Emil Nolde is one of my favourite German artists. Today I present 12 of his etchings printed on post cards.
Κατηγορία: expressionism
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
This post is long overdue. Munch is one of my favorite artists. In this post I put together some of his paintings and prints and a photograph he took. I put them in chronological order.
Enjoy!
PS. Back in 2009 I wrote about Munch’s “Madonna“. In 2013 I wrote a piece on “Death and the Maiden“, a journey from Munch to Abramovich. Finally, in 2014 I wrote about Munch’s stories with “Alpha and Omega”.
Edvard Munch – Horse and Cart on a Country Road , after 1880. Oil on paper laid on board, 19 x 15 cm. (7.5 x 5.9 in.). Courtesy of Count Wedels Plass Auctions AS, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Old Aker Church, 1882. Oil on board, 16 x 21 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Street Corner on Karl Johan, Grand Café, 1883. Oil on canvas, 36 x 28.8 cm. Munch Museet, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Afternoon at Olaf Rye’s Square, 1883. Oil on canvas, 47.5 x 25.5 cm. Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden
Edvard Munch, Inger in Black, 1884
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Rue Lafayette, 1891. Oil on canvas, 92 x 73 cm. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Summer Evening in Åsgårdstrand, 1891. Oil on canvas, 15 1/2 x 26 1/8 in. (39.2 x 66.2 cm). @ Christie’s Images, New York
Edvard Munch – Cypress in Moonlight, 1892. Oil on canvas, 81 x 54 cm. Private Collection
Edvard Munch, Sketch for Scream, Presumably 1893
Drawing, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1893
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – The Girl by the Window, 1893. Oil on canvas, 96.5 × 65.4 cm. (38 × 25 3/4 in.). Art Institute of Chicago, IL, USA
Edvard Munch, Death in the Sickroom, 1893, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – The Storm,1893. Oil on canvas. 36 1/8 x 51 1/2 in. (91.8 x 130.8 cm). MoMA, New York, USA
Edvard Munch – Sunrise in Åsgårdstrand, 1893-94. Oil on canvas, 25⅝ x 35 in. (65 x 89 cm). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York
Edvard Munch – Sketch for ‘Madonna’. Charcoal, 1893-1894 (plausible). Photo © Munchmuseet, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Madonna. Oil on canvas, 1894. Photo © Munchmuseet, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Death and the Maiden, 1894, Drypoint on paper,
23.20 x 16.70 cm (framed: 62.50 x 46.00 x 2.10 cm)
Private Collection on long term loan to the National Galleries of Scotland
Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Cigarette, 1895, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Love and pain – 1895
Edvard Munch – The Kiss, 1895. Etching and drypoint with burnisher, on wove paper, 34 x 27.6 cm. @ Christie’s Images, New York
Edvard Munch – Woman in Three Stages, 1895
Edvard Munch – Madonna, 1895-1896, lithograph printed in black, with hand coloring on light gray-green cardboard, 25 x 18 in (64.8 x 47.2 cm), Ohara Museum of Art, Japan
Edvard Munch – Meeting on the Shore, Mermaid, 1896
Edvard Munch, Young Woman Washing herself, 1896
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch, Stéphane Mallarmé, 1897 (plate)
Print, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch, Mother and Daughter, 1897 – 1899
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – woodcut: “Two Women on the Shore”, 1898
Edvard Munch – Summer Night in Studenterlunden, 1899. Oil on canvas. The Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – The dance of life. Painted between 1899 and 1900. Oil on canvas, 129 x 191 cm. National Gallery of Norway, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Dancing on a Shore, 1900. Oil on canvas, 95.5 x 98.5 cm. National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Edvard Munch – View from Nordstrand, 1900-01
Edvard Munch – Road in Åsgårdstrand, 1901. Oil on canvas, 88.3 x 113.8 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland
Edvard Munch, The Fairy tale Forest, 1901 – 1902
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Foster Mothers in Court, 1902
Edvard Munch – Clothes On A Line In Asgardstrand, 1902
Edvard Munch – White Night. Aasgardstrand (Girls on the Bridge), 1902-03. Oil on canvas, 86 x 75.8 cm. The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia
Edvard Munch, Blonde and dark haired nudes, 1902-3
Edvard Munch – Girl with Red Check Dress and Hat, 1902-3
Edvard Munch – Girl Under Apple Tree, 1904. Oil on canvas, 43 1/2 × 39 11/16 in. (110.49 × 100.81 cm). Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Edvard Munch – Merry Company, 1903. Oil on canvas, 59 x 83.5 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Ingse Vibe, 1903
Edvard Munch – Thuringian Forest, 1904. Oil on canvas, 29 3/4 × 39 1/2 in. (75.57 × 100.33 cm). Dallas Museum of Art (DMA), Dallas, TX, USA
Edvard Munch – Two Girls with Blue Aprons, 1904-05. Oil on canvas, 115.5 x 93 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Chestnut Trees, 1906. Oil on canvas, 101 x 80 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Friedrich Nietzsche. Oil and tempera on canvas, 1906. Photo © Munchmuseet
Edward Munch, Self portrait with bottle of wine, 1906, Munch Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch, The Death of Marat, 1906-1907 (plate)
Print, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch Self Portrait at 53 Am Strom in Warnemünde 1907
Gelatin silver print
9 x 9.4 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/ DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum Oslo
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1907, Tate Gallery, London
Edvard Munch – Garden in Kragerø, 1909. Oil on canvas, 47½ x 43¾ in. (120.7 x 111.1 cm.). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York
Edvard Munch – Two old men, 1910
The Sun, 1910–11. Oil on canvas. Photo © Munchmuseet, Universty of Oslo.
