shelidonNovember 14, 2024Leave a Comment

I have no idea why, but the English versions of the panels for this exhibition in Milan translate the title as “Munch’s Inner Fire“, while literally the title has no shame in referring to Munch’s most famous work, the infamous Scream. Anyway, aside from giving me a chance to admire some of this artist’s lesser-known works, the exhibition left me with a mutated opinion on some of the artist’s inner workings of the mind, especially when it comes to his relationship with passions, women and sex.

Nothing is small, nothing is large. we carry worlds inside us. The small is part of the large and the large of the small. A drop of blood is an entire world with its own sun and planets. The sea is but a drop of water from a tiny part of the body. God is in us and we are in god. The primeval light is everywhere and it falls wherever there is life. everything is in motion and light…
— The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil

The show is loosely chronological, starting with a timeline, and… guys, if you place the timeline in a corridor, entrance to the right and exit to the left, the timeline can’t be written from left to right, unless you really want people dancing up and down and tripping over each other. Just sayin’.

1. Earlier portraits and approach

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) took painting seriously, and not necessarily in the way you think. He was a professional, a powerhouse when it came to work ethic, and his approach was equally emotional and intellectual, a discovery that shouldn’t come as a surprise and we already saw was the leitmotiv of the splendid exhibition around Van Gogh and his books. Over his long life, he managed to create thousands of prints and paintings, filled page after page with notes, stories, letters, and even wrote a play or two. Driven by a deep urge to express his inner feelings, he thoroughly analyzed both the usage of shape and colours, eventually questioning whether we paint what we see or what we think we saw and diving head-first into the rising field of psychoanalysis. Munch’s career kicked off just as some big changes were happening in the study of perception, in fact: by the late 1800s, scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and artists were deep in discussion about how what we see relates to what’s in our minds, and how what’s in our heads influence what we see. (Spoiler: a lot.)

Munch became fascinated by these “invisible forces” that shape our experience, and this curiosity would deeply influence his work, making him one of the most insightful artists of his time. His works explore big universal themes like birth, death, love, and the mysteries of life itself, spanning from the wild ride of romantic love, the struggles of physical and mental illness, and the hollow feeling that loss leaves behind.

The roots of this approach are well encapsulated by an early painting, an 1882 portrait of Laura Munch.
Laura was the fourth of the five Munch siblings, and the exhibition tells us she was a talented artist herself, though I couldn’t find one single work attributed to her. She began struggling with psychological challenges as a teen, and she’d battle mental illness for her whole life. The portrait was painted when Munch was in his 20s, and shows off his early academic training in the careful attention to her hair and the texture of the lace — classic elements in exercises like this. Flat areas of colour hint that Munch was starting to break free and experiment a bit with a more relaxed style, and his attention to Laura’s slightly uneven eyes, together with her tightly closed lips, capture her brother’s attention to represent her complex psychology.

Munch believed that the mind, inner visions, and consciously recalling memories actually shape — or even replace — how we see reality. He summed it up with: “I don’t paint nature; I use it as inspiration. I tap into the rich experience it offers. I don’t paint what I see but what I’ve seen.” His early academic art training soon morphed into creative techniques designed to express memories and emotions that go beyond what the eye can capture.

After a brief stint as an engineering student and later in academic drawing in 1880, Munch quickly fell under the influence of Christian Krohg, a politically radical writer and painter, and got involved with the Kristiania Boheme, an artistic and literary group that, according to Munch himself, helped “mature” his ideas about the importance of inner experience over mere physical reality. He would represent the group in a few sketches, such as the one below.

Hans Jæger, a writer, philosopher, and anarchist activist, was at the heart of the Kristiania Boheme movement, and he brought in people like the naturalist painter Christian Krohg, the painter Oda Lasson Krohg, and writer Jappe Nilssen. They were a mixed group, about twenty men and women, who criticized the restrictive values of the middle class, gender and class biases, and organized religion while promoting free sexuality. They came together as a kind of anarchist political group, creating texts and manifestos to challenge the establishment, and Munch was right there with them, becoming a pioneer of modern, progressive ideas, which he wove into the relationships portrayed in his work. We can see their influence in his paintings and prints from that era, full of unsettling, intense expressions, and everyday scenes such as The Day After.

