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Symbolism Class3 Munch
Symbolism Class3 Munch
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I
FRESHINSIGHT into the art of Edvard Munch comes from recognizing the significance
of drama for his imagery. He was interested in the art of drama and distinguished
himself in the early years of his career by his sensitive and original rendering of
people's faces and gestures. He distanced himself from conventional reproductions of
people's physiognomy, and tried instead to express their psyche and personality, some-
times exaggerating in order to stress important features. In the early I89os, Munch
frequently stated 'I paint not what I see- but what I saw'.' It appears that drama was an
important influence on his presentation of memories.
People in performance were a lasting stimulus to Munch's art. He enjoyed watching
performances in a concert, theatre or circus, and the outdoor performance of street
musicians. He himself enjoyed singing, and when he went to Paris to study pictures in
1885 his first outing was not to an art gallery but to the Gaietitheatre to hear the operetta
star AnneJudic sing.2 When he returned to Paris in 1889for another study session, he was
again attracted to halls of entertainment. The inspiration for his most famous resolution
to create a series of pictures showing 'living people, who breathe and feel, sufferand love'
came to him while listening to Rumanians singing in a St Cloud dance hall.3
Munch's interest in the art of performance may provide a key to explaining the
discrepancy between the positive way his friends described him and the more negative
interpretations of his life and work by people who did not know him. Many of his friends
remarked on his sense of humour. How can the currently prevailing image of Munch as
the mournful figure of alienation be reconciled with the tale of the fine time he had with
Knut Hamsun in I900 at the Tivoli circus, where they disconcerted the clowns by
shouting to them from their box? According to Christian Gierloff, Munch and Hamsun's
shouts of encouragement also drove the circus horses and their riders to excel themselves
in their performance through hoops and wreaths of fire.4 Munch's pleasure in perform-
ance went hand in hand with his pleasure in portraying himself and other people in
different guises and changes of mood.
In his personal life Munch responded to talented people, and many of his friends were
connected with the performing arts. They included good musicians, dramatists and
actors.5sMunch came from an imaginative family and appreciatedliteraturefrom an early
1
Livsfrisens tilblivelse (The Creation of the Frieze of 3E. Munch, Livsfrisenstilblivelse,p. 7, 'Det skulde vxere
Life), Oslo, c. 1925, p. i, 'Jeg maler ikke det jeg ser - levende mennesker som puster og foler, lider og elsker'.
men det jeg sa'. In this pamphlet Munch published 4 'Litt fra Skrubben og Ekely', EdvardMunch,Mennesket
reflections and recollections he had written many years og kunstneren,Oslo 1946, p. 74.
before. 5 See the catalogue to the exhibition 'Frederick Delius
2 See Edvard Munchs brev, Familien, selected by Inger og Edvard Munch', Munch Museum, Oslo 1979
Munch, Oslo: Munch museetsskrifter,I, 1949, 46 (5 May (Norwegian and English text).
1885).
'9'
Journal of the Warburgand Courtauld Institutes, Volume 46, 1983
II
Germany, according to Munch, was the country where his major work, 'The Frieze of
Life', was understood first and most fully.12 Although he encountered considerable
11 See for
example Thadee Natanson, 'Correspondance Tegn, 15 October I918. Jens Thiis dated the pamphlet
de Kristiania', La revueblanche,59, November 1895. Livs-Frisenas 1925 when he quoted from it in 1927 in the
12 'I anledning kritikken', Livs-Frisen, I918, p. 6. This catalogue for Munch's exhibition in Oslo Nasjonalgal-
article by Munch was available with the catalogue of the leriet, p. 27. He may have mistaken its date for that of
1918 exhibition of his later 'Frieze of Life' at Blomqvist's Munch's other undated pamphlet with reflections and
art gallery in Kristiania, and was published in Tidens memories, Livsfrisenstilblivelse.
13 'Der Streit 14
um den Impressionismus und den Maler Munch's writing on Strindberg probably dates from
Munch hat den grundsiitzlichen Antagonismus zwis- 1912, when he heard of Strindberg's death. It was
chen Alten und Jungen im Berliner Kiinstlerverein published by PAl Hougen, 'Farge pa trykk', Munch
klargelegt'. See also Dr Relling, 'Der Fall Munch', Die Museum catalogue 5, 1968, p. 6, and in my catalogue
KunstfiirAlle, viII, I January 1893, pp. 102-03. n. 9 above, p. 28.
