While there’s a lot more to Edvard Munch than The Scream (here in lithograth), it remains the work that best explains him. The figure, Munch himself of course, is not screaming, but feeling ‘the scream in nature’. Or so we’re told by Munch. Yet the solution to the artist’s turmoil is found not by changing nature, but himself.

Here at the Royal Academy of Arts we learn that Munch welcomed illness (physical as well as mental) into his life thanks to an idea that’s become a cliche: creativity comes out of suffering. And for much of the work this idea holds. The misogyny of early works is a symptom of his own immaturity and the sexual repression of the age.

Fortunately, Munch does mature before us in this exhibition.
AD: Buy Edvard Munch by Himself, Royal Academy of Arts tickets.
This posted via mobile via Flickr and so not so closely proofread. Click the pic to see it large (there’s an ‘all-sizes’ tab for really large). Updated: 24 November 2005.

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