Edvard Munch – Springtime (Lovers by the shore), 1911-13. Oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm. (27.6 x 35.4 in.). Private Collection
Edvard Munch, Seated Nude, 1913
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Winter Landscape, 1915. Oil on canvas, 100 x 150 cm. Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria
Edvard Munch, Midsummer, 1915
Painting
Edvard Munch – Self Portrait in Bergen, 1916. Oil on canvas, 89.5 x 60 cm. The Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Seated young woman, 1916. Oil on canvas, 136 x 110 cm. (53 1/2 x 43 1/4 in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London
Edvard Munch – Man in the Cabbage Field, 1916. Oil on canvas, 136 x 180 cm. National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – At the Grand Piano, 1916-17. Oil on canvas, 67 x 100 cm. Munch-Museet, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – The Haymaker, 1917
Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1918. Oil over crayon on canvas, 66.5 x 100.5 cm. (26 3/4 x 39 1/2 in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London
Edvard Munch – Landscape from Hvitsten – 1918
Edvard Munch, Bathing Man, 1918,
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – Woman with Poppies, 1918-19. Oil on canvas, 100 x 75 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Horse Team, 1919. Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 145.5 cm. National Gallery, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Melancholy, 1919. Oil on canvas, 120 × 125 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Two teenagers, 1919
Edvard Munch – Sleepless Night. Self-Portrait in Inner Turmoil, 1920. Oil on canvas, 150 x 129 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch, Workers Returning Home, 1920
Painting, National Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch – The Wave, 1921. Oil on canvas. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Elm Forest in Spring, 1923. Oil on canvas, 109 x 130 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Spring Landscape, c. 1923-24. OIl on canvas, 39½ x 49⅜ in. (100.3 x 125.3 cm). @ Sotheby’s Images, New York
Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait in Hat and Coat, 1923-4
Edvard Munch – Seated Model on the Couch, 1924. Oil on canvas, 90 x 100 cm. Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Consolation in the forest, 1924-25. Oil on canvas, 215 x 173 cm. Munch-Museet, Oslo, Norway
Edvard Munch – Self-Portrait with Palette, 1926. Oil on canvas, 90 x 68 cm. (35½ x 26 ¾in.). @ Sotheby’s Images, London
Edvard Munch – Still Life with Cabbage and Other Vegetables 1926-1930
Edvard Munch Disturbed Vision 1930
Oil on canvas
80 x 64 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Musem Oslo
Edvard Munch, Birgitte III, 1930
Edvard Munch The Artist with a skull: Optical Illusion from the Eye Disease 1930
© Munch Museum/Munch-Ellingsend Group/DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum Oslo
Edvard Munch The Artist’s Injured Eye (and a figure of a bird’s head) 1930–1
Crayon on paper
50.2 x 31.5 cm
© Munch Museum/ Munch-Ellingsend Group/ DACS 2012
Courtesy Munch Museum, Oslo
Edvard Munch [Norwegian, 1863-1944], Self-Portrait Between the Clock and the Bed, 1940-43
Edvard Munch’s grave in Oslo’s Vår Frelsers Gravlund (Our Savior’s Cemetery)
Paul Klee and two philosophers: Benjamin and Heidegger
Paul Klee: Works on Paper from the Guggenheim Collection and the Berggruen Klee Collection
(Featured image: Paul Klee, Cold City, 1921, watercolour on paper mounted on maroon paper mounted on cardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection)
Paul Klee is one of my beloved painters and artists.
Today I would like to share some of his works on paper, which I find as beautiful as his pictures on other media. Most of the works belong to the Guggenheim Collection. The rest belong to the Berggruen Klee Collection from the Metropolitan Musem of Art in New York.
Paul Klee, Hilterfingen, 1895. Ink on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee was born on December 18, 1879, in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, so he drew this when he was 16 years old. At that time he had no formal training. He studied in Munich from 1898 to 1901.
Paul Klee, Thunersee near Schadau ( Thunersee bei Schadau ), 1895. Ink on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee, In Angel’s Care ( In Engelshut), 1931. Watercolor and colored inks on paper, mounted on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee, Two Gentlemen Bowing to One Another, Each Supposing the Other to Be in a Higher Position (Invention 6), 1903. Etching on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Color became central to Klee’s art only after a revelatory trip to Tunisia in 1914.