In Berlin, Munch met another set of key intellectuals, including the Polish writer Stanislaw Przybyszewski and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. They shared Munch’s fascination with the unconscious and the complexities of gender. His art often touched on the mystical and was linked to the tragic and mysterious Scandinavian vibe — think Henrik Ibsen (and more on that later). For Munch, love was an obsession, sexuality a torment, and life often tangled with death.

1.1. Munch and Ibsen’s Ghosts

Henrik Ibsen was a pivotal figure in the world of theatre, known as the father of modern realism and one of the most influential playwrights of the 19th century. Born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, Norway, Ibsen’s early life was marked by his family’s financial struggles, which shaped his perspective and later influenced his writing. He began his career in theatre as a director and playwright in Norway before moving to Italy and Germany, where he spent nearly three decades crafting many of his most famous works.

Ibsen’s works often delve into social issues, including women’s rights, mental health, and moral dilemmas, using realistic dialogue and intricate character development to challenge the audience’s perceptions of morality and society. His plays frequently depict the struggles of individuals against oppressive societal norms. Take A Doll’s House for instance, written in 1879: it tells the story of a woman, Nora Helmer, who challenges societal norms regarding marriage and gender roles by leaving her husband and children in pursuit of her own identity. Ghosts, written in 1881, was even more controversial, if possible, and addresses issues such as heredity, morality, and societal hypocrisy.

Ibsen died on May 23, 1906, and in the same year Max Reinhardt, director of the Berlin theatre, asked Munch to create “emotional sketches” for a production of Ghosts. Munch had long been deeply influenced by Ibsen’s work, as you might expect, and saw a part of himself in the story of Osvald Alving, the artist in Ghosts who’s forced to live with a hereditary illness. Munch used expressive colours and painted tilted ceilings and slanted floors to convey a sense of claustrophobia, adding an ominous black screen as a symbol of death. Reinhardt loved how these elements added depth to the bourgeois setting, and I can’t blame him.

2. Deeper into Psychoanalysis: the Frieze of Life

Munch was well aware of what he was doing. In a note written in 1893, just after returning from Berlin, Munch explains his working method: “I only painted what I remembered and added nothing else. I tried to capture the simplicity and emptiness I saw in many scenes. I painted impressions from childhood, the colours I remember from back then. I painted colours and lines that I’d seen in an emotional state, ones that could bring that same feeling back to life.”

So, we might say that each of Munch’s paintings is like a scrapbook of memories — of things he experienced or imagined, all filtered through emotions: the colours he used weren’t naturalistic but more expressive, aiming to evoke mood rather than realism, and that’s one of the ways his work intersects with the ideas of psychoanalysis, particularly as it was shaping up in Freud’s writings around that time. Freud’s theories about the mind’s “manifest content” — the images and memories that rise to the surface like dreams — help us look at Munch’s paintings as layers of hidden emotions. In Munch’s art, we see techniques like “displacement,” where a painful scene like Death in the Sickroom makes grief almost invisible; “condensation,” where The Kiss represents the clash of two bodies as a single entity; and “symbolization,” where the haunting face in The Scream seems almost like a mummy, embodying a deep sadness through a distorted image.

“I realized that my paintings, with all their ups and downs, had taken on new meanings when seen together — they became a symphony. That’s why I decided to paint a series of friezes,” Munch wrote after setting up an exhibition in Berlin in 1893. This was the first time he considered showing some of his works in sequence. He started with a project called Study for an Evocative Series, including pieces like The Voice (1893), The Kiss (1893), Vampire (1893-94), Madonna (1893-94), Melancholy (1891-93), and The Scream (1893).

Reflecting on this choice, Munch wrote in his diaries, “I brought all my paintings together and discovered that many images shared a similar theme. Placing them side by side was like creating a melody — each piece transformed into something greater than it was alone.” This reflection marked the beginning of what Munch would later call The Frieze of Life, a collection of works around themes like Love and Seduction, Death and Rebirth, all united by similar colours and a plain white background. Munch never finalized this series, though, as he kept adding to it over time, reorganizing and refining it. His goal was to create a pathway through life’s experiences with a structure that captured the highs and lows of emotion.

2.1. Death and Rebirth

His painting Death in the Sickroom, created around 1893, is one of the most poignant reflections of personal loss and the emotional turmoil surrounding death, particularly significant as it memorializes the death of Munch’s beloved sister Sophie, who succumbed to tuberculosis in 1877. The painting captures a moment of profound sorrow, depicting Munch’s family gathered around a person in her final moments.

