Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye
A review by Richard Woods
Edvard Munch, “Virginia Red Creeper”
I recently decided to go see the exhibition at The Tate Modern by one of my favourite artists, Edvard Munch. He was an artist who drew inspiration from his dark experiences and psychological states of mind. As I walked through the entrance of the exhibition on the third floor of The Tate I was greeted by a suitably miserable ticket attendant. She resembled an isolated Munch figure in installation form. As she ripped my ticket without uttering a word I felt the exhibition was already worth the £14. As a painter I was keen to see the brush work. However, the show included prints, sculpture, photography and film which broke up the exhibition well and gave different insights into the artist’s life and works.
The first room comprised of a number of self portraits as a visual introduction to the artist. I was particularly fond of the small oil which was very different to his more globally recognised expressive style. It was tightly painted and excellently executed with as much confidence as his mark-making in the later works.
The one thing I had heard about the show was the discussion of his repetitious use of the same image or “reworking” as The Tate calls it. As I entered the second room, with giant red walls, the most notable work for this repetition at the show was “The Sick Child,” which is about painful memories of his sister’s death when he was 13. It’s described as his breakthrough work. We see this reproduction today with artists reproducing works which sell through their popularity. I don’t see this as a bad thing, at the end of the day artists have to make a living and surely reproducing a popular image can only make it more successful and well-known. On the subject Munch said, “I have in fact often made copies of my paintings – but there was always progress too, and they were never the same – I build one painting on the last.”
What I had come to examine, which is typical of a painter examining one of his peers, was the technique. Thin washes of colour depicted skies and groups of trees, almost applied in the same way you would a water colour. These thin layers in the background helped push the thick sure mark making of events in the foregrounds forward and into the viewers space. I even noted paint being squeezed directly from the tube to outline the bottom of a girl’s skirt in the work, “Children in the Street.”
To me the most interesting aspect about his paintings is the movement. The trees are blowing, clouds are swirling. You are pushed and pulled through the images. The huge painting titled “Workers on Their way Home,” is one of the strongest at pushing the perspective around. A large group of workers are depicted walking towards you. The one at the centre of the composition is looking directly at you, and you do get a sense that you’re in one of those situations on the street with someone walking towards you but you both begin picking the same side of the pavement to get past until you’re almost falling over one another apologizing. With this work, if you go to the right you will surely bump into the side of the chap walking with his hat down looking at the ground. The guy on the left is standing in a stationary position as if he knows he’s going to have to wait for you to pass. The busyness of the brushstrokes distracts you from the situation and I feel it gives you a sense of his nervousness and anxieties in these social scenarios. In The Tate’s guide it highlights the fact that the subject and movement are probably inspired by early film. The early shots of trains or large groups of people moving towards the screen used to panic people and I’m sure it must have been quite an event.
There were a number of self portraits in the form of photographs. Small close up snapshots Munch had taken of himself to me drew a resemblance to facebook profile pictures people often take of themselves. I found this incredibly striking and familiar. I hadn’t seen many of these paintings before but they too felt familiar. I think I picked up on where inspiration to more contemporary artists had come from. The work titled “The Fight,” reminded me a lot of the work by the late Scottish artist, Steven Campbell. He was a master of optical illusion with paint as was Munch. This humorous fight with a character almost falling out of the bottom of the picture is one of the best works in the show. “The Fight,” is another work which Munch reworked a number of times.
For me though, the outstanding work is “Red Virginia Creeper,” The head of a man dressed in black who looks rather ill in colour, is heading towards us in the foreground yet our eye leaps over him and up the winding path to a house with red blood-like ivy smothering the building. It looks as if the house has a mortal wound. This ivy has no leaves, is it ivy at all? It appears to be suffocating the house trying to make it disappear. The sky and surrounding landscape are calm, making the disturbing house ever more poignant.
The experimentation with both subject and technique is truly brilliant. The use of human emotion and innovative technique in the time of these works’ creation is certainly inspiring and worth the entry fee. The exhibition runs until 14th October 2012.
- Richard Woods
