After having viewed the Neue Galeie's large retrospective Munch and Expressionism only last year, I was surprised to see another exhibit of the artist's work on display in New York City so soon thereafter. Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed at the Met Breuer is not so large or ambitious as its predecessor but it is nevertheless still well worth visiting.
The show is broken down into four galleries. The first is given over to self-portraits painted at various times in the artist's career including that completed shortly before his death that gives the exhibit its title. Though Munch never sought to disguise his features in his self portraits, he did show himself in a number of different poses and settings. In the self portrait with cigarette, for example, he struck the pose of a well to do bohemian. Of them all, the one I found most interesting was that set in a hotel bar in Weimar. There's a profound sense of melancholy here. In it, the artist made himself the archetype of those lonely souls we still see sitting by themselves lost in a somber mood at some New York nightspot while all around them is gaiety.
The second gallery depicts The Struggle against Death, a series of sickroom and deathbed paintings inspired by the early death of Munch's sister. In a number of paintings, most explicitly in the 1895 "Death in the Sickroom" and "The Struggle against Death" itself, the artist tried to come to terms with his grief long after his sister had passed. There are two versions here of "The Sick Child" from 1886. Munch felt that this work, painted with the help of an eleven year old neighbor as model, was a turning point in his career that finally allowed him to go beyond technique and to paint expressively.
The third gallery, very obviously intended to complement the second, is entitled The Frieze of Life. The reference here is to a series of paintings Munch first exhibited in 1893 in Berlin under the title Study for a Series: Love. The artist later expanded this cycle under the somewhat awkward title Frieze of Life—A Poem about Life, Love and Death. The gallery is dominated by the large allegorical painting "The Dance of Life" from 1900 that shows figures moving clumsily in a landscape that might represent an evening garden party. With the exception of one couple placed in the background, the figures' movements are stilted, and they paradoxically seem more alone in a group than if they had been painted individually. One of the more interesting works in this gallery is "Red Virginia Creeper," also from 1900. The center of attention here is not the house in the background covered with red creeping vines but rather the figure in the foreground whose face is a study in anxiety. Another work worth noting is "The Death of Marat," a sensationalised rendering that resulted from an argument between the artist and his fiancee that ended with Munch being shot with a gun the two had struggled over. Other well known paintings in this section include "The Kiss" and "Ashes."
The fourth and final gallery is entitled In the Studio but it really serves as a catch all for paintings that did not fit easily into the three preceding categories. Here are two of Munch's best known paintings, "Puberty" and "Madonna," the latter in two different versions. The most compelling images, however, are two nudes Munch painted of his seventeen year old housekeeper. In both "Weeping Nude" and "Naked Model" the young housekeeper appears in great distress and not at all a willing model. One can't help but wonder at the nature of her relationship to the artist. Had she been coerced into posing for her employer? Had there been a physical relationship between the two that was not entirely consensual?
Missing at the exhibit are any of the many versions of "The Scream," but that image has grown so popular in our time - a testament to the anxiety that permeates modern society - that its presence hangs unseen over the entire show.
The exhibit continues through February 4, 2018.
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