 |
| Ghosts at the Gallery |
In preparation I bought the catalogue and read it to get a clearer view of the artist, his context and his motivation.
I also determined to road test my recent guidelines on "ways of looking" at a picture (link tbs).
Munch engages me because the time at which he was working is in the period that I am studying (Impressionism to Modernism). But in addition, he engages me because of his apparent interest in photography and geometry. I will, I hope, justify my inclusion of geometry as part of his interest in due course.
Visiting an exhibition for a second time, some weeks after a first visit, and after time to study the artist, has much to commend it. Was the first visit essential? I think so. It heightened my interest in the artist considerably, raising many questions that the short exhibition notes could not answer adequately. It meant that I read the essays in the (excellent, btw) catalogue with the clear memory of the pictures in mind. Reading the catalogue answered many of the questions (and raised many new ones) so that walking into the exhibition for the second time, I knew what I wanted to see.
The bigger pictures in this exhibition are the ones that stand out on a first visit. They are in a style fairly well unique to Munch and set him up in my mind to be as great an artist as my other heroes of the age, in particular, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Miro and O'Keeffe. Standing before a picture such as Children in the Street or Starry Night (left and right, above) at just the right distance is a rewarding experience. You see the picture as the artist did.
Seeing a picture as the artist intended is only part of the experience however. We each have our own ways of looking at pictures and a significant aspect of this is our own experience as an artist or a critic.
Applying this approach to Munch, second time around, I now believe I can see what he was getting at. Each picture stands out both in the context of his life and the series in which this picture appears.
Thus, the most revealing aspect of the exhibition, to which the curators immediately draw our attention is the way in which Munch repeats his picture throughout his career. The second gallery is devoted to exhibiting pairs of copy-paintings, typically painted twenty or more years apart. Munch has taken a painting from earlier in his career and created a similar-but-different copy. Examples are The Sick Child, Girls on a Bridge, Vampire and Ashes.
These pairs are mounted in the gallery opposite each other, so it is possible to stand half-way between (sadly, not the correct viewing distance for either) and by turning left and right see these similar-but-different paintings seconds apart rather than twenty years apart. They are generally similar (remarkably so) in their geometry while being different in their style. The later pictures are more robust, more confidently painted, with broad brush strokes. The difference between Impressionism and Modernism, effectively. Munch paints Ashes in 1895 impressionistically and then copies it in 1925 in a style that would be seen as contemporary at that time. That is, Modern.
It is remarkable how similar, geometrically, these copies are. Each could almost be a tracing of the other. Did Munch use a photograph, or work directly from the original. It is not conceivable that he painted the second from memory, despite the intensity of the relationship that an artist has with their paintings.
The issue which many critics have with Munch is his use of perspective. The perspective is true, as far as I can see, but exaggerated by the "cinematic" effects that Munch employs. He places people close to the "camera" or on the edge of the action or makes them "optically" larger that they might be in a more conventionally composed painting. This alone is reason to admire Munch and to study his work. Effectively, it is his signature. You couldn't fail to identify the artist from his works, once you have seen one of them.
Another issue, which exercises some critics (including myself) is the interplay between photography and painting. Munch used a camera from about 1905 (apparently) and took "snapshots" of his social life as well as photographs of his paintings. The photograph of Rosa Meissner (1907) is something he clearly used to reproduce the figure in Young Woman Weeping by the Bed (1907-9, 1930). For Munch the camera seems to have been a tool used for sketching. Even when he takes photographs of himself (many, many,...) and his friends, they are photographs taken by an artist, rather than by a portrait-photographer. Munch is trying to achieve an impression that he has in mind, perhaps a painting he plans to create.
Ultimately, on this second visit, I discovered that I was most affected by one painting. One I had more or less ignored on my first visit. The Sun (1910-13) is right on the edge of Munch's transition from Impressionist to Modernist. The painting can be seen as representational or as abstract.
 |
| http://shop.tate.org.uk/content/ebiz/shop/invt/13474/the_sun_poster_13474_large.jpg |
The depth illusion is achieved by perspective, but it is a fragile illusion. The reproduction here or in print doesn't do it justice, unfortunately. Standing before the original, at a distance where the the artist's brushstrokes are just disappearing (where I suspect the artist wanted us to stand) the impression comes and goes. It is both abstract and real. It would be a challenge to achieve an effect equivalent to this in any medium other than oil.