Paul Klee, Untitled, 1914, watercolour and ink on paper mounted on cardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection,
Paul Klee, Southern Gardens, 1919. Watercolour and ink on paper mounted on cardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection.
Southern Gardens (1919), a watercolour to which the artist assigned the status Sonderklasse (“Special class”), which meant that he was particularly satisfied with the result and wished to keep it for himself. (National Gallery of Canada, Anabelle Kienle Poňka, November 23, 2018)
Paul Klee, The Bavarian Don Giovanni ( Der bayrische Don Giovanni ), 1919. Watercolor and ink on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Citing Klee’s confession that his “infatuations changed with every soubrette at the opera,” art historian K. Porter Aichele has identified the Emma and Thères of the watercolor as the singers Emma Carelli and Thérèse Rothauser. The others—Cenzl, Kathi, and Mari—refer to models with whom Klee had fleeting romantic interludes. (Nancy Spector)
Paul Klee, Temple Gardens, 1920, gouache and traces of ink on three sheets of paper mounted on paper mounted on cardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection
Paul Klee, Runner at the Goal ( Läufer am Ziel ), 1921. Watercolor and graphite on paper, mounted on cardboard with gouache border. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Runner at the Goal is an essay in simultaneity; overlapping and partially translucent bars of color illustrate the consecutive gestures of a figure in motion. The flailing arms and sprinting legs add a comic touch to this figure, on whose forehead the number “one” promises a winning finish. (Nancy Spector)
Paul Klee, A Pious One (Ein Frommer), 1931. Graphite on paper, mounted on paper.
Paul Klee, Two Passages (Zwei Gänge), 1932. Watercolor on paper, mounted to paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
In 1932 Klee was in Düsseldorf, teaching at the Akademie. He was forced by the Nazis to leave his position in Düsseldorf in 1933, and he settled in Bern the following year. Seventeen of his works were included in the Nazi exhibition of “degenerate art,” Entartete Kunst, in 1937.
Paul Klee, Open Book (Offenes Buch), 1930. Water-based paint and varnish over white lacquer on paper, mounted on canvas. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
In 1920 a major Klee retrospective was held at the Galerie Hans Goltz, Munich; his Schöpferische Konfession was published; he was also appointed to the faculty of the Bauhaus. Klee taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 to 1926 and in Dessau from 1926 to 1931. During his tenure, he was in close contact with other Bauhaus masters such as Kandinsky and Lyonel Feininger.
Paul Klee, Peach Harvest (Pfirsich-Ernte), 1937. Watercolor and charcoal on chalk- and glue-primed paper, mounted with linen strips on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee, In Readiness (Bereitschaft), 1931. Graphite on paper, mounted on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee, Public Duel (Öffentliches Duell), 1932. Watercolor and india ink on tissue paper, mounted on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Major Klee exhibitions took place in Bern and Basel in 1935 and in Zurich in 1940.
Paul Klee, Rocks at Night (Felsen in der Nacht), 1939. Watercolor and ink on chalk-and glue-primed letter paper, mounted on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Paul Klee, Postulant Angel, 1939. Gouache, ink, and graphite on paper mounted on cardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Berggruen Klee Collection.
In 1936, the artist became immobilized by the incurable tissue disease scleroderma. Klee’s personal suffering combined with the increasing gravity of the political situation in Europe is expressed in more sombre paintings that drew on a muted palette and more simplified, broad forms. (National Gallery of Canada, Anabelle Kienle Poňka, November 23, 2018)
Paul Klee, Boy with Toys (Knabe mit Spielsachen), 1940. Colored paste on paper, mounted on paper. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Estate of Karl Nierendorf.
Klee died on June 29, 1940, in Muralto-Locarno, Switzerland.
Edvard Munch: Color in Context, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA, 2017
August Macke’s untimely death: 26 September 1914
August Macke was born in 1887 and died in September 1914 in the trenches of Champagne, at the age of 27.
Macke was one of the expressionist painters who formed the Blue Rider (Blaue Rieter) group of painters at the beginning of the 20th century.
He was married to Elisabeth Gerhardt and had two sons.
In August 1912, Macke took part in a military exercise for the reserves in Elsenborn (today in Belgium). He wrote to his mother in Kandern (a town in Black Forest):
“[…] I have arrived here very well. I like it a lot, against expectation. The landscape is as beautiful as up on the Feldberg(a). There is wonderful honey. So everything is great […]”. “[…] For eight days we have now been going around in the rain with God for the King and the country. Liters of water in the boots. But I am standing up. Not even a cold. […]”. (1)
(a) Feldberg is a mountain in the Black Forest area in southwestern Germany. The village of Feldberg is located at 1,277 meters above sea, some 30 kilometers east of Kandern.
Macke was drafted shortly after his return form Tunisia, where he spent a month (April 1914) traveling with his fellow painter Paul Klee. He was 27 years old.
The trip to Tunisia was the high point of Macke’s artistic life. He arrived in Tunis on the 7th April 1914, on board the steamship “Carthage”. When he returned home he had 33 aquarelles, 79 drawings and many photographs in his bags.
