Edvard Munch: When art collides with mental disorder
Hello to all the lovely creatures out there!
In today's post we dive deep into our well-known artist Edvard Munch's psychology that shaped his life's artwork. Mostly known for his painting "The Scream" the norwegian artist was well-aquainted with the world of medicine as he was the son and brother of doctors, and he suffered from medical and psychiatric illnesses throughout his lifetime.
A little bit about him: Born in Norway in 1863 to an aristocratic family Munch grappled with illness from an early age. From himself, to his family, mental illness and medicine had a complicated relationship through his life. His father struggled with depression, and his sister Laura spent time in a psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, his mother died of tuberculosis when he was 5, and his older sister Sophie, perished from the same disease a little later when Munch was 14. His brother Andreas also died from pneumonia in adulthood.
Munch's early life would profoundly influence his later artistic expression. He categorized his paintings into themes including "Death" and "Self", seeking to use art as a means to express his inner thoughts and universal experiences. His artwork, distinguished by contrasting lines and somber colors, expressed not only his state of mind, but all "living beings who breathe and feel and suffer and love" (Munch).
Many of his paintings use these exact patterns. In "The Sick Child" Munch portrays his fifteen-year-old sister Johanne Sophie on her deathbed, and a grieving woman by her side. The painting presents death here as a prolonged process that impacts deeply the whole family. The green color on the walls symbolizes sickness, and the space evokes a sense of claustrophobia. Taking the time to further observe the painting, forceful brushstrokes intensify the colors, creating a hard contrast with the child's pallid complexion.
In "Sick Mood at Sunset: Despair" the painting captures a solitary figure gazing into the fjord and the city beneath it. The slight downward tilt of his chin and the sky, awash in shades of red and yellow, enhance the figure's emotional exhaustion. Below, a bridge spans a fjord, the shadows and an elevated vantage point of the landscape reinforce the depth of the figure's thoughts. Two men walk past the main figure, their indifference highlighting his solitude at the forefront. The separation between the figures in the background and the figure in the front suggests a theme of individual sorrow against collective indifference. Though Munch really aimed to depict his own emotional state, the painting's themes resonate universally. The purposeful lack of facial features allows the audience to interpret the subject's emotions, allowing all types of viewers to connect with the painting on a deeper level.
In 1919, Munch was 56 when he contracted the Spanish flu, which was then ravaging Europe. During this period of illness, the artist painted his "Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu", which shows Munch staring toward the viewer, struggling to breathe. Althought the rest of his posture seems calm and collected, his face's expression betrays the pain and agony in which the artist would have been during this painful period of his life. The bright colors in his face seem to be in alignment with the strong emotion distorting his face while trying to take a breath.
In "On the Operating Table" a man is depicted, surrounded by doctors, nurses and an audience of observers during surgery. This painting is connected to a violent encounter between Munch and his fiancée in 1902, which left him with a bullet wound in his hand. According to the Art Newspaper's Louisa Buck, experts aren't sure who fired the shot, but the surgery he endured afterwards inspired the piece.
In general, Munch's work often reflected women's health concerns, such as "melancholy, hysteria, syphilis, contraception, childbirth and infant care". In his painting ''Inheritance" a couching mother is depicted holding a sickly newborn. It was inspired by Munch's visit to a Paris syphilis hospital, where he recalled watching a mother learn that her baby had been infected with the disease.
I understand that a lot of you might have expected to talk about one of his most popular works, "The Scream" but I decided for this to be a future post where we will be discussing more about Munch's own psychology and illness leading him to create such a piece. At this moment, I'd like for us to focus more on how his prehistory with mental illness and medicine affected the rest of the body of his work as a reminder first of all to all his work, and secondly, to reflect on ourselves, our connection with our body and mind, and our health. Munch's work invites us to reflect on our own health and vulnerability ina time of deep uncertainty.
See you in a next post and as always thank you for reading!
xoxoxo
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