15 Strindberg, Brev. IX, 2552 Graefe's essay on Munch in 1894 was his first piece of art
(12 June 1893) 'Dekora-
tioner beh6fvas ej; bara ett rum!'. criticism and that it 'shows little interest, even contempt
16 E. Munch, 'Mein Freund for the medium of painting, combined with a bias
Przybyszewski', Pologne
Littiraire, 15 December 1928. toward profundity and "thought"'. Although Meier-
17 Letter from Munch to A. Aubert, Graefe was interested enough in art to become the first
7 February 1902,
Oslo University Library MS Brevs. 32. editor for the art section of Pan in May 1894, none of the
18 Julius Meier-Graefe, who was three and a half years active founder members of the journal were professional
younger than Munch, had come to Berlin in I890 to art critics or historians: Bierbaum, Dehmel and von
study engineering. He started writing in Berlin and in Bodenhausen had studied law, Meier-Graefe some
1893 published a first-person novel, Nach Norden,which engineering. To attract subscribers, they enlisted the
shows an enthusiasm for Norway and Scandinavian support of museum directors who eventually took over
literature. Kenworth Moffett writes in his book Meier- the journal in September I895 and made it more
Graefe as art critic, Munich 1973, p. 10, that Meier- specifically concerned with art than literature.
III
The illusion that Munch produced his images in anguished isolation is dispelled by
recognizing his friendship with writers who urged him to develop his studies of love and
death. From 1893 onwards he gradually assembled a large frieze of paintings showing
scenes of tension between people. The coastal background becomes a backcloth to the
men and women who appear in this series, which Munch exhibited with the titles 'Love',
'Motifs from the life of the modern soul', and later 'The Frieze of Life'.
23 O0. Hansson, 'Vom kiinstlerischen Schaffen', Die with the screaming figure was first formulated in
'93.)
Zukunfl, III, 1893, p. 321, 'ein Unding, das aus zwei Thiis wrote in Zeitschriftfiir bildendeKunst, vI, 19o8,
Klecksen, einem schwarzblauen und einem rindflei- p. 134, that he was there at Munch's first exhibition in
schrothem, bestand, aber sonst wohl einen Sonnenun- Berlin in 1892, and the fact that he met Strindberg
tergang vorstellen sollte'. I first referred to this version confirms that he was in Berlin that winter. The painting
of the painting in a script on Munch's work and 'Sonnenuntergang' of the violently coloured sky,
reception in Berlin for the BBC Open University 3rd without a figure, described by Thiis and by Hansson
level Arts Course A315. (n.23 above), appears to be lost or may have been
24J. Thiis, Edvard Munch og hans samtid, Oslo I933, overpainted. It is not illustrated or mentioned by R.
p. 218, 'Den blodig bolgende aftenstemning er forst malt Heller in his book Munch, The Scream,Art in Context
i Nizza 91, uten den skrikende person i forgrunnen. series, London 1973. The picture 'Verzweiflung' (The
Dette forste billede blev kjopt av en wiener kunstsamler. Scream) was described by a correspondent in
En pastell fra 92 eier Munch selv. Komposisjonen med Morgenbladet, 7 December 1893, and by S. Przyby-
den skrikende figur er forst utformet i 93'. (The gory, szewski in his article 'Psychischer Naturalismus', Die
undulating evening mood was first painted in Nice '91, neue deutsche Rundschau, v, February I894. It was
without the screaming person in the foreground. This exhibited at Stockholm in October 1894 as 'Skrik' and at
first picture was bought by a Viennese art collector. Berlin in 1895 as 'Geschrei'.
Munch himself owns a pastel from '92. The composition
25 G. Heiberg, Balkonen,
Copenhagen 1894,p. 61, 'bliv erindringer om Edvard Munch', Edvard Munch som vi
staende siledes. Med armen haevet hojt. Bliv staende. kjenteham. Venneneforteller,Oslo 1946, p. 40. C. Gierloff,
Alt er nyt ved dig. Ja smil! Alle de andre er in. Du er n. 8 above, p. 149, also found Munch reading Weinin-
tusen'. ger's Geschlechtund Charakter. Weininger committed
26 Johs. Roede wrote that when he first visited Munch suicide in 1903, the year after the publication of his
in the summer of I904 a copy of Weininger's book was book, and his work at first received more publicity than
lying on the table (together with a revolver), 'Spredte Freud's.