“Wir liegen in der Sonne, essen Spargel. Dabei kann man sich umdrehen und hat Tausende von Motiven. Ich habe heute schon sicher 50 Skizzen gemacht. Gestern 25. Es geht wie der Teufel und ich bin in einer Arbeitsfreude, wie ich sie nie gekannt habe. Die afrikanische Landschaft ist noch viel schöner als die Provence!” (3)
“We lie in the sun eating apsaragus. There one can turn around and find thousands of themes. Today I have already prepared 50 sketches. Yesterday I did 25. It is as if I am in an artistic competition with the Devil, one which I cannot win. The African landscape is much pretier than Provence!” (the translation from German to English is mine).
After he was drafted and sent to the front, in his letters and postcards to Elisabeth, Macke uses words like “dreadful”, “horrible”, “awful”, “terrible” and “the most gruesome experience a man can undergo”. He suspects that his chances of surviving are minimal:
“I would consider myself incredibly lucky if I was to return from this war. I think about all the beautiful things that I have witnessed and that I have you to thank for”. Apart from being horrified about the losses on the German side, he also shows compassion considering the injured or killed French soldiers. (1)
On September 20 he is rewarded the Iron Cross Second Class, which he sends home immediately. His last postcard dates from September 24; in it, he asks for chocolate, warm socks, clothes, and cigarettes. On Saturday, September 26, German troops attacked French positions south of Perthes-lès-Hurlus. On this occasion, August Macke was killed. – In one of his last testimonies, Macke tells his brother in law about the front: “[…] My dearest ones! Safe and sound, I am back from a heavy battle. Yesterday, I got the Iron Cross and I am very happy about it. Auguste has written several times sending cigarettes. I am well and I think about you a lot. Faithfully goodbye, August […]”. (1)
August Macke, Turkish Coffee Shop, 1914
In a note from the front (1914) Macke wrote to his wife Elisabeth.
„Ich habe in den letzten Tagen viel an Dich, liebes Kind, gedacht, an die beiden, kleinen Kerle. Ich sehe immer das liebe, blonde Köpfchen vom Wölfchen und die großen träumenden Augen von Walter vor mir. Könnte ich die beiden sehen! Ich betrachte das jetzt immer als ein Wunder, daß das meine Jungen sind. … Ich wäre glücklich, wenn ich heimkommen könnte, in Eure Arme, wenn ich wieder malen könnte (das ist mir wie ein Traum jetzt). Aber wenn ich an die Kinder denke, dann packt mich immer eine wilde Verzweiflung, daß ich die nicht wiedersehen sollte. Es ist ja nur Egoismus, wenn ich einen Schmerz empfinde darüber, daß mir der Anblick der Kinder entrissen werden könnte. Kind, was werden wir aber glücklich sein, wenn dieser Krieg vorüber ist und wir sind wieder zusammen …“ (2)
In the last days I have thought a lot about you dear child, about the two little guys. I always have Wölfchen’s beloved blond head and Walter’s big dreamy eyes in front of me. I wish I could see them both! I always consider it a miracle that my children….I would be lucky to come home, in your arms, to be able to paint again (which is like a dream now). But when I think of the kids, a wild despair grabs me, that I will never see them again. When I feel pain about this, I seek a sight of the children to make the pain go away. Child, how lucky we would be, when this war is over and we are together again…” (the translation from German to English is mine).
Macke’s last painting is titled “Farewell”. In contrast with his other paintings that are bright and colorfull, this is a sombre, rather muted painting. As if the painter had a premonition about his imminent death.
Sources
Emil Nolde: At the Night Club (1911)
During my recent visit to Oslo’s National Gallery, I found time to “break” my complete and undivided attention to Edvard Munch, as I saw Emil Nolde’s “At the Night Club”. This post is about this benign infidelity.
I will not discuss of course whether an infidelity can be benign or not. This is not for this post. In any case, I claim it is, therefore it is, until we discuss it again.
I love the interplay between the cold and warm colors that Nolde has created in the picture. The woman’s blue dress contrasts with her red hair and the background to the picture, a dark glowing orange.
There is also a “wavy” aspect in the paint, that gives the picture a peculiar 3D quality. Typical example is the man’s shirt. A most difficult part, because it is white and (theoretically) boring.
The merging of colors is another unique aspect of the picture. In the detail above, it is not only (or primarily) the hands that join, it is the colors.
The man and woman in the picture do not look like a man and a woman, they are distorted in many ways, but there is nothing wrong with this.
If you want to read more about Nolde’s pictures, I have written about his seascapes, flowers, and the area near his hometwon, Husum.
Edvard Munch: Alpha og (and) Omega
“Sickness and insanity were the black angels that guarded my cradle”
Edvard Munch, personal manuscript.
Background
Edvard Munch is one of my painting idols.
Back in 2009 I wrote about his “Madonna“. In 2013 I wrote a piece on “Death and the Maiden“, a journey from Munch to Abramovich.
