlighting why his work remains as compelling today as ever. Highlights: - The creator of The Scream: Discover Munch's iconic and timeless masterpiece. - A soul laid bare: Munch's art as a profound expression of psychological states. - Surprising themes: 26 fresh perspectives on Munch's life and work. Hatje Cantz A–Z – Compact and Inspiring Art History The Hatje Cantz A–Z series presents the great artists of art history in a compact and engaging format. From Lucas Cranach and Paul Cézanne to Piet Mondrian, Edvard Munch, and Niki de Saint Phalle – each volume offers biographical insights, surprising details, and fascinating perspectives on their work. With its clear structure and handy format, the series is the perfect companion for art enthusiasts, collectors, and curious minds alike. In his painterly and graphic work Edvard Munch (1863–1944) made feelings and states of mind the subject of his work. In intense colors and expressive figuration, he created a highly individual artistic language that makes his oeuvre as enigmatic as it is appealing. Born in Norway, his travels took him to Paris and Berlin, where he cultivated contacts with important writers, artists, and intellectuals of the time. He spent the end of his life in seclusion in Oslo, where he died in 1944.  The art historian Ulf Küster (*1966, Stuttgart) has worked at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel since 2004. He has curated internationally acclaimed exhibitions and written numerous publications. His books on Edward Hopper and Piet Mondrian (A-Z series) and Louise Bourgeois (Kunst zum Lesen series) have been published by Hatje Cantz.

Leseprobe

Munch

A–Z

Edvard Munch

A–Z

Ulf Küster

A → Anxiety

B → Bohemia

C → Christian Munch

D → Dagny Juel

E → Ekely

F → Film, Photography

G → Ghosts

H → Houses

I → I, Edvard Munch

J → Jacobson

K → Count Harry Kessler

L → The Frieze of Life

M → The Munch Affair

N → Nature

O → Oslo

P → Puberty

Q → Quisling

R → Revolver

S → Scream

T → Tuberculosis

U → University

V → Vampire

W → Weimar

X → Xylography

Y → Yggdrasil

Z → Zoo

Preface and Acknowledgments

Edvard Munch deserves to be rediscovered, over and over again. He was the ultimate modern artist. Coming from a Nordic tradition of landscape and genre painting, very early on, he chose a path that was completely his own. Despite all the hostility he encountered, undeterred he did “his thing.” That meant painting his life, representing his feelings, and developing his individual expressive painting style. The intensity of his art, his passion, and the apparently breathless way of working, which is expressed by his pictures, leaves almost no one indifferent. This A–Z is intended to guide an interested public through the multifaceted life of the artist and his art, and to present familiar as well as less familiar aspects of his biography.

Those who want to devote more time to Munch will find his pictures in many of the world’s important museums, and particularly in Oslo. Famous masterpieces by the artist are on display at the Nasjonalmuseet, and the Munchmuseet, which houses his large estate, regularly arranges exhibitions on his work and its motifs. For online research, I recommend the museum’s outstanding website: munchmuseet.no.

Munch wrote many letters and recorded his thoughts extensively, sometimes in novelistic fragments in which he speaks of himself in the third person. His writings are gradually being made accessible, also in translation, at emunch.no. The sources in the present book refer to this website.

This book could not have been written without the help and suggestions of the director of the Munchmuseet, Tone Hansen, and of Lars Toft-Eriksen, the museum’s senior curator. My special thanks go to them! I also thank Lasse Jacobsen, the research librarian of the Munchmuseet, and Ove Kvavik, the museum’s photographer. My boss, Sam Keller, gave me permission to write this book while simultaneously working as a curator at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen/Basel, for which I am deeply grateful. Special thanks to Angelika Thill for managing the project, Torsten Köchlin for the design, Ilze Mueller for the translation, and José Enrique Macián for editing. A big thank-you to the publisher Nicola von Velsen for many discussions and for the suggestion that I write this A–Z.

Thanks to my profession I have the privilege of getting to know many artists. For most of them, Edvard Munch is a principal role model. This book is dedicated to them all.

A → Anxiety

AEvening on Karl Johan Street 1892

Oil on unprimed canvas 84.5 × 121 cm

Kode Bergen

“If there is such a thing as a hell, it is most certainly nothing but a time of nameless anxiety.” This line is from the poems and reflections of Carmen Sylva published under the title Geflüsterte Worte (Whispered Words). Sylva’s name was actually Elisabeth zu Wied, and she was the queen of Romania by marriage from 1881 until 1916.

Anxiety was a prevalent feeling at the end of the long nineteenth century and could turn human existence into hell. While there was much progress and prosperity, and Europe’s dominion over the world seemed to be assured, all this gave rise to misgivings, accompanied by a vague sense of anxiety, especially at the thought of the abysmal depths of the indivisible self. For perhaps the most momentous discovery of the era was the subconscious, which is beyond all control.

Most likely Edvard Munch did not know the writings of Carmen Sylva, but he was all too familiar with the “hell of anxiety.” His 1894 painting Anxiety picks up on a theme he had already pictured two years earlier (Evening on Karl Johan Street at the Kode Museum in Bergen). A group of people is seen; only the three faces in front are recognizable. They appear to be walking toward the painter (and thus the viewer) along a diagonal, cropped street and are looking at him: with horror, panicked fear, and the mocking reflection of individuals trying to cover up their anxiety. Here, Munch chose the same landscape constellation as in his 1983 painting The Scream,→ Scream with a view of the fjord and the iridescent, variegated colors of the sky.

AAnxiety 1894

Oil on canvas 93.5 × 73 cm

Munchmuseet Oslo

Munch’s painting is associated with childhood memories. Little Edvard waits for his father → Christian Munch to come home and has trouble recognizing him in the crowd of people hurrying homeward.

And finally there is also a written fragment by Munch from a collection of notes, drawings, and graphic reproductions he compiled under the title “Tree of Knowledge.” It is associated with Anxiety (mm T 2547, fol. 060-A41). He writes that he sees all people behind their smiling masked faces as corpses hurrying hopelessly down a winding road “whose end is the grave.”

AAnxiety 1896

Lithograph, colored by hand 57 × 43 cm

Munchmuseet Oslo

B → Bohemia

BKristiania Bohemians I 1859

Drypoint 20.8 × 27.7 cm (motif)

Munchmuseet Oslo

In his early twenties, Edvard Munch came into contact with a group of literati and artists in Kristiania (present-day Oslo). Their lives were a radical alternative to the Pietism of Norwegian society represented by his father.→ Christian Munch A key figure of this group was the writer Hans Jæger (1854–1910), who, in 1885, published a novel titled Fra Kristiania-Bohêmen (From Bohemian Kristiania), which gave the group its name. The book was banned, and the author was sentenced to prison on the grounds of immorality. Jæger was a nihilist, called for suicide, preached that all ties to one’s parental home should be severed, and advised that Edvard should kill his father. For a while he had a great influence on Munch, who painted his portrait in 1889.

Jæger advocated free love and for years had an affair with the painter Oda Engelhardt, who in turn was in a relationship with her fellow painter Christian Krohg, whom she married in 1888. Her sister was the wife of the painter Frits Thaulow, who was Munch’s distant cousin. Krohg and Thaulow were mentors of Munch. Thaulow’s brother Carl, in turn, was married to the notoriously unfaithful Millie Thaulow with whom, in 1885, Edvard fell head over heels in love. Their relationship ended badly, a fact that caused Munch to suffer for the rest of his life.