Published in the Weekly Volcano, April 22, 2016
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“Neutralia (Girls Picking Apples)” 1915,
color lithograph. Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester: Marian
Stratton Gould Fund . © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, courtesy Tacoma Art Museum.
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“Summer Evening” 1895 aquatint and drypoint, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection, courtesy Tacoma Art Museum.
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Edvard Munch and The Sea at Tacoma Art Museum includes 25 prints and drawings and one oil
painting by the Norwegian expressionist and symbolist master. Like most people,
I have seen very little of Munch’s art other than the two or three pieces that
habitually show up in art books, so I am grateful to TAM for pulling together
this important exhibition.
Not included
are any of the four versions of Munch’s most famous work, “The Scream,” two oil
paintings and two pastels. There is, however, a beautifully executed large silk- screen version by Andy Warhol, which is not a
lampoon but rather a respectful homage.
Munch was a
methodical and masterful printmaker — drypoints, etchings, lithographs. He
worked with a few simple and highly personal images including portraits and
figures on the themes of love and death, nearly all of which were set on the
coast of Norway. He did countless versions of these pictures, and this
exhibition provides an excellent opportunity to compare prints of the same
images with slight variations. For example, many of his pictures include a moon
reflected in water, which in his treatment becomes an iconic lower case letter
“i” with the moon as the dot and the stem of the “I” as the reflection. In some
it is very bright, and in some almost invisible; often it looks like a Roman
column, and in a few instances it becomes a crucifix.
Another Munch
trope that shows up in many of the prints is pictures of women with heavily
shadowed eyes that look morbid or threatening. His wife of 20 years died young,
as did a beloved sister, and he was known to have had tumultuous and tragic
relationships with women, all of which shows in his complex depictions of women
in his art.
Other stylistic
devices that show up repeatedly are flowing hair that blends
with the flowing
waves in the sea, and white figures or figures in white dresses next to white
backgrounds and figures in black next to black backgrounds, so that figures and
ground merge. His compositions are masterful in their balancing of dark and
light for dramatic effect.
Among the most
powerful images in the show are two lithographs of the Madonna, one in black
and white done in 1895, and the other in
color from 1902. Other than the color, the
images are identical. Each is of a nude with a stark white body and black hair.
Heavy waving lines in the background follow the contour of her head and body.
There is a frame with sperm swimming around it, and in the lower left corner a
little skeleton that looks like the figure in “The Scream.”
This figure
shows up in many guises in a number of his prints, perhaps most clearly in
“Alpha’s Despair,” one of a group of images that illustrate the tragic myth of
the love between “Alpha,” a woman, and “Omega,” her lover who murders her.
Another strong image is “On the Waves of Love,” picturing the head and
shoulders of a woman floating in water. Typical of Munch, the waves around her
mimic the shape of her flowing hair. The woman looks like a corpse. If you
study this print carefully, you’ll see that there is a man’s head on her
shoulder. Such hidden images are not uncommon in his work.
This is a most
fascinating show that, once seen, should linger in your mind.
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