Today I continue the Munch stories with “Alpha and Omega”, which I saw a few days ago at the Munch Museum in Oslo. It was a revelation for me to see these pictures.
Alpha and Omega is a fable written by Edvard Munch.
In addition to the text, there is a series of lithographs depicting the story.
It is possible that Munch first created the pictures and then he wrote the text.
As we read in Christie’s website, presenting one of the lithographs for sale, “lithograph, 1908-9, on stiff wove paper, signed in pencil, from the total edition of approximately 80 or 90 impressions”.
At first the title was “The First Human Beings”, but then Munch changes it to “Alpha and Omega”.
Before I present the fable itself, I would like to give some background relevant to Munch’s life at the time of writting and illustrating the fable.
In the period 1908 – 1909, Munch suffered a psychotic incident. He was 46 years old at the time.
In the fall of 1908, Munch collapsed in Copenhagen. Hearing hallucinatory voices and suffering paralysis on his left side, he was persuaded by his old roommate from the Saint-Cloud apartment, Emanuel Goldstein, to check himself into Dr. Jacobson’s clinic at Frederiksberg in Copenhagen for detoxification. It was during his stay there, 1908–09, that he created Alpha and Omega.
The sketch shown above, drafted by Munch himself, reads:
“Professor Jacobsen is electrifying the famous painter Munch, and is bringing a positive masculine force and a negative feminine force to his fragile brain.”
Munch made progress following his treatment, which included “tobacco-free cigars, alcohol-free drinks, and poison-free women.”
The fable
Let us now go back to Alpha and Omega.
Alpha is the first man and Omega is the first woman.
They live on an island and fall in love.
ALPHA AND OMEGA were the first Humans
on the Island. Alpha lay in the Grass and slept
and dreamed, Omega approached him, looked at
him and became curious. Omega broke off a
Fern branch and tickled him, so he awoke.
Alpha loved Omega; they sat in the Evenings
leaning into one another and gazing at the golden
pillar of the Moon, which swayed and rocked in
the Ocean surrounding the Island.
The couple lives a paradiselike existence, surrounded by animals and plants.
Omega becomes bored and allows herself to be seduced first by the Serpent, and then in turn by the Bear, the Poet Hyena, the Tiger and the Donkey, in addition to the Pig and other animals.
After a time she leaves the island on the back of a Doe and travels across the ocean to “the light green Land, that lay beneath the Moon”. Stenersen, quoted by Steinberg and Weiss, notes that the tubelike reflection of the moon on the water resembles the artist’s characteristic drawing of male genitalia. “Thus it appears that the image of the full moon (breast – penis) was to Munch a protection against castration anxiety.
Alpha remains on the island together with Omega’s offspring – a whole new generation of children – “little Pigs, little Serpents, little Monkeys and little Predatory animals and other Human Bastards”.
One day Omega returns. Suddenly the landscape turns to blood and Alpha closes his ears to the “cries of nature”. He then drowns Omega. According to Steinberg and Weiss, the bloody landscape represents the shocking sight of Munch’s dying mother, which could not be avoided or shut out. Munch experienced his mother’s death at the age of five.
He is in turn torn asunder by her small mixed offspring, who finally take over the island.
It is a story of an archetypal man and woman as they progress from love and passion, to jealousy and melancholy, to anxiety and death.
Death and the Maiden: from Munch to Abramovic
Some time ago I wrote about one of the most stunning and moving themes in the work of Edward Munch: The Madonna. Following my visit to the Munch Museum in Oslo, I wrote about Munch’s fable “Alpha og (and) Omega“.
Some of the paintings and etchings of the “Madonna” series I used in a subsequent post on poetry: “Naked heart forever.”
Munch described “Madonna” in this way: “Now life and death join hands. The chain is joined that ties the thousands of past generations to the thousands of generations to come” (qtd. in Hughes 281). He painted a woman in warm hues, her torso bare and her head tilted back, with long reddish hair flowing around her body. Her eyes are closed, her lips slightly parted in silent rapture. Her face is pale and bony, and crowned with a deep orange halo. The corpse-like face above the voluptuous, sensuous body is a strange rendition of the Madonna as virgin-especially given that the work was originally presented with a painted frame of circling sperm. The lithograph versions have the sperm border, and a fetus with its arms crossed in the corpse position looking up unhappily at the Madonna from the lower left corner. Munch is playing with opposites here: fertility and virginity, lust and chastity, and in his words, life and death. (1b)
The “naked heart forever” post ended with an etching by Munch that sets today’s topic: “Death and the Maiden”.
But what is the origin of this theme in the western world?
I quote from “Black Calavera“
Rudolph Binion argues that artist Hans Baldburg painted Death and the Maiden during the early 1500′s, which also originates from the ‘Dance of Death’.
According to Binion, the Renaissance Reformation introduced the Death and the Maiden to the public sphere. These particular paintings featured death holding or touching a woman in a suggestive and sexual manner.
