“Edvard Munch's Plan and His Unconsciousness about ‘The Scream’”
“Edvard Munch's Plan and His Unconsciousness about ‘The Scream’” 1995
by Tadami Yamada
山田維史（論文）「ムンクの『叫び』の設計と無意識」 日本語初出『AZ』誌 No.34 1995年（新人物往来社）
In appreciating artistic beauty, it is not necessarily important to seek the expression of humanity in a work based on the artist's real life. Such a search may limit the viewer's sensibility and imagination. However, viewers will not go out of their way to view a work that does not express humanity.
Artists make a living by exposing themselves, but at the same time they know how to protect themselves and withstand any criticism with clever calculations, which is why great works are full of mystery, and why artists weave that mystery into their work, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) once said, "My art was a self-confession," and "My paintings are my diary." His works, which are drawn with rough brushstrokes and relentlessly self-insight, accurately capture the anxiety lurking in the depths of modern life, and can be said to be close to psychoanalysis. In that sense, it is important to consider Munch's life, but as I have already argued in my article "Castration Anxiety in the Painter Munch," I will not go into detail here. However, I must state in advance that Munch is one of the few painters who suffered from schizophrenia. Munch's works seem completely independent of his real life - which is, of course, an undeniable fact - and at the same time, they also seem like a child who cannot let go of his parents. Or could we say that Munch was a parent who could not let go of his child? However, this state may have been the relationship Munch wanted with his own work.
In this article, I will use "The Scream" as an example to examine, from the perspective of myself as a painter, the process by which the artist's original experience came to fruition in the work, and to clarify how the meticulous planning of a professional painter is reconciled with the unconscious (sublimation). Some fans of Munch's paintings may imagine that Munch, like the legend that Van Gogh, who is also said to have suffered from schizophrenia (there are about nine theories), slammed an outpouring of emotion onto the canvas, also let his passions get the better of him when he painted. However, this is a complete misunderstanding, although it is not the same as the misunderstanding about Van Gogh.
The original experience of "The Scream"
Munch was born with a weak constitution. He suffered from rheumatic fever as a child. This was a source of worry for his parents, but his mother also contracted tuberculosis. At that time, tuberculosis was a fatal disease. With no cure, it slowly eats away at life like smoldering ashes, leading to death, so the household must have been gloomy and stagnant. His sick mother was in despair, whispering love to her children and praying for God's mercy with her dying breath. When Munch was five years old (1868), his mother died just after Christmas. Then, when he was 14, his sister, who was two years older than him, also died of tuberculosis. His father was a doctor. He was deeply religious, tyrannical, and strict. He became even more fanatical as he was tormented by the incomprehensibility of having let his beloved wife and child die in vain. According to Munch, the intensity with which he punished his children was almost insane. Munch later wrote, "Disease, madness and death were the hordes of black angels who watched over my cradle. They haunted me all my life."
Thus Munch lived in constant fear. His nerves were always on edge. Fear would strike suddenly. When he had an attack, his whole body would become paralyzed, and he was unable to cross the road. One experience that would later materialize as "The Scream" seems to have happened suddenly in that way.
In November 1891, Munch traveled to France with the painter Christian Skredsvig. At the time, he spoke to his friend about a work that was still too vague to be called a concept. Skredsvig wrote the following in "Days and Nights among Artists," published a year before Munch's death:
"For a long time, Munch had wanted to paint a memory of a sunset. It was blood-red, or rather, it was fake blood. But no one would feel the same way as he did. Everyone would think of the clouds, he said, sadly talking about the time he was seized by that fear. (omitted) 〈Munch pursues the impossible and makes despair his religion,〉I thought, but I still urged him to paint the picture. (1)”
What is particularly noteworthy here is that Munch said that the famous blood-red sky in The Scream was not a cloud. He was worried that viewers of the work would think that it was a cloud. That way of looking at it was completely different from his experience. Let's hear Munch's own words.