IV
Strindberg's significance for Munch's development in the 1890s lay in the emphasis on
simplicity in the dramatist's projections of psychological movement. Strindberg hoped
that his experimental plays would be performed by Antoine's ThedtreLibrein Paris.
Amateur actors in this theatre performed short one-act plays called quarts-d'heure of a
frequently violent and sensational nature. The action naturally had to be fast. One of the
attractions for Strindberg in the one-act play was that he could dispense with an interval
and thereforekeep the audience in a mood of suspense.
In order to authenticate his presentation of psychic tension, Strindberghad borrowed
images from Max Nordau, who in his Paradoxedescribed the will as a sort of electric
battery and the impulse to movement as being transmitted to the muscles by a kind of
electric current. He strengthened his argument by applying the theories on suggestion
and the popular belief in nerve-currents, nerve-power and nerve-fluid. Strindberg used
these concepts to demonstrate the psychological and mechanical impact of suggestion and
the state of trance. In his play TheCreditors,the exchange between people is at a nervous
level, a series of impulses and reflexes; one character tells another that he had been 'the
mesmerist who spread his nerve power over your weak muscles, charged your empty
brains with new electricity'.32
Strindberg's presentation of involuntary movement and mesmeric powers on the stage
is implicit in Munch's series of paintings which demonstrate the attraction and separation
of lovers. Munch knew that Strindberg wished to accelerate the exposure of inner life and
make it more obvious than in Ibsen's plays. Strindberg thought that there had been too
much romanticism and scenery in his own play MissJulie, and believed TheCreditors was
thoroughly modern and a better play.33 His attempts to reform the theatre of his day
coincided with Munch's artistic attempts to experiment with psychological tension and
elimination of static detail. The rhythmic sky in TheScreamis a concentrated image for the
rhythms passing through the brain which Strindberg tried to project in his plays.
Among the theatrical innovations Strindberg recommended for the production of his
plays were more natural make-up, speech, lighting, scenery and especially a small,
intimate theatre for a receptive audience. His one-act drama aimed to replace the
prevailing romantic conventions and historicism with a contemporary sense of urgency
and integration. In 1888 he wrote that he wished that actors would work together to
produce a simultaneous, natural performance. He observed in his preface to MissJulie,
'that I shall see an actor's back throughout a vital scene is beyond my dreams, but I do
wish that crucial scenes could be played, not in front of the prompter's box, like duets
seeking applause, but in the place required by the action'.
Strindberg's attempts to reform the theatre made an impact in German drama circles
where, apart from his premieres in Berlin, his one-act play The Creditors was chosen to
open an 'intimate theatre' society in Munich in April 1895. Max Halbe, who acted in the
play, described the performance and the aims of the 'intimate theatre' in an article in Pan,
I895. He wrote that the scenery had consisted of two chairs, a small table, a few lamps
which gave subdued light. The invited audience of about forty people and the three actors
were on the same level and close together. The prompter sat in an adjoining room in
candlelight. According to Halbe the purpose of the 'intimate theatre' was to stimulate the
imagination and to rely on simplicity and originality rather than on expensive props and
d6cor. Halbe wrote that the naturalism which was so dominant in the contemporary
theatre should be directed away from external scenery and back to the internal perform-
ance of the actors. In future, the intimate theatre society might hold its performancesin a
variety of differentsettings, such as a room, garden or park, which would help to stimulate
the imagination. Among the plays he listed for future performances was Gunnar
Heiberg's Balkonen(The Balcony).
The 'intimate' theatre's objective of suggesting states of mind as simply and directly as
possible was very close to Munch's interest in creating dramatic images. Before he and
Strindberg met, they had both used figures primarily as intermediaries for conveying
psychological experience. In Berlin they helped each other to make the transition from
naturalism to a more open justification of psychical phenomena and dream sequences.