In comparison Enrico De Pascale claims that “The origin of the theme lies in Greek Mythology, in the abduction of Persephone by Hades, king of the Underworld who epitomised the eternal conflict between Eros and Thantos, between love (life) and death”
“Death and the Maiden” is an even more explicit rendition of the same themes. The woman and the skeleton clasp each other in a purely erotic pose. She is, as in the “Madonna,” very sensuous and voluptuous, while the skeleton is cold, thin, harshly white. The figures-death and sex-are thrust together within a background that is black and chasmic. They are framed by red, upward-moving sperm cells on the left, and two fetuses on the right in the same style as the “Madonna” fetus, with their arms crossed over their chests in the corpse-position. The moment of conception parades around the figures, who are taunted by the hollow stares of the fetuses. The unborn present their judgment on the nature of sex, conception, life, their own ultimate demise.(1b)
The link between Eros and Thanatos is embodied in the images-he imbeds it there so that he might reach us through our own relationship to love. He presented his paintings as packets of emotional impressions rather than as a narrative, thereby allowing us to arrange and rearrange the impressions, to create our own oppositions and links. Throughout, though, he firmly establishes the destruction inherent in creation. A creation of the union between two people results in conception, which is quite clearly the beginning of death. The idea of love involves an opposition in trying to combine with the other person, in trying to break the original barriers of communication. It is an attempt to move together towards one space while still retaining one’s own identity. (1b)
This motif dates back to the Middle Ages, but has been repeated and developed throughout the history of art thereafter. A precursor of the strong focus on the erotic that we find in Munch’s engraving Death and the Maiden is Albrecht Dürer’s portrayal of death as a skeleton, part-seducer, part-rapist. Yet in Munch the roles are reversed; it is the woman who is the seducer, and the man who allows himself to be ensnared by her, loses his integrity and his creative powers – and dies, if not physically, then figuratively. Perhaps this mirrors the man’s scepticism vis-à-vis the sexually and socially emancipated woman – the femme fatale in various guises was a popular motif in literature as well as art at this time of change and upheaval – yet above all it reflects Munch’s own horror at the fact that an all-consuming relationship with a woman should stand in the way of his artistic vocation. The link between love and death was graphically real for Munch, as it was for many other artists of the age. Woman was a creature who, by virtue of her bodily cycle, was closely bound up with life and death, and who therefore brought man face to face with his own transience. (1a)
Matthias Claudius, Der Todt and das Maedchen – Death and the Maiden
Das Maedchen – The Maiden
Vorüber! Ach, vorüber!
Geh, wilder Knochenmann!
Ich bin noch jung, geh Lieber!
Und rühre mich nicht an.
Over!
Oh, pass by!
Go, wild bone man!
I’m still young, go dear!
And do not touch me.
Der Todt – Death
Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!
Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen.
Sei gutes Muts! ich bin nicht wild,
Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender form!
I am a friend, and come not to punish.
Be of good cheer! I am not fierce,
Softly shall you sleep in my arms!
Musical Interlude: Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden), D.531; Op. 7, No. 3, is a lied composed by Franz Schubert in February 1817. It was published by Cappi und Diabelli in Vienna in November 1821. The text is derived from a poem written by German poet Matthias Claudius. The song is set for voice and piano.
Júlia Várady soprano sings and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau plays the piano.
Egon Schiele’s painting “Death and the Maiden” puts us in mind of the circumstances of Schiele’s own life at this moment. He is on the eve of conscription. Perhaps then the mood of this painting is being tainted and informed by the thought that he is being spirited away into the arms of death. He has also just chosen between two women in his life, with great callousness. One he has married, the other, a model of long standing, he has abandoned.
The man’s stare is blank and wild, disinterested, otherwhere engaged – look at that distended pupil. With the long and bony fingers of his left hand he appears to be caressing, as if dispassionately evaluating, the dome of the woman’s skull. The impulse of the other hand appears to suggest that he may be repulsed by the way in which she is exaggeratedly enwrapping him with the long curve of her left arm.
That curiously long arm of hers is rendered all the thinner, longer and stranger-looking by the fact that the sleeve of his coat part-conceals it. Her fingers – are they loosening their grip even as they embrace him? – are turning and twisting about. We have noticed that he appears to be disengaged from this embrace – even though it is everything that is happening here. She too looks askance, into the middle distance. There is no pleasure in that look of hers.
Meanwhile, everything behind and beneath them, all that agitated landscape, seems to be engaged in a kind of heaving, in-and-out breathing, erotic dance of sorts, coaxing the two of them into a dance of death. In this case, the last dance with death perhaps. Or the last dance with the jilted or jilting lover. (3)
Joseph Beuys, the man who can fairly be called Europe’s most influential postwar artist, was influenced by Munch.
A characteristic feature of Joseph Beuys is the identification with everything from mythological figures and historical personages to writers and artists. Edvard Munch is one of them. Beuys developed an interest in Munch towards the end of the 40s, when he was going through an existential crisis, partly attributable to splitting up with his childhood sweetheart.