"One evening, I was walking down a road - on one side lay a town and below was a fjord. I was tired and feeling sick - I stopped and looked out at the fjord. The sun went down - the clouds turned red - I 'felt' something like a scream that pierced nature, like blood - I 'thought I heard' a scream (2)" (''' is Yamada's note)
Munch left behind many writings about his memories and artistic impressions. He repeatedly wrote similar things about his own works in particular. He never kept a wastebasket near him, and instead of throwing his work in a wastebasket, he threw it into a trunk. In another entry dated December 1, 1895, about his original experience of The Scream, he writes that he was with a friend at the time: "My friends had left, and it was then, alone and trembling with anxiety, that I grasped the majestic cry of nature (3)."
From these writings, we can imagine to some extent the scene of Munch's experiences.
This happened when he was traveling to Ekebergsåsen with two friends. He was feeling unwell, tired, and too lazy to walk, so he leaned against the fence of the path overlooking the fjord. He felt lonely and anxious. His friends talked and left him, and he found himself alone. It was dusk, and the flame-like sun, unique to Scandinavia, was setting, painting the sky crimson. At that moment, Munch's consciousness was torn apart by the boundary between reality and hallucination. The sky opened a huge wound, and blood gushed out. The blue-black abyss of the fjord became the mouth of absolute nothingness (death), dragging him in. The screams of nature echoed endlessly. His fear reached its peak, and anxiety screamed inside him. The two giant screams twisted and swelled, and the vibrations disintegrated all forms.
It is said that Munch would lose consciousness in certain landscapes. He particularly disliked mountains. His preferred landscapes were wide ocean views, and seaside locations are depicted in his works. Munch did not dislike the Norwegian landscape, but rather praised its beauty. However, when he depicted fjords, according to Jungian analysis, they were symbols of anxiety and fear. This has the same meaning as the feeling of suffocation or falling that accompanies claustrophobia or acrophobia.
By the way, there is a story written by Munch himself that, although it has been made public, seems never to have been directly related to this event. It is a memory from when he was a child more than ten years ago.
"On Christmas night, I was 13 years old and sleeping. Blood flowed from my mouth - fever raged in my veins - anxiety screamed inside me. In another moment you will be standing at the judgement seat, condemned to eternal punishment (4)."
Is the event described here a nightmare caused by fever? Or a hallucination?
It can be assumed that at this time, his sister was already infected with tuberculosis and was in bed. She died in November of the following year. Munch must have had a clear premonition of his sister's death, who had the same disease as his mother. His mother died four days after Christmas. Munch had just turned five, but the last Christmas with the whole family together and the grief that followed immediately afterwards must have been deeply engraved in his mind. His mother must have coughed up blood many times. Blood overflowed from her mouth. As Munch was suffering from a fever, he must have thought of his beloved sister and thought he would die too. When anxiety screams from within, he identifies himself with his fanatical father! Even though it is Munch himself who is dying, he punishes it as his own powerlessness in not complying with God's will. Although it would be a hasty conclusion to say that his consciousness is split at this moment, it may be possible to point out this as a sign of it. And I consider this incident on Christmas night when he was 13 years old to be related to "The Scream," as an experience that lies even deeper than the original experience.
Thinking and searching
Prior to the November 1891 trip in which he told his friend about his experience, Munch had stayed in France for an extended period from November of the previous year through May of the new year. During his stay in Paris, he actually created the oil paintings "Rue de Rivoli" (Fig. 1) and "Rue Lafayette" (Fig. 2), which have compositions very similar to "The Scream."
In "Rue Lafayette," a person in a frock coat and top hat leans against the railing of a balcony, looking down at the bustling street. Although the balcony railing is on the opposite side to "The Scream," it converges sharply and deeply towards the distance.
Munch depicted the bright outdoor light and the hustle and bustle of the city with a light, speedy pointillism, and used a variety of brushstrokes to depict the balcony and people. It may have been the shadow of the balcony railing that inspired him, adding a mysterious accent to the scene below. To his sensibility, the swirling patterns of the plants, which were to become Art Nouveau-like, would have been reminiscent of the famous ancient braided pattern of Urnes Church in his own country.