The nerve currents Strindberg had tried to rationalize in his earlier dramas are accepted
in his later plays as manifestations of irrational forces in a surreal environment.
Strindberg's paintings, which were mainly recognizable seascapes before the I89os,
became more abstract, his Wonderland for example, which he described in his article 'Des
arts nouveau! ou Le hasard dans la production artistique' in Revuedesrevues,November
I894. Munch meanwhile concentrated on the expression of intuition, observing the
approach of 'intimate' theatre; early in I894 he considered illustrating Maeterlinck's
Pellias et Melisande.
In the plays by Ibsen, the spectator also glimpses a scene by looking past or with
intermediary figures, perceiving only part of the situation because the figures are not
objective, but nervous and emotional. Temperament obtrudes and blocks the illusion of
physiological accuracy. Munch developed this approach in his years of contact with the
modern theatre. His undulating lines and interacting figures express temperament like
the actors who turn away from the audience towards each other. This is the view he gives
in his Attraction,TheLonelyOnes,To theWood.
Munch's concentrated, evocative images were as deliberate as the dramatists' sparing
use of scenery and props for visual suggestion about their characters' imagination. The
film of pulsating lines, the averted faces, ambiguous backgrounds in his pictures convey
the vulnerability of his figures. They hover among shadows and vacillating spaces,
remaining over-susceptible to others, indefinite in their identity. The spectator, in being
14
V
Strindberg's wish to mesmerize his audience impressed Max Reinhardt, who in Berlin
converted a ballroom into a theatre in order to stage chamber plays. The Kammerspiel-
theaterwas small, with the stage barely separated from the auditorium. It held about three
hundred people. Reinhardt asked Munch to decorate an upstairs reception room with a
frieze and to design sets for the performance of Ibsen's Ghosts,with which the theatre
opened in 1906. Reinhardt's emphasis on the psychologically convincing mood won the
approval of Strindberg, who opened his own intimate theatre in Stockholm in 1907. The
Berlin Kammerspieltheater, after opening with Ghosts,continued to give three hundred and
six evenings of Ibsen's plays and four hundred and ninety-one evenings of Strindberg's
plays. Other modern dramatists on the repertoire included Maeterlinck, Shaw,
Wedekind, Hauptmann and Schnitzler. The frieze of Munch's paintings decorated a
reception room, but it was badly sited and so the paintings were eventually divided up and
sold. Eight of them are now in the Berlin National Gallery.
Munch found Reinhardt's commissions among his most exacting tasks. Requests for
book illustrations and for programmes such as for Le Thedtre del(Euvreallowed him freer
of
interpretation the literary material (P1.23b). Believing that Reinhardt required for the
Ghostssets illustrations of an old-fashioned Norwegian home, Munch was so uneasy about
his lack of historical accuracy that he asked his relation Ravensberg in Norway to help by
sending a picture of an interior which would suit the large room, chairs, tables and
furnishings on the stage of Ghosts.35Ravensberg should consult theatre people if
necessary, Munch urged. The material Munch collected in this way was useful to him
when he designed sets for HeddaGabler,which Reinhardt planned to stage in January
1907. Hermann Bahr took over the production of HeddaGablerand fewer of Munch's sets
have survived.
In spite of Munch's diffidence, Reinhardt was enthusiastic about the painter's
contribution to the performance of Ghosts.It was not a hard, external naturalism or
36 See letter from Ravensberg, published by Gierloff, Lehnstuhl sagt alles! Sein Schwarz gibt die ganze
op. cit., p. 189. Stimmung des Dramas restlos wieder! Und dann die
37Letter from Gertrud Eysoldt, quoted by Peter Winde der Stube auf Munchs Bild! ... Sie haben die
Krieger, catalogue n. 9 above, pp. 27-28. Farbe von krankem Zahnfleisch. Wir miissen uns
38Quoted by Pal Hougen, catalogue n. 9 above, bemiihen, eine Tapete dieses Tons zu finden. Sie wird
Kunsthaus Zurich, 1976, p. I2, 'Mag sein,... aber der die Schauspieler in die richtige Stimmung versetzen!'.