In a long series of drawings from this period, Beuys explores woman, love and death, for example in Loving Couple (1948-49), Autumn of Life (1952) and Death and the Maiden (1957). We recognise Munch’s ambivalent attitude to woman in a number of these, where she is portrayed as a blend of the fascinating and fear-inspiring – as a dual symbol of eroticism and death. (1c)
The drawing depicts the shadows of two skeletons in an intimate embrace upon the back of a manila envelope stamped ominously with the address of “Auschwitz.”
In contrast to traditional iconography, Beuys changed the perspective in his watercolour of 1957, Der Tod und das Mädchen (Death and the Maiden) by representing the maiden, too, as dead in her encounter with Death. Death, so it seems, is communicating with his equal. In this image Beuys refers to a life that is ruled by Death. Life appears here as a strangely unfamiliar paradox: Death speaks to us, and by way of the element of death in life, the human being ultimately achieves a new awareness of life. (2)
Ana Mendieta and Marina Abramovic place the motif in a contemporary feminist context. By substituting their own bodies for the maiden they take on the female role that was so alarming and novel in Munch’s time. In a ritualised episode, life and death become acquainted with one another and the woman confirms the cyclical power of her sex. These two artists also reiterate Munch’s analysis of himself and his relation to his surroundings. His role as outsider in the bourgeois society of the day becomes a parallel to the female artist’s situation in a society dominated by man. (1a)
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
Sylvia Plath
Death,
I need my little addiction to you.
I need that tiny voice who,
even as I rise from the sea,
all woman, all there,
says kill me, kill me.
Anne Sexton
Sources
(1a) Ana Mendieta, Marina Abramovic: Death and the Maiden
(1b) Anna K. Norris, Ruminations on Munch
(1c) Joseph Beuys: Woman as Symbol
(2) Michael Kröger: Death keeps me awake’ The Thresholds of Life and the Consciousness of Death in the Work of Joseph Beuys
(3) The Independent: Great Works: Death and the Maiden (1915-16) by Egon Schiele, Osterreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna
On the Dark Side: A “Fluxus Eleatis” Discourse
Ludwig Wittgenstein: “In a conversation: one person throws a ball; the other does not know whether he is supposed to throw it back, or throw it to a third person, or leave it on the ground, or pick it up and put it in his pocket,…Any interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning.”
Socrates: So it is that the good man too could sometimes become bad, either through age or toil or disease or some misfortune – for doing badly is nothing other than being deprived of knowledge – but the bad man could never become bad – for he is bad all the time – but if he is to become bad he must first become good.
MM: Are you a good man?
Mr. FFF: I am good and bad at the same time. And not because of lack of knowledge.
Mrs. T: Are you then disagreeing with Socrates?
Mr. FFF: Good and bad is only one of the “dialectical” dichotomies of man. Others being: reason / faith, bright / dark, rational / irrational, sacred / profane, Apollonian / Dionysian, nature / culture. Dialectics dictate that both sides are taken together, and dealt with as a whole.
Friedrich Nietzsche: Every human embodies a compound of nature and culture, chaos and order, instinct and reason… symbolised by Dionysus and Apollo.
Mrs. T: What are the origins of bad, of the dark side? Was man in the past a unitary entity? How did this dichotomy of bright and dark come about?
Mr. FFF (Reads from Genesis): “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made and he said to the woman, ‘Indeed, has God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden?’ And the woman said to the serpent, ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you shall not eat from it or touch it lest you die.’ And the serpent said to the woman, ‘You surely shall not die for God knows in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’ And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. She gave also to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings.”
St. Augustine: We took away an enormous quantity of pears, not to eat them ourselves, but simply to throw them to the pigs. Perhaps we ate some of them, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden. .. the evil in me was foul, but I loved it. I loved my own perdition and my own faults, not the things for which I committed wrong, but the wrong itself. My soul was vicious and broke away from your (God’s) safe keeping to seek its own destruction, looking for no profit in disgrace but only for disgrace itself.
Mrs. T: Surely the Judeo-Christian view is not the only one.
Mr. FFF: Of course not. To take an example, daemons were benevolent spirits in the time of Hesiod. It was Plato and his pupil Xenocrates, who first characterized daemons as dangerous spirits. This was later absorbed by the Christians.
Mrs. T: Is the dark side a moral construct?
Mr. FFF: The dark side is a multifaceted construct. It has moral and religious connotations to say the least.
MM: The seductress of Juliette claimed immediately after the act that morality and religion are meaningless.
Mr. FFF: Lets put two of the prominent “dark side” attributes on the table: sin and evil.
MM: Juliette’s aim in life is to to enjoy oneself at no matter whose expense. What is the meaning of sin and evil for Juliette?
Clairwil: I expect Juliette to do evil – not to quicken her lust, as I believe is her habit at present, but solely for the pleasure of doing it…one must proceed calmly, deliberately, lucidly. Crime is the torch that should fire the passions.
Mephistopheles: Das beste, das du wissen kannst, / Darfst du den Buben doch nichts sagen.
(Mephistopheles: The best of what you know may not, after all, be told to boys.)