The scene is set in a sparsely furnished room, where the sick sits in a chair, her back turned to the viewer. The figures around her— whom we can think of as Munch himself, his siblings, and their father—are portrayed at the ages they were at the time of the event, and each family member exhibits a distinct reaction to the grief, highlighting their isolation despite being together in this moment of shared sorrow. For instance, the absence of physical contact among the family members—except for a hand resting on Sophie’s chair—illustrates their emotional distance and isolation in grief.

Though memories of his family members’ deaths haunted the artist, Munch often reflected on the cycles of death and regeneration in his writings, observing as bodies break down and transform into new life forms and energy continually reshapes matter.

Death and Spring from 1915 is a significant work in this discourse, as it reflects his ongoing exploration of death, rebirth, and the complex relationship between life and mortality, particularly through colours. He shows a body lying in a domestic setting, with a window in the background that reveals the bright green of springtime rebirth — an ironic and contrasting image, yet somehow full of promise. Beside the woman’s gaunt face, a large fern sprawls out, either resting on a pillow or sprouting from her head in a surreal way.

The Sick Child is another poignant series of paintings, created between 1885 and 1926, again reflecting on the illness and death of youth. Munch created six major painted versions of the scene, alongside various lithographs and studies. The paintings typically depict the child lying on her deathbed, often accompanied by a grieving woman assumed to be Sophie’s aunt, Karen, a pivotal figure of Munch’s childhood who moved into the house and acted as the sibling’s second mother after their biological mother’s death. In these works, the girl projecting a memory of Sophie is portrayed with a gaunt face and a haunted expression, propped up by pillows, looking towards an ominous curtain. The emotional weight of the scene is heightened by the contrast between her frail appearance and the dark, oppressive atmosphere surrounding her.

“Illness was a constant presence throughout my childhood and youth. Tuberculosis turned my white handkerchief into a proud red banner of blood. One by one, all my closest family members passed away.”

Starting in the 1880s with The Sick Child, Munch’s works began exploring his memories through painting and writing, a habit he would keep for the rest of his life. As a child, he faced significant losses: his mother died of tuberculosis when he was just five, and later his older sister Sophie. His father passed away soon after, and even when Munch was in France, his younger brother Peter Andreas died at only 30. By the 1890s, Munch was expressing his family’s grief through some of his most touching motifs.

While sentimental portrayals of illness were common in Nordic countries, Munch’s images had a twist: they were charged with the agony of watching someone die and the struggle that he believed the sick endured. His art often shows hallucinations, shadows stretching behind figures, and swirling strokes that evoke dissolving bodies — capturing how patients might experience the world around them.

2.2. Love and Seduction

In 1890, Munch wrote the Manifesto of Saint Cloud, a poetic text that’s thought to have guided his artistic choices. He wrote: “A strong, bare arm; a powerful, tanned neck; a young woman resting her head on the soft curve of her breast. She closes her eyes and listens with open, trembling lips to the words he whispers into her long, wavy hair. I want to capture this scene as I see it now, wrapped in a blue haze. These two people, at this moment, are no longer themselves but just one of the countless sexual links binding one generation to the next.”

Many of his erotic depictions revolve around the concept of bodies merging into a singular unity, and Munch believed people should understand the sacredness and grandeur of the erotic moments, “tip their hats as if entering a church.” He planned to create many such works — not just domestic scenes but real people in flesh and blood, who breathe, feel, suffer, and love. In an era of both public and private promiscuity, Munch was determined to make visible what he called the “grandeur of sexuality” — a bold and controversial choice. Although some of his images can come across as a bit misogynistic or often depict men and women as locked in a battle of the sexes, Munch’s work also shows empathy. He portrays people of all genders who are, in their own way, lured by seduction and devastated by the collapse of love.

In the 1890s, Munch began organizing his imagery of erotic desire, sexual awakening, and loneliness into a series called Love, which he developed over the next few decades.

Painted in 1895, Woman, Sphinx is also known as Woman in Three Stages, and it’s significant to understand his vision during this stage of his career. This work explores the themes of femininity, the passage of time, and the complexity of women’s identities through a symbolic representation of womanhood. The first woman, depicted in white attire, symbolizes youth as innocence and purity, and she stands between nature and the horizon, but her flowing blonde hair creates a sort of wave, connecting her to the other stages. Maturity is represented by a red-haired woman, confidently displaying her sensuality and fertility through her position, her nudity and strokes of red paint trickling between her legs. The last identity is raven-haired, shadowy and somber, and her dark clothing and ashen complexion evoke themes of loss and grief. They are usually described as three stages of maturity, but I beg to disagree: all three women are young, arguably the same age, and in my opinion they show sides of a woman that might very well coexist in the same age and in the same individual. A fourth figure, dressed in what looks like a kimono, stands on the right and it’s usually identified as a man. His eyes are lowered, either in contemplation or consternation we do not know.

