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Edvard Munch
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„The only influences in [the painting ‘The sick Child’, Munch painted in his elderly home, remembering very accurate the last days of his dying little sister Sophie] ‘The sick Child’…. were the ones that come from my home…. my childhood and my home. Only someone who knew the conditions at home could possibly understand why there can be no conceivable chance of any other place having played a part – my home is to my art as a midwife is to her children…. few painters have ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did in ‘The sick child.“
„My art is rooted in a single reflection: why am I not as others are?.. my art gives meaning to my life.“
„Life here [in Paris, 1885] is quite different. You hardly ever see a dog on a lead; you come across little wagons being pulled by dogs that are often so small that you can’t imagine how on earth they manage to shift such enormous weights. You see shepherdesses in the middle of the street herding goats and sometimes playing on their flutes. I think I’ll go to the Louvre and the Salon today.“
„Could only have been painted by a madman.“
„The strange light illuminated all those night-time meetings that took place in every imaginable sort of café; the lips mouthing defiant words, heedless of restraint or consequence, often overbearing and brutal as only Norwegians can be, vast shadows of impotence misery and shabbiness – spirits training for fulfillment, striving in vain to be great, complete, unique. [Munch describes the environment and atmosphere of the Norwegian bohemia in Kristiana, where he himself lived and worked when he was about 23] And at the center of all the faces there would be Jaeger, whose logic was as sharp as a scythe and as cold as an icy blast..“
„Realism’s ‘truth’ as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892)“
„Quote in Munch’s letter (1885); as cited in Edvard Munchs Brev, Familien, Oslo: Tanum, 1949, p. 57“
„One sunny spring day I heard the music coming down Karl Johan [street] and it filled me with joy. The spring, the sun, the music, all blended together to make me shiver with pleasure. The music added colour to the colours. I painted the picture [his painting ‘Music on Karl Johan’] allowing the colours to reverberate with the rhythm of the music. I painted the colours as I saw them at that moment.“
„By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does.“
„When seen as a whole, art derives from a person’s desire to communicate himself to another. I do not believe in an art which is not forced into existence by a human being’s desire to open his heart. All art, literature, and music must be born in your heart’s blood. Art is your heart’s blood.“
„What is art really? The outcome of dissatisfaction with life, the point of impact for the creative force, the continual movement of life…. in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.“
„Behind the top hats, a little lady wearing lila-coloured tights was balancing on a tightrope in the middle of all that blue-grey tobacco-laden air. I sauntered in among the standing clientele. I was on the lookout for an attractive girl. Yes – that one wasn’t bad. When she became aware of my gaze her facial expression changed to that of a frozen mask and she stared emptily into space. I found a stair – and collapsed into it – tired and listless. Everyone clapped. The Lila-clad tightrope-walker curtsied, smiled and disappeared. A group of Romanian singers took her place. There was love and hate – and longing and reunion – and lovely dreams – and that soft music melting together with the colours. The melted notes became green palm trees and steely blue water floating in the blue haze of the room. An artwork is a crystal. A crystal has a soul and a mind, and the artwork must also have these.“
„I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence — there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city — my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety — and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.“
„it was the period I think of as the age of the pillow… What I wanted to bring out – is that which cannot be measured – I wanted to bring out the tired movement in the eyelids – the lips must look as though they are whispering – she must look as though she is breathing – I want life – what is alive.“
„And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France]… Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me…. my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer…. at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it’s all over. Why live? I light the candle – my huge shadow springs across half the wall, clear up to the ceiling and in the mirror over the fireplace I see the face of my own ghost.“
„There must be no more pictures covered in brown sauce [c. 1880, when Munch started to paint series of landscapes in fresh colors]“
„The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one’s mood…. coming in from a dark bedroom in the morning into the sitting room one will, for example, see everything in a bluish light. Even the deepest shadows are topped with bright light. After a while one will accustom oneself to the light and the shadows will be deeper and everything will be seen more sharply. If an atmosphere of this kind is being painted it won’t do merely to sit and gaze at everything ‘just as one sees’. One must paint precisely the fleeting moment of significance – one must capture the exact experience separating that significant moment from the next – the exact moment when the motif struck one… In some circumstances a chair may seem to be just as interesting as a human being. In some way or another it must have caught the interest in which case the onlooker’s interest must somehow be engaged in the same way. It’s not the chair that should be painted, but what the person has felt at the sight of it [written in Saint Cloud, 1890 – probably related to the chair of Vincent van Gogh“
„When I write these notes, it is not to describe my own life. I am writing a study of the soul as I observe myself closely and use myself as an anatomical testing-ground. It would therefore be wrong to look on these notes as confessions. I have chosen – in accordance with Søren Kierkegaard – to split the work into two parts; the painter and his distraught friend the poet. Just as Leonarda da Vinci studied the recesses of the body and dissected human cadavers, I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is the universal in the soul“
„My afflictions belong to me and my art – they have become one with me. Without illness and anxiety, I would have been a rudderless ship… My art is really a voluntary confession and an attempt to explain to myself my relationship with life – it is, therefore, actually a sort of egoism, but I am constantly hoping that through this I can help others achieve clarity.“
„One evening I came to have a discussion with my father on the subject how long unbelievers are tormented in Hell. I maintained that no sinner could be so guilty that God would let him suffer longer than a thousand years. Father said that they would suffer for a thousand times a thousand years. We would not give up the argument. I became so irritated… I returned home to make my piece with him. He had gone to bed so I quietly opened his bedroom door. He was on his knees in front of the bed, praying… I closed the door and went to my own room but I could not get to sleep…. eventually I took out my drawing block and started to draw. I drew my father kneeling by his bed, with the light from the bedside lamp casting a yellow glow over his nightshirt. I fetched my paintbox and colored it in. Finally I achieved the right pictorial effect, and I was able to go to bed happy and slept soundly.“
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