Georges Battaile: Sexual reproductive activity is common to sexual animals and men, but only men appear to have turned their sexual activity into erotic activity. Eroticism, unlike simple sexual activity, is a psychological quest independent of the natural goal: reproduction and the desire for children…Eroticism always entails a breaking down of established patterns, the patterns, I repeat, of the regulated social order basic to our discontinuous mode of existence.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (Reads from “The Diary of the War of the Pigs”): “Την κοιτουσε απο κοντα. Καρφωνε το βλεμμα του στα χειλη, στις λεπτομερειες της επιδερμιδας, στο λαιμο, στα χερια που του φαινοντουσαν εκφραστικα και μυστηριωδη. Ξαφνικα καταλαβε πως αν δεν τη φιλουσε, η στερηση θα ηταν ανυποφορη. Ειπε μεσα του: “Ειμαι τρελος”. Κι επανελαβε πως αν την φιλουσε, θα κατεστρεφε ολη αυτη την τρυφεροτητα, που τοσο αυθορμητα του προσφερε εκεινη. Θα εκανε ισως τη λαθος κινηση, που θα την απογοητευε και θα τον εμφανιζε σαν ενα ατομο χωρις ευαισθησια, ανικανο να ερμηνευσει σωστα μαι πραξη γενναιοδωριας, σαν ενα υποκριτη που παριστανε τον καλο, ενω μεσα του κοχλαζουν οι χυδαιες ορεξεις, σαν εναν ανοητο που τολμα να τις εκφρασει. Σκεφτηκε: “Αυτο δε μου συνεβαινε αλλοτε” (και ειπε μεσα του πως αυτο το σχολιο του ειχε γινει πια εμμονη ιδεα). “Σε μια παρομοια κατασταση εγω θα ημουν ενας αντρας μπροστα σε μια γυναικα, ενω τωρα…” Κι αν τωρα εκανε λαθος; Αν εχανε εξαιτιας μιας αγιατρευτης ντροπαλοσυνης την καλυτερη ευκαιρια; Γατι να μη δει τα πραγματα απλα, να μην αφησει τον εαυτο του να καταλαβει πως η Ν κι εκεινος…”
Adolfo Bioy Casares (Reads from “The Diary of the War of the Pigs”): He was watching her from a close distance. His stare was penetrating her lips, the details of her skin, the neck, the hands, mysterious and ever so expressive. He told himself: ” I am mad”. And repeated that if he were to kiss her, he would destroy all the tenderness that she was so spontaneously offering to him. He might make the wrong move, that would disappoint her and present him in her eyes as a person without sensitivity, unable to interpret correctly an act of generosity, like an hypocrite who was pretending to be good, while inside him burn all sorts of vile desires, like a fool who dares express them. He thought: “this was not happening to me in the past” (and told himself that this was becoming now a persistent thought). “In a similar situation in the past, I would be a man in front of a woman, while now…” And if he were wrong? If because of this incurable shyness he was to miss the best chance? Why not see things in the simple way, not let himself understand that N and himself…”
Michel Foucault: …transgression is not related to the limit as black is to white […] the outside to the inside […] their relationship takes the form of a spiral which no simple infraction can exhaust…sexuality is a fissure – not one which surrounds us as the basis of our isolation or individuality, but one which marks the limit within us and designates us as a limit…transgression and the limit has replaced the older dichotomy of the sacred and the profane.
Marlow: And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom and all the truth, all the sincerity, are just compresses into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.
Adolfo Bioy Casares (Reads from “The Diary of the War of the Pig”): “Πιστεψε πως δεν ειχε πια ουτε δυναμεις ουτε ψευδαισθησεις για ν’αντεξει τη ζωη. Η φιλια ηταν αδιαφορη, ο ερωτας ποταπος και απιστος και το μονο που περισσευε ηταν το μισος. … του περασε απο το μυαλο μια λυση που αξιζε τον κοπο να την μελετησει κανεις¨το ιδιο του το χερι, οπλισμενο μ’ ενα φανταστικο ρεβολβερ να τον σημαδευει στον κροταφο.”
Adolfo Bioy Casares (Reads from “The Diary of the War of the Pig”): Adolfo Bioy Casares (Reads from “The Diary of the War of the Pig”): “He felt that he no longer had any powers or illusions to stay alive. Friendship was indifferent and love unworthy and vile and the only thing in abundance was hatred… a solution emerged in his mind to be further explored “his own hand, armed with a imagined revolver, aiming his temple”.
Participants
Georges Battaile, French writer and philosopher
Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine writer
Clairwil, character in de Sade’s “Juliette”
Mr. FFF, wanderer
Michel Foucault, French philosopher
Mr. Kurtz, half-English, half-French, ivory merchant and commander of a trading post
Marlow, main character in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
Brother Medardus, a Capuchin Friar
Mephistopheles
MM, partner
Alexander Nehamas, professor of philosophy
Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher
Socrates, Greek philosopher
Mrs. T, unknown ethinicity, gourmant