Munch researcher R. Heller cautiously compares Munch's "Rue de Lafayette" with Gustave Caillebotte's (1848-94) "Man on a Balcony" (1880) (Figure 3). Heller neither denies nor confirms the possibility that Munch may have seen Caillebotte's work, but says that it is an exact copy with the left and right reversed. However, he says that Munch, who was searching for his own originality, was dissatisfied with Impressionism somewhere in his heart, and used his own exaggerated perspective.
There is no doubt that Munch already considered Impressionism to be conservative. However, in my opinion, what he attempted with "Rue Lafayette" far exceeded Heller's expectations. The existence of "Rue de Rivoli" attests to this.
"Rue de Rivoli" has almost the same composition as "Rue de Lafayette" except for the figures. Both works were produced in 1891, but most publications do not specify which was painted first. Many seem to consider "Rue de Rivoli" to be the later work, because the painting is unified in pointillism, and the sense of speed it exudes is more striking and modern than "Rue de Lafayette".
However, I think the opposite. Although "Rue de Rivoli" was painted first, Munch thought it was merely an impressionistic copy of the scenery he saw. A year and a half earlier, shocked by the death of his father, he had declared to himself, "From now on, I will paint living human beings who breathe, feel, suffer, and love." There was no trembling of his inner soul in "Rue de Rivoli". Although it cannot be said with certainty that "Rue Lafayette" was created with the intention of overcoming this absence, the mixture of the two techniques is not merely a matter of technique. Munch thereby expressed a sense of "vertigo." He could not handle the feet of the person modeling himself with unsteady pointillism. The change in brushwork created a clear contrast in the picture. The street view not only achieved the effect of aerial perspective, but also became a hallucinatory scene seen in a state of vertigo. In other words, the landscape was transformed into a mental image in its entirety without the aid of symbols.
"Rue de Lafayette" is not particularly highly regarded among Munch's works, but I would like to link it to "The Scream" and point out not only the similarity in composition but also that it is a concrete expression of his psychological problems - his fear of heights.
Now, Munch was clearly aware of the memory of that fear and began to search for a form for it. He completed his first sketch in 1891 (Figure 4). A deep red colors the sky. This is the only color used. He wrote his memories in the right-hand margin.
Based on this memorandum-like sketch, the oil painting Despair (Fig. 5) was born in the same year. As Munch himself said, this was the first work that led to The Scream, all the elements of The Scream were present and the composition was finalized. The path overlooking the fjord sharply converges to the upper left, and the two friends walk away talking to each other. Two sailing ships in the distant bay. The roaring sky. And a man in a bowler hat, his face pale, leans against the railing. However, the style of the painting is closer to Impressionism than to what is commonly called Munchian. Moreover, he merely captured a scene from his memory.
The next drawing shows Munch's sincerity in his pursuit of expression as well as his struggle to make the characters in the painting reproduce the events of his heart (Fig. 6). On the left side, there is a copy of the oil painting Despair. On the right is a sketch of a revised design, with the difference in the thickness of the borders indicating the old and new.
Munch twisted the man's face in the painting to an angle, like a director directing an actor. This is a noteworthy change, because the emphasis has shifted from the expression of facts from memory to the expression of emotional turmoil. The right half of the man's face is deeply shaded, but perhaps the expression in his eyes was not what he intended. Perhaps it was too expressive. This can be inferred from the somewhat strange hand placement of the left eye.
Munch seems to have found a solution to the problem that arose from this revised sketch of "Despair" during the production of another work, "Evening on Karl Johan Street" (1892).
"Evening on Karl Johan Street" is a work that eventually developed into "Anxiety," but I do not have the space to go into detail here. I will just look at its connection to "The Scream."
This oil painting was based on an innocuous sketch from 1889 (Fig. 7). In a drawing made three years later (Fig. 8), a man appears alone, away from the crowd, emphasizing the perspective. Then, in the oil painting, the appearance changes completely (Fig. 9). The expressions of the crowd facing forward are abnormally stiff, like masks, while the man's back is emphasized and he appears like a black shadow. In this work, we can see the forward facing nature of the figures with vacant eyes, and by confirming the tension created by the figures who, in contrast, have their backs turned, we can finally sense the arrival of "The Scream."
