February 17, 2006

Edvard Munch retrospective comes to MoMA

The Museum of Modern Art on Sunday will open "Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul," the first American retrospective of the Norwegian artist's work in almost three decades.

Made up of more than 130 oils and works on paper including several self-portraits and two 1895 lithographs of "The Scream," the show is complements another Munch show at Scandinavia House.

From the New York Times review:

And yet, for all its roots in Symbolism, the turn-of-the-century European movement that sought to replace naturalism with the imagery of fantasy, dream and psychic experience, "The Scream" apparently had little to do with what Munch saw as the real thrust of his art.

That took in such existential matters as birth, love, loss, emotional turmoil, the search for one's identity and the inevitable decline into death. In these paintings Munch struggled to render his own emotional and psychological traumas, including the deaths of his mother and older sister, as well as his doomed first real love affair, into universal images that resonated with the outside world. By so doing, he said, he hoped to "understand the meaning of life" and to help others gain similar insights.

February 17, 2006 12:07 AM in Midtown, Museums, Sightsology

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