Alcoholic, agoraphobic, motherless, unmarried ...no wonder Munch wanted to Scream
Edvard Munch: Love And Angst British Museum, London Until July 21 ★★★★★
It’s fair to say Edvard Munch’s most famous art-work is considerably more famous than he is. In fact, as the Norwegian’s name recedes further and further into the past, his painting The Scream constantly takes on new life.
In recent months, its anguished subject – hands on head, eyes wide open, and mouth letting out a yell – has inspired countless cartoonists reflecting on the Brexit process.
A superb exhibition of Munch’s prints at the British Museum in London, however, makes clear there was a lot more to Munch than The Scream. Born in 1863, he lost his mother aged five and elder sister Sophie aged 15 (both to tuberculosis). As an adult, he had long battles with alcoholism and agoraphobia – and never married.
Munch held little back when it came to expressing his woes in art. Yet, as with Van Gogh, the effect is haunting or electrifying rather than depressing. In The Sick Child, Sophie is depicted on her deathbed, her lifeless face so drained of colour it all but merges with the white pillow beneath her.
Thinking Norway too small for his artistic ambitions, Munch moved to Berlin in the
1890s, and it was there he made his first prints. He became popular with Germans, and demand for his pictures soon grew so high that he started producing them in large numbers. The exhibition includes a lithograph version of The Scream. It’s based on the painting of the same name but differs in certain key ways. For a start, it’s in black and white. Much of the painting’s power derives from the piercingly red colour of the sky, matching the piercing scream of its subject. The print, by contrast, relies on the clouds to make much of its impact: they look like huge waves and, as such, suggest scream-worthy waves of sound. Prints exhibitions often fail to attract a big crowd because of their lack of colour. It should be said, though, that – The Scream aside – Munch’s prints are full of colour. One suspects the orange hair of the woman biting her lover’s neck in Vampire II could be seen from 100 yards away.
Munch was a highly innovative print-maker, sometimes using different techniques in the creation of a single image (Vampire II is a mixture of woodcut and lithograph). For those interested in learning about his methods, there are helpful wall-texts throughout. However, even for those who aren’t, the revelations come thick and fast. Certain woodcut prints, for example, look like tree trunks with a picture superimposed on them. Munch loved to exploit the grainy texture of the woodblocks with which he made them.
On the evidence of this show’s
‘As with Van Gogh, the effect is haunting or electrifying rather than depressing’
83 works, Munch was a printmaker of the very first rank. I’d even go so far as to say his prints are more compelling than his paintings. They really are something to scream about.