The Creation of The Scream
One day in 1893, Munch must have had a momentary inspiration and the Muse descended upon him. After two years of contemplation and searching, The Scream was born (Figure 10).
He may not have expected it to be completed that day. The Scream that we all know well is painted with tempera and pastel on cardboard. Tempera is made by adding cold water to egg yolk, stirring it to make it milky, and mixing the pigment separately with water. Adding a small amount of egg white gives the painting a glossy finish. It requires special techniques, but if you think of it as an extension of gouache, it is easier than oil painting and, above all, it dries quickly. However, given Munch's usual use of painting materials, the use of cardboard for the actual painting, aside from tempera, is somewhat unusual. I am not aware of any explanation for this point, but it is possible that Munch began the work thinking of it as a study.
Now, let's look at the expression in "The Scream."
The composition of the background apart from the main characters is the same as in "Despair." However, the descriptive quality is sparse, and the color planes are rather shallow. However, the layers of tempera give these color planes density. The fence of the path sharply pierces the flat color planes, creating a "creaking" in the picture. The red "tongues of flame" in the sky (Munch's expression) are even bolder, and the brushstrokes are unhesitant. The faint glimpse of sapphire blue effectively emphasizes the vitality of the red, even more so than in other words, these two colors are opposites on the color wheel, and they appeal to the visual sense of brilliance. The tongues of flame are reflected on the sea, the parapet, and the road. The fjord drops off into a cliff below the path. A brighter purple, but somewhat unstable in color, runs across the purple that forms the fjord. The protagonist, with his skeletal face, no longer has any weight of flesh. His eyes, nose, and screaming mouth are merely hollow holes. Rather than saying that Munch himself was the model, he is a personification of fear itself, unable to name anyone, having lost both personality and gender. All objects begin to disintegrate under the overwhelming force of fear. In the red ripples at the top of the painting, Munch wrote in pencil, "Only a madman could have drawn this."
This note is one of the reasons why I suspect that “The Scream” began as an expedition. Like a balloon that has reached saturation point and suddenly bursts after two years of searching, Munch was surprised to break away from past techniques and the ideas that clung to them and gaze upon an unexpected horizon. Artists always long for this, but a Muse does not smile easily. Munch's emotion is conveyed here.
But this note also speaks of something else. That is, he may have truly recognized his experience of that evening stroll as madness. At the very least, he had come so close to it, so to speak. It may have been this awareness that caused him to cling to this original experience. Because he believed that madness ran in his family. He was frightened by it. Munch continued to paint throughout his life as a curse against the things that threatened his mind.
But it was not that he was swept away by intense emotion and lost his inhibitions as a painter. What objectively guarantees the psychological image of the protagonist on the screen is the presence of the two men who are completely unaware of the cry of nature that the protagonist "felt" - "thought he heard" (in Munch's words). It is a fact that the two men were unaware of anything, and it is not a delusion on Munch's part. These figures are not the product of Munch's delusion.
By the way, some critics say without a doubt that the protagonist of “The Scream” is a boy, while others (Thomas M. Messer and Marcel Brillant) think he is a woman. Regarding this view, I have just written that he "lost his gender," so I would like to express my personal opinion.
In my other papers "Castration Anxiety in the Artist Munch," I pointed out the Oedipus conflict (what Lacan calls a love triangle within a family) in Munch's love pattern, and also pointed out castration anxiety. C.W. Digby, a Jungian, sees the unfulfilled bond with his dead mother reflected in Munch's anima, and his hatred of women as an expression of the dilemma between prohibition and desire. While I agree with this, I speculate that the root of the fear that threatened his ego was an unconscious struggle against demasculinization. In the nightmare (hallucination?) he had on Christmas night at the age of 13, mentioned above, I see the earliest sign of Munch's split in consciousness. I have written about this before. Implicit in that fragment is the scream of terror as the young Munch's immature ego is rapidly projected onto his mother, sister, and father, and is finally engulfed in the overwhelming image of self-loss (death). The anxiety of his illness makes his ego unclear. As soon as his ego becomes identified with his mother or sister, the ego that has become identified with his father appears to bring about the death of the ego that has become identified with his mother or sister, and once death is complete (the ego is torn away from his mother or sister), he is punished for it.
