The Norwegian Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is best known for ‘The Scream’, that unforgettable image of the tortured self in the grip of alienation, loss and fear. Munch is the great Symbolist and precursor of Expressionism, the artist as poetic visionary who valued imagination over knowledge, and the urge to self-expression beyond the need to enlighten or inform. He takes us into a twilight existence of gloom and psychosis. In a God-less universe, man was left to his own devices, and it’s not a pretty sight. Munch was manically overproductive, and on his death left more than 20,000 works to the city of Oslo, which took 20 years to establish the Munch Museet to house it all. From this vast collection the current exhibition of some 150 self-portraits has mostly been drawn — 150 self-portraits? I hear you gasp. Afraid so. Munch didn’t do things by halves.
An outsider by temperament, he is a classic case of the artist as victim, staggering from one emotional crisis to the next, relishing his pain. The inner world of Edvard Munch is all very fascinating to the artist himself, but does it carry to an audience? Only when the material is sufficiently transformed, when art overrules self. Munch was unhappy with women in his early alcoholic years, seeing them as threat and lure. The Academy’s exhibition opens with ‘Self-portrait beneath a Female Mask’ (c.1893), and quickly gets to the nub of the problem. On one side is a disembodied head peering into the abyss, beneath a swan representing humanity in Paradise, and on the other is ‘The Flower of Pain’, a reclining nude self-portrait with liberally bleeding heart. In the same first gallery is the later ‘Self-portrait in Hell’ (1903), painted after Munch had tried to resolve an unsatisfactory love affair by shooting himself in the hand. This was one of the key events which led to his breakdown in 1908, after which he changed his life and retired to the country.
The second gallery deals with Munch as printmaker, an activity as important for him as painting. Some of his most powerful images are done in lithograph or woodcut, occasionally in etching. The dark, almost clerical ‘Self-Portrait with Skeleton Arm’ is a good example. And here is the lithograph of ‘The Scream’ (thankfully, ‘self-portraiture’ is interpreted fairly widely), next to ‘Salome-Paraphrase’, in which the artist is enfolded by the hair of the temptress, against a violent red ground. A pencil drawing, a woodcut and dry-point, all on the theme of man/woman, are effectively grouped to show how Munch explored an idea in different media. This room is the secret heart of the exhibition and worth lingering in.
The show is only roughly chronological, and has been most effectively hung to emphasise points and play upon pictorial strengths. The third gallery contains 14 oils dealing with Munch’s deepening psychological crisis — abounding with accusations of murder (himself as Marat in ‘The Death of…’) alongside images of relative sanity and febrile elegance. (For example, ‘Self-portrait in Light Coat in front of a Yellow Background’, c.1915.) The Small Weston Room is given over to works on paper, including a couple which are ex-catalogue, and some memorable woodcuts.
At this point, the visitor is requested to ascend by stairs or lift to the Sackler Galleries, for the second half of the exhibition. Some might with justification think that the selection of Munch’s work already viewed in the main galleries is sufficient to do him justice. One more gallery might be useful to show some later work to round out the show, but upstairs there are four further galleries, and the enthusiasm begins to wane. Far better to mount an altogether different show in the Sackler Wing, perhaps by a contemporary British artist? There are plenty of mid-career painters and sculptors whose work would benefit enormously from such a showing. Munch certainly doesn’t need two sections of the RA, and neither do we need so much Munch. A little of him goes a long way.
However, the Sackler Wing looks handsome enough in its present guise. On the right in Gallery 5 is the Bergen self-portrait from 1916, in which Munch depicts himself against (not part of) the activity in the square below. It’s the middle of the first world war, and although Munch is by now increasingly acclaimed, he is very distant from the real world, looking part hunted, part quizzical. Here is hung also ‘Self-portrait nude with raised arm’, lighter in palette and more optimistic in mood. The painter still looks rather disgruntled, but who wouldn’t, disturbed in their early-morning callisthenics?
Gallery 6 takes up the sub-theme of artist and model, with Munch (in the third version) straddling the scene aggressively, hands in pockets, like a dour landowner or petty tyrant. The first version of this subject, dated to 1919, is a more intriguing picture and less wildly composed. The paint is dribbled and dashed on with relentless fury but to great expressive effect, particularly evident in the intense patterns of carpet and clothes. If at times it looks as if Munch painted frantically, it was never unthinkingly. Here also are three drawings (two on canvas) hung strikingly together, in coloured chalk for the two clothed versions, and in Indian ink and blue watercolour for the seated nude. The inclusion of a small group of pictures of Munch looking miserable at a bohemian’s wedding rather detracts from these powerful images. It’s all becoming too much.
The exhibition tails off badly in Gallery 7, another room of works on paper, though there are still good things to be seen: a litho self-portrait (after the Spanish flu which nearly killed him), an angular and nasty coloured pencil depiction (1925–6), a pen and black ink full-face from c.1940. There’s also a flat cabinet with three sketchbooks in it, including another self-study in coloured pencil, uncompromising and fluent, from c.1911–3. The last room contains some very fine things, though by this time even the most devoted will be flagging. In front as you exit is the moving ‘Starry Night’ (1923–4), another image of reclusion, of man alone with nature (the city confined to the horizon), Munch casting his shadow on the snow in his garden. To its right is the haunted, restless figure of ‘The Night Wanderer’, stooped and peering, condemned to sleepless vigil and the endless depiction of self. On the left is ‘Self-portrait by the House Wall, Ekely’, a sturdy, almost likable painting, contrasting with the late portraits in which Munch looks like an inmate in an asylum. In ‘Self-portrait between Clock and Bed’ he has become a shrunken old man trapped by things, and undoubtably terrorised by his assertive black, white and red bedspread. The end is in sight: on 23 January 1944 Munch escaped the world which was so inimical to him, and the traumatised visitor may now escape his world, and stagger dazed from the Academy.
Rarely have I felt so strongly that an exhibition was over-extended. Assuredly Munch had a hard time. We can feel for him, we can reverence his art (we can even enjoy some of it), but must we be deluged with it? Most of his self-portraits were never publicly shown in his lifetime, and in a very real sense are private statements. He was the first painter to subject his emotional state to such in-depth modern analysis (it’s no coincidence that Freud published Studies in Hysteria and Interpretation of Dreams at this time), but his obsession is not endearing. ‘Without anxiety and illness I should have been a ship without a rudder,’ wrote Munch. He makes a positive virtue of enfeeblement and madness, but even today’s infatuation with self can’t stomach too much of his merciless disclosure. This long series of portraits is a lavish and extended dialogue between Munch and himself, on which we ea vesdrop at our own risk.
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