VI
Of all the dramatists whom Munch knew, Ibsen appears to have impressed him most, and
long after his work on the sets for the Kammerspieltheater
he continued to illustrate the
themes of Ghostsfor his own pleasure. In 1920 he repeated two of his paintings in
lithographs. His painting and lithograph of Osvald's collapse (P1.25a) intensified the
39 Krieger, catalogue n. 9 above, p. 28. exhibition catalogue 'Edvard Munch, Alpha and
40 Quoted by Trine
Ness, 'Edvard Munch og "den fri Omega', Munch Museum 1981, in which the play is
Kjarligheds By"', Kunstog Kultur, LVI,1973, P. 150, 'O published in an English translation.
fri mig for denne Frihedens by!'. See also Arne Eggum, 41 Gustav Schiefler, EdvardMunch. Das graphischeWerk
'The Green Room', catalogue to Edvard Munch 19o6-1926, Berlin 1928, p. 18.
exhibition, Liljevalchs and Kulturhuset, Stockholm 42 Letter to Sigurd Host, 24 May Igog, quoted by Pola
1977; Gerd Woll, 'The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Gauguin, EdvardMunchsomvi kjenteham. Venneneforteller,
Evil', catalogue to Edvard Munch exhibition, National p. 155, 'De tyve Blade er nok til at sette Sind i Bevaegelse
Gallery of Art, Washington 1978, p. 232; and the dernede'.
43 Draft letter in Munch Museum archive, quoted by Life', published together with an English translation of
PAl Hougen, n. 14 above, p. 26, "'Var" var den Munch's pamphlet Livs-Frisen in the catalogue to
dodssyges lengten mot lys og varme, mod livet. Solen i Edvard Munch exhibition, Liljevalchs and Kul-
Aulaen var i "Var" solskinnet i vinduet. Det var turhuset, Stockholm 1977. Before 1918 the series had
Osvalds sol ... I samme stol somjeg malte den syge har been exhibited as studies on the theme of love (1893-95)
jeg og alle mine kjaerefra min mor afsat vintre pa vintre, and as motifs from the life cycle (1902-05). Much of the
sat og lengtet mot sol - til doden har tat dem. Jeg og information about Munch's intentions for his frieze
alle mine kjaerehar fra min far gat op og ned af gulvet i derived from pamphlets he published in later life, in
livsangst, galskab'. Livs-Frisen (1918) and in Livsfrisenstilblivelse (c. 1925).
44 Munch first used the title 'Frieze of Life' in Munch wrote that he considered the series would
I918
when he exhibited a later variation of the series. See remain unfinished until such time as it could be
n. 12 above, and Arne Eggum, 'Munch's late Frieze of assembled permanently in one place.
VII
If assessments of Munch take into account his association with Scandinavian and
continental authors, he no longer appears an isolated psychotic but an accomplished and
imaginative draughtsman. Some of his more startling images were clearly motivated by
his interest in suggesting vivid and dramatic moments. The technicalities of suggesting
vacillating states of mind invited experiment, in which Munch excelled. In spite of the
appearance of spontaneity, he repeated and re-worked his images over a long period of
time, and in his prints created brilliant new versions of his thematic groups like 'The
Frieze of Life'. He was reluctant to sell individual paintings of his series, and made
replicas rather than lose motifs from his groups. Although the prints of the same motifs
were often more accessible than the paintings, they lost some of their coherence by being
separated from the original thematic group. When hung together, the pictures illustrate
his dramatic sense in suggesting the tensions in human behaviour.
Munch in his repeated visits to Germany during the years 1892-I908 impressed
writers and painters there by his method of expressing psychological awareness. He was
drawn into the Berlin literary and theatre milieu, which encouraged and influenced his
art. His concentration on visual demonstrations of psychological tension stimulated
younger generations of painters in central Europe, like Kokoschka, who also fluctuated
between painting and drama. Remarkable for the development of expressionism is that
Munch's projections of psychic mobility by gesture, colour, perspective and background
emerged most clearly when he competed with modern dramatists and responded to the
theatre.
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a-Edvard Munch, Scene from Ibsen's Ghosts,I906. Oslo, Munch Museum (pp. 193, 203)
b-Edvard Munch, Family Scene (from Ibsen's Ghosts), 90o6.Oslo, Munch Museum (p. 203)