Similar themes are explored in Linde’s Frieze (above), also known as The Dance on the Beach: we have the refreshing presence of a blonde woman, we have the red-haired and red-dressed temptress accompanied by a man who doesn’t look well, and we have an unamused raven-haired youth staring straight at the spectator.

The most famous exploration of these themes, however, has to be with the series of paintings depicting a kiss. The widespread interpretation we have of these series however, and in particular the connection of the woman to the mythological figure of a vampire, isn’t Munch’s. We owe it to the playwright August Strindberg, Munch’s friend from his Berlin days, who had a rather misogynistic take on the kiss imagery and described his friend’s painting as “the fusion of two beings, where the smaller one, like a carp, is on the verge of devouring the larger one, like a pest or vampire.” Strindberg’s view was miles away from Munch’s own thoughts on intimacy, as seen in Munch’s journal: “She clung to my body. She rested her head on my chest. We stayed like this for a long time. A warm, delicate feeling filled me… We kissed for a long time. The studio was utterly silent.”

Regardless of that, Edvard Munch’s series titled The Vampire is one of his most iconic and evocative works, created in various versions between 1893 and 1895. The central motif depicts a woman with flowing red hair embracing a man whose head rests on her lap, and Munch doesn’t do anything to make the woman’s grip not suffocating in a sort of tender way, and the man borderlines desperation. What’s happening here? Munch originally titled the painting Love and Pain, reflecting the duality of affection and suffering inherent in romantic relationships, and we have some similarities in poses and themes if you compare it to pieces like Consolation.
It all started in 1893 in his Berlin studio, where Munch made a sketch of two models, a man and a female. He instructed the man, “Kneel on the ground. Rest your head on her lap.” A completed version of this theme was exhibited that same year. Two years later, Stanislaw Przybyszewski suggested renaming it Vampire, and Munch gave up. He would later comment, “It was the era of Ibsen, and if people loved indulging in dark symbolism and calling a romantic scene ‘vampire,’ who was I to say no?”

3. Munch’s Own Problems

Even if it’s true that Munch didn’t quite agree with his friend’s misogynist view of paintings like The Kiss, we would be disingenuous if we didn’t consider that Munch didn’t have a particularly serene relationship with women in the first place, and the exhibition does that by telling us of two women: Eva Mudocci and Tulla Larsen.

3.1. Eva Mudocci

Born Evangeline Hope Muddock, Eva Mudocci (1872–1953) was a notable English violinist and a significant figure in Edvard Munch’s life. Their relationship, which began in 1903, was marked by intimacy and artistic collaboration, influencing both their lives and works.

Mudocci was born in Brixton, London, to a musical family; her father was a journalist and her mother a violinist. She began performing publicly at a young age and gained acclaim as a child prodigy. Throughout her career, she toured Europe with pianist Bella Edwards, forming a musical duo that was well-regarded in artistic circles. She met Munch in Paris through composer Frederick Delius, and their relationship is believed to have developed into a romantic affair that lasted until around 1908 or 1909, although they maintained contact until 1927. Munch was captivated by Mudocci’s beauty and talent, often depicting her in his artworks. According to Mudocci’s herself, Munch struggled to paint a portrait of her before creating a print titled The Brooch. “His ambition,” she explained, “was to make the most perfect portrait. But whenever he began a canvas, he destroyed it because he was dissatisfied with it.” The lithographs he eventually made were sent up to our room in the Sans Souci hotel in Berlin, along with a note from Munch that read, “Here is the stone that has fallen from my heart.” The brooch was a gift from Jens Thiis, an art historian who was one of Munch’s earliest supporters.

In December 1908, Mudocci gave birth to twins, Isobel and Kai, in Denmark. Although there were speculations regarding Munch being the father, it is now believed that the actual father was Danish writer Louis Levy. Mudocci’s relationship with Munch and her role as a mother was complex; she struggled with motherhood and found in Munch someone she could relate to when it came to anxieties.

