Mulling over Munch: art altered by time

LAST Friday, I visited the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway. It was a glorious evening, and the sunlight had a shimmery silver quality to it as it reflected off the fiord. Inside the gallery however, the light was dimmed, meticulously controlled to allow for the preservation of the museum’s treasures. Of course, such measures are necessary for the life and future of precious artworks. But the stark contrast between the beautiful light of the summer sun and the dry darkness of the museum made me wonder about the other, unintended effects of conservation measures.

Edvard Munch is best known for The Scream, a series of paintings, pastels and lithographs bearing the instantly recognisable twisted face of a soul encountering some existential terror. Munch, in describing the inspiration for

The Scream, recalled that he had been out for a walk at sunset when suddenly the setting sun’s light turned the clouds ‘‘a blood red’’. He sensed an ‘‘enormous infinite scream passing through nature’’.

The Scream exists in four primary versions: two pastels (1893 and 1895) and two paintings (1893 and 1910), as well as several lithographs. All versions of The Scream were created on cardboard or paper, making them more fragile than oil paintings on canvas. They are also prone to disintegration from temperature, humidity and light exposure.

At the Munchmuseet, there are three versions of The Scream — a painting, a pastel drawing and a print. One of these is always visible while the two others rest in darkness. I stumbled into this darkness on the museum’s fourth floor. In a kind of exhibition within an exhibition, the three pictures were displayed on rotation, changing hourly. I arrived at the museum at 7.30pm, to find the lithograph print on display. I returned to the darkened room half an hour later, hoping to see the painted version, but to my chagrin, it was the duller and less impressive pastel on display. The museum closed at nine. I never saw the painted version.

As I wandered around Munchmuseet I was struck by the sheer number of unfinished and damaged paintings, prints and drawings. Halffinished sketches were displayed alongside flaking paintings; prints with water stains and yellow age spots hung alongside tattered canvases. I longed to run my fingers over the matte surface of Munch’s paintings; to feel the rough crumbly edges of his drawings, to sniff his diary pages.

There is something wonderfully human and tangible about artworks — or indeed any remnant of a precious life — that have not been coated with slick layers of varnish entombed for decades in darkened vaults. Munch intentionally left most of his artworks unvarnished so that the subtle variations in gloss, saturation, hue and texture might fully be appreciated. In fact, he loathed the thenobligatory varnishing of oil paints, describing such varnish as ‘‘brown sauce’’.

Munch, as much as he considered his paintings to be his ‘‘children’’, was something of a neglectful father. In addition to his untraditional painting techniques and materials, Munch was rather unconventional in his storage of artworks. Munch bequeathed his art collection to the City of Oslo, and upon his death, city officials were astonished to find pictures, tools and books scattered all over his large villa at Ekely.

Many of Munch’s paintings displayed the additional artistic input of birds and animals, as evinced by myriad pawprints and bird droppings. He stored a number of paintings outside, and several paintings also exhibit human footprints, remains of water damage and candle wax. Moreover, earlier and clumsier attempts at conservation have left their mark upon his artworks.

Indeed, Munch was a renegade artist from the start, and wished for his artworks to have a life of their own. He took great delight in confounding contemporary art critics who derided his ‘‘random blobs of colour’’ and accused him of exhibiting ‘‘a discarded halfrubbedout sketch’’ by employing large, rough brushstrokes, or thinning his paint and letting it drip freely down the canvas or cardboard, so that the rivulets created their own little rivers and trails through his strokes.

Both painted versions of The Scream have been stolen and recovered; one from the National Gallery in 1994, and one from the Munch Museum in 2004. The Munch Museum’s painting — that painting I was so close to, yet did not see — was rather damaged over the course of its twoyear hiatus from the museum, and returned with a noticeable water stain in the lower left corner. Before repairs and restoration began, the damaged painting was put on public display for five days, with over 5500 people flocking to view the prodigal son.

I can’t help but feel as if there is something more beautiful in the ephemerality of artworks such as The Scream series. There is something profound about having the honour of seeing a painting in the flesh — an honour not necessarily afforded to people of the future who might gaze upon a more faded and flaky version, or may not ever see the original works themselves.

There is also something delightful in the fact that Munch allowed nature — wind, rain, birds and his beloved dogs — to make their own special contributions to his artworks. From their conception, his ‘‘children’’ were never static. They grew and altered with time, and will continue to do so, despite every effort of the conservator.

Last summer, my siblings and I collected shells from every beach we visited, from Mangawhai Harbour to Waihi Beach. We carefully washed these treasures, then sat down one sunny afternoon and painted them in a kaleidoscope of colours, lines, and patterns, finishing them off with a thin layer of clear nail polish from the two dollar shop. We then laid these brightly coloured shells upon our brother John’s grave, on the edge of the cemetery in Waihi.

I know, despite the nail varnish, that the wind and the rain will have their way with these little gifts. I know that when I return this summer, the shells will have faded, the paint will have flaked from the rain, and little insect tracks may be visible upon their surfaces. But these shells will be all the more beautiful for the input of these other nonhuman visitors, for the weathering of the time they have kept my brother’s grave company while I am far away, on the other side of the planet.

These garish little shells cannot be compared with the profound impact of Munch’s oeuvre. They will never be hung in galleries, or reproduced on countless tea towels and posters. But both the shells and Munch’s artworks have their history writ upon them, and will continue to evolve and change so that each viewing is an utterly new and unique experience.