Munch believed that sexual intercourse sucks away a man's vitality and leads to death. In fact, Munch's youngest sister was only a few months old when their mother died. She was born during a brief period when her mother's illness had subsided. How did Munch take this fact? Just as his father regretted the death of his wife and child for the rest of his life, perhaps Munch also thought that it was his father who caused his mother's death. Interestingly, Munch was against the marriage of his sickly younger brother, and when his brother died six months after the wedding, he was confirmed as having thought the right thing. I think that the formula "illness = helplessness = demasculinization (identification with mother/sister) = death) was ingrained in his subconscious.
Based on this premise, I infer that the original experience of "The Scream" was a repetition of that unconscious formula, and that Munch experienced unconscious demasculinization. And he probably did not want to acknowledge this experience. It is a consciousness separate from the artistic achievement of "The Scream."
He exhibited "The Scream" at an exhibition in October 1894. Prior to that, he created one variation. In this work, again entitled "Despair" (Fig. 11), Munch returns the depiction of the protagonist to the state he was in before "The Scream." Actually, to be precise, while the previous figure was clearly an adult, this time the figure is a boy, much younger than Munch's actual age, and rather cute. This figure has a similar appearance to that of "Separation" ( There are similarities with the stylized self-portraits that appear in Munch's paintings "Despair" (1893) and "Yellow Boat" (1891-2).
What was the necessity for Munch to create "Despair"? In terms of artistic achievement, it feels like a step or two back from "The Scream." It is mediocre. But perhaps Munch felt a huge discrepancy between the representation of the figures in "The Scream" and his ideal concept of himself. Of course, this discrepancy is not a problem with the appearance of the figures. The demasculinization that he did not want to accept as his ideal concept of himself was revealed in the figures in "The Scream." He wanted to revise that self-image at all costs. The power of narcissism forced him to submit to artistic beauty. For Munch, the production of "Despair" was an undertaking that he had to undertake in order to recover from the loss of integrity of his ego, or to confirm that recovery.
Regarding Munch's auditory hallucinations
The approach of the psychiatric community to Munch's art is particularly remarkable in Japan. The research of Miyamoto Tadao and Tokuda Yoshihito will be unavoidable in future Munch theories. Nakano Hisao's point about the instability of Munch's depiction of his feet is very thought-provoking for me as a painter.
In this section, I will consider Munch's hearing in relation to the "Scream" that he heard.
German psychopathologist W. Winkler examined Munch's paintings based on Kretschmer's theory of schizophrenia and manic-depressive personality disorder, and pointed out that the main symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia, delusions of persecution and pursuit, appeared in 1904. Miyamoto Tadao responded by saying that the suspicious symptoms were found 10 years earlier, around the time "The Scream" was created. He focuses particularly on the 1895 lithograph of The Scream (fig. 12) and infers that the original experience was an auditory hallucination. "In this work, a world of overwhelming "voices" closing in on a man is vividly depicted, and although it cannot be immediately concluded that this is an expression of the auditory hallucinations that Munch himself experienced, it can at least be acknowledged that the world depicted here was captured by his "auditory hallucinatory consciousness" (5)."
The lithograph of The Scream was produced almost a year after Despair, mentioned in the previous section. Upon seeing Despair completed, Munch was probably forced to acknowledge that the artistic achievement of his previous work, The Scream, was epoch-making. Even his friend Pszewski immediately quoted scenes from The Scream in his novel Falling into the Sea (1894). However, Munch did not simply copy the previous work when he produced the lithograph. Based on an auditory concept, he expressed the protagonist's entity dissolving into the landscape as a negative image of the undulating sky. He then imprinted the title "The Scream" in German, and in the lower left corner of some of the paintings he wrote the words, "I felt a great cry piercing nature." He does not say that he heard it; note that he said "felt."
Munch himself said, "I aim at the target. When I hit it, I hit the bull's-eye." Nevertheless, the sustained energy of Munch's artistic pursuit when confronted with a single subject is truly astonishing.
As for the auditory hallucinations in question, although he turned his experiences into artworks as if he were writing a diary, there are in fact no other works that can be explicitly described as auditory hallucinations. From 1908 to the following year, Munch spent eight months hospitalized for the treatment of his mental illness. During that time, he was encouraged to write stories as part of his treatment. He wrote "Alpha and Omega," a pessimistic tale of life and death of the last man and woman of humanity, and produced it as a series of lithographs. A passage from the book closely resembles the original experience of "The Scream," and the illustration for this part shows a nude male Alpha covering his ears at the edge of the water. Another work, "Dead Mother and Child" (1887-9), depicts a child covering his ears. "Self-Portrait with Wine" is even more interesting than the previous two (fig. 13). Let me explain this work in a little more detail.
It is a scene in a deserted restaurant. Two rows of tables converge toward the center of the picture, and Munch sits between them, twisting half his body towards the viewer. At the back of the room, at the other end of the table, sits an eerie female guest. There are no other guests, and behind Munch, two waiters stand with their backs to each other. Behind the waiters, Munch's head is surrounded by red paint. It does not depict any real object. It is merely a surface of color, if you will. However, it suggests that he was in a difficult mental state.
This work was created in 1906, when his mental illness began to become apparent (according to Miyamoto). This composition is very roughly similar to that of "The Scream." However, Munch's compositional design in "Self-Portrait with Wine" is even more precise. His main aim was to draw the viewer's gaze, after it has wandered across the painting, to his right ear. The main guiding line is the line of the table, which emphasizes the perspective. The flow of the line stops exactly at the position of Munch's face, making the edge where the female guest is sitting stand out sharply and horizontally. This horizontal line meets a very delicate position on Munch's face. It is so beautiful that it is hard to imagine any other suitable position. The waiter stands directly behind the right ear in question. This arouses the viewer's interest. The sculptural mass of the waiter's standing figure is echoed in the wine bottle. The arch of Munch's right arm also resonates with the arch of the edge of the plate on the table. These soft curves, like ripples that draw concentric circles, prevent the painting from becoming rigid and mediocre flat. Not only that, but they also guide the viewer's gaze, which is directed at the wine bottle, down to the plate, and then along the right arm in reverse, moving from the shoulder to the right ear.
Also, when you put them side by side, you can see that the composition of this work and "The Scream" are very similar. If we identify the strange female customer with the unknown terror that frightened Munch in "The Scream," then the composition, including the positioning of the two waiters, is exactly the same as "The Scream."
Now, it is clear that the compositional leads of "Self-Portrait with Wine" converge on Munch's right ear. With this work, we cannot suggest the same auditory experience as "The Scream," but it is possible to surmise that he is obsessed with anxious delusions, listening closely to the female customer's movements and the words and actions of the waiter. From the perspective of physiognomy, Shimazaki Toshiki says that the anxious facial expression seen in anxiety neurosis, schizophrenia, and depression is "characterized by a mixture of fear and pain (the corners of the mouth are pulled outward and downward, the cheeks are drooping, and the eyebrows are furrowed) and the gaze is not fixed." "Self-Portrait with Wine" has exactly these characteristics. Munch faced a crisis of the ego, and as a defense mechanism, he distorted what a normal person would call a restaurant with idle waiters, where the customers had retreated. That is, the women were there to commit some nasty crime, and the waiters were sitting back to back, whispering rumors over each other's shoulders as if they could see into my mind. They were driving me into a corner and persecuting me. I could hear what they were saying!
Munch's delusional hearing disorder may have been induced by excessive drinking. Furthermore, I suspect that Munch had a problem with his left ear. Perhaps he had a mild hearing loss.
When examining the numerous self-portraits he painted, the overwhelming majority of them have his right ear facing forward. Considering the obvious possibility that he was drawing a mirror image, and comparing it with the self-portraits of other artists, his glaring attitude is distinctive. Perhaps this is because he is standing with his right ear standing upright. The same impression of glaring can also be seen in his self-portraits, in which