Edvard Munch remains best-known for his “Scream,” an image that can rival the Mona Lisa for mass popularity. But Munch was much more than a one-hit wonder. “Munch and Expressionism,” a fascinating show at the Neue Galerie, rounds up a first-rate selection of his paintings and woodblock prints, many of them from museums in his native Norway. It has often been said that Munch was a key influence on the German Expressionists, who are also well-represented in the show.
[Click on “Listen” for Solomon’s review of the show with WNYC’s Soterios Johnson.]
Munch, actually, invented Expressionism before anyone knew what to call it. He was exploring Freudian themes of depression and sexual shame before Freud got around to publishing a word on the subject. Munch openly traced his problems to his childhood, which was clouded by illness and death. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was five, and a beloved older sister died of the same disease when he was 14. His father was a physician, and I sometimes wonder whether Munch’s self-dramatizing “Scream” was directed at a father who was likely to have dismissed his son’s emotional suffering as small potatoes compared to illnesses that were claiming lives.
This is very much a show with a theme, and it is interesting to see how Munch’s early Symbolist works influenced artists in Germany, especially Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Emil Nolde. But the differences between Munch and his followers outweigh the affinities. While an artist such as Erich Heckel favored loudly colored, in-your-face paintings that owe much to the French Fauves, Munch didn’t go for modern flatness. In many of his paintings, long roads unwind behind a central figure, and tiny figures in the distance hint at unresolved dramas.
Munch remains best-known for his early work – the dark, Symbolist meditations infused with a heavy melancholy. But he did lighten up at the end. Despite his intense and oft-stated fear of death, he outlived many of his friends; he died in Oslo in 1944, at the age of 80. Look for an extraordinary painting in the show called “Standing Nude Against Blue Background,” a late canvas circa 1930 that seems almost shockingly upbeat. It reportedly has never been shown before.
A woman occupies the right side of the canvas, appearing to be floating on a raft of beautiful blue-and-green brushstrokes. The loose brushwork and patches of dripped pigment can put you in mind of Jackson Pollock’s free way with pigment. It’s a relief to see that finally Munch learned how to find pleasure – at least in his art, if not in his life.
Munch and Expressionism runs through June 13, 2016, at the Neue Galerie.