Munch also portrayed Mudocci in an image that was almost a caricature of himself and whose title referenced the biblical figure of Salome, daughter of Herodias, who famously demanded the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Mudocci wasn’t too thrilled with being represented as a femme fatale — a seductive woman who led men to their doom, which was a popular trope of the late 19th century. She admitted the title caused “the only discord between us.” The two remained friends for many, many years.

3.2. Tulla Larsen

The same cannot be said of Tulla Larsen, the only woman Munch ever thought about marrying.

Educated and artistic, Mathilde “Tulla” Larsen came from a well-off neighbourhood in Kristiania (Oslo) and met Munch for the first time in 1898. They often travelled together, including an infamous and ill-fated trip to Italy in 1899 and their relationship, though initially happy, soured when Munch began to shy away from Tulla’s desire for a deeper, more physical attachment. “This is the time for my work. And I dedicate myself to it with all my soul,” Munch wrote. In the final months, his own fragile health and his idiotic idea of bathing nude in the Northern Sea (more on that later) made him distance himself further from her. He told Tulla, “We have to live like brother and sister. You need to see my love for you as more like a brother’s love.” But as time passed, this became impossible. Their relationship ended dramatically in the summer of 1902 during a fight, when a gun went off and Munch lost two fingers. No one’s quite sure how the shot was fired.

The bitter memory of Tulla lingered with Munch for years, especially after she married another artist. Munch’s feelings of jealousy and growing paranoia about their relationship pushed him into a spiral of depression and alcoholism. Between 1908 and 1909, he sought treatment at a private clinic in Copenhagen run by Dr. Daniel Jacobson. In his artwork, Munch repeatedly depicted the moment of his injury and its aftermath with caricatures and symbolic imagery through the depiction of Marat’s death. In his art, Munch transformed Tulla, with her red hair, into a seductive yet dangerous femme fatale, a beautiful woman who was also a sly temptress and “murderer,” while he portrayed himself as a sacrificial victim.

Such scenes appears distorted, as if viewed under intense stress where peripheral vision fades and details become sharper. Munch’s fascination with different ways of seeing — whether heightened by music or pressed by fear — comes through in his art as he explores telescopic perspectives by suggesting the loss of peripheral vision through a swirling, tunnel-like space that zooms in on Tulla Larsen at the centre. The writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, a German physicist and doctor, transformed the understanding of vision, showing how emotions and memory affect what we see. With his keen attention to his own subjective experiences and scientific interests, Munch magnified his memory of his last encounter with Larsen, turning it into a visual tunnel and framing it as a murder scene.

He even painted a double portrait with the single aim of cutting it in half. Yes, he didn’t cut a painting he already did. He painted one specifically to cut it.

4. Did you say “Swimming Naked”?

Yes, that’s what I said. Munch had a childhood plagued by illness and death, as we have seen, and both his father and brother were physicians. He himself suffered from various lung ailments throughout his life. Obsessed with the fragility of the human body, he spent much of his adult life seeking relief in spas and sanatoriums, places that were becoming popular as health consciousness spread across German-speaking and Nordic countries. Which is good.

What’s not good is that it all went south.

Recurring epidemics such as the Spanish Flu and a sense of urban “degeneration” in northern Europe led to the rise of vitalism, a mix of pseudo-scientific bullshit and philosophical theories inspired by renewal and health. Thinkers like Friedrich Nietzsche and biologist Ernst Haeckel, both German, promoted ideas that encouraged nudity, outdoor exercise, and sunbathing as paths to physical regeneration. Which, again, it doesn’t sound so bad. At the same time, unfortunately, rose Lebensreform, the “life reform” movement, advocating for vegetarian diets and physical exercise. Swimming naked in the icy waters of northern Europe was prescribed by doctors and natural healers to treat weakness and other conditions.

Munch adopted these lifestyle practices at his home in Åsgårdstrand, especially from 1902 to 1908, and drew artistic inspiration from these experiences, such as scenes of naked men which I won’t oppose, but his health began to decline. He eventually caught a cold. And died.

The exhibition ends with a singular piece, his Self-Portrait in Hell.

The work was painted in 1895, a pivotal year for the artist as he was navigating personal crises, the tumultuous relationship with Tulla Larsen and financial difficulties. This period marked a transition in his artistic journey as he sought new ways to express his experiences. Self-Portrait in Hell serves as both a reflection of his struggles during this time and a broader commentary on the human condition: Munch portrays himself as a naked figure standing against a turbulent, abstract background filled with intense colours that evoke flames and smoke.