Edvard Munch has left the building

Edvard Munch, The Vampire, 1895, color lithograph and woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Gift of Lionel C. Epstein. Munch's original title for this was Love and Pain and may mean to convey an embrace, rather than an act of violence. The theosophist's color for high intellect was yellow, found on the arm of the woman and the man's face, but hard to see on her arm in this photograph.

Edvard Munch's works are no longer on view in Washington, D.C. at the National Gallery of Art where an exhibition of his prints closed last week, so why do I write about him now?

I cannot resist. His work is haunting and leaves me desolate, sad, exhausted, and untrusting. Who wants to write about that? Maybe, by my writing, I can transmit his "spell," his mystique, to you, the reader, and it will leave me. Read no more or, at your own risk. 

Edvard Munch, Man's Head in Woman's Hair, 1896, color woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Rosenwald Collection. Is the man part of the woman's thoughts or the woman, part of the man's? The theosophist's color palette connects the woman's orange and brown to selfishness and sensuality, so it's unlikely the woman is the artist's mother or favorite sister who died when Munch was only five and 13 years old, respectively.  Note Munch's triangular head.  

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was only five years old when his mother died of tuberculosis, her death and presence to inhabit his life.

His aunt and his father, a goodly man though besot by religious fervor, raised Edvard and his siblings. On cold nights in Norway, Edvard's birthplace, his father would read stories by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and tell his children ghostly yarns, warning them that their mother was looking down upon them from heaven, mindful of their misbehaviors.

Later, Edvard wrote about his father: "From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by side since the day I was born." (Wikipedia)

At age 18 Munch abandoned his study of engineering at a technical college, much to the disappointment of his father and neighbors who sent him hate mail (even then!). He enrolled, instead, at an art school, partially started by a distant relative. 

Edvard Munch, Anxiety, 1896, color lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Epstein Family Collection.  Another with the same title is below.

Edvard Munch, Anxiety, 1896, color woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Epstein Family Collection

Edvard drew subjects which pervaded his mind and soul, with heavy imagery and symbols, a state of his mind and "external reality." He wrote: "In my art I try to explain life and its meaning to myself."

It is believed that his father confiscated several of his son's nude portraits, destroying at least one. And like Edgar Allan Poe's foster father who stopped supporting Poe when Poe refused to follow the life path his stepfather desired for him, Munch's father stopped supporting his son.

Edvard Munch, Crowds in a Square, 1920, color woodcut, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Gift of the Epstein Family Collection

An 1889 solo show of almost all Edvard's works led to a two-year scholarship and a move to Paris where the blossoming artist was smitten by the works of Paul Gauguin, Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Vincent van Gogh, and their uses of color to depict emotions. Later, Munch toyed with the pointillist style, made famous by Georges Seurat.

It became hard for Munch to give up "his children," his art works, but the controversies they produced delighted him.

His reputation and talents gradually took root and his career took off. He spent the last 20 years of his life at his estate near Oslo where he died.

Munch and Paul Klee (whose exhibition, Ten Americans: After Paul Klee, opened last weekend at the Phillips Collection), were two of the modern artists whose art the Nazis had labeled "degenerate."  They seized, burned, buried, hid, and sold more than 16,500 "degenerate" art works, according to Wikipedia.  

When the Germans arrived in Norway in 1940 to take over the government, they came calling on Munch who feared they would take his collection stored on the second floor of his home. Collectors had already returned to Norway 71 of Munch's pieces, earlier seized by the Nazis (including The Scream) and 11 were never recovered.

An art historian has named Munch's The Scream one of four best-known paintings in the world. (Which do you think the other three are?*)

Now, information about the show you missed: It contained 21 of his prints, all from the National Gallery, and most from the Epstein Family Collection. The exhibition was dedicated to the  memory of Lionel Epstein who died in 2017, said Earl A. Powell, III, the National Gallery's director, at the opening of the show.

The National Gallery's Jonathan Bober and Mollie Berger, were the curators. Below is a portion of the National Gallery's description of Munch and some words from a transcript from Ms. Berger's introduction to the presentation.
 

Some of the prints in the National Gallery's show had never been on view while others had not been on display for a while.

Munch considered print making as experimental. "Art is supposed to communicate something to the viewer" Ms. Berger said, "and I think that's what's happening here."
Munch wrote in 1929 that he was attempting to dissect the soul, unlike Leonardo da Vinci who dissected the human body.
 
Munch was a follower of theosophy "which believes that hidden knowledge or wisdom from the ancient past offers a path to enlightenment and salvation." (Wikipedia) 

He was especially interested in how color was perceived.
 
Theosophists claimed that thoughts generated auras of colorful shapes, or “thought-forms,” that could move through space: bright yellow connoted “highest intellect,” dark purple suggested “devotion mixed with affection,” and bright blue indicated “pure religious feeling.”

A friend confirmed that Munch claimed he could see auras around people.

And from the press announcement: 

In the second half of the 19th century, advances in physics, electromagnetic radiation theory, and the optical sciences provoked new thought about the physical as well as the spiritual worlds.  Edvard Munch: Color in Context, considers the choice, combinations, and meaning of color in light of spiritualist principles. Informed by popular manuals that explained the science of color and by theosophical writings on the visual and physical power of color, Munch created works that are not just strikingly personal but also are charged with specific associations."

This is the eighth Munch exhibition the National Gallery of Art  has presented.

"Early in his life, Munch was exposed to spiritualism and aural concepts that became popular on an international scale at the end of the 19th century. His childhood vicar was the well-known spiritualist Reverend E. F. B. Horn. Additionally, as a young artist in Oslo, Norway, Munch would meet his friends directly across the street from traveling medium A. Stojohann's "Scientific Public Library." Given such exposure, Munch would have been open to the notion of spiritual power, four-dimensional planes, and invisible forces. It is known that he believed he could see energies radiating from specific colors.

"Many of Munch's contemporaries, including Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Maurice Denis (1870–1943), and Odilon Redon (1840–1916), were well aware of these new philosophies, and their work bears some general relation to them. In Munch's use of color, which intensified psychological and expressive meaning, the correlation with theosophical theories and ideas is specific."

*1. Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa, 1503-1506 and until c.1517

 2. James McNeill Whistler, Whistler's Mother, 1871

 3. Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930

Visit: The National Gallery of Art, open 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., Sunday.

Where: The National Gallery of Art, between Third and Ninth streets at Constitution Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. On the Mall.

Admission charge: Always free at the National Gallery of Art.

Metro stations for the National Gallery of Art:
Smithsonian, Federal Triangle, Navy Memorial-Archives, or L'Enfant Plaza

For more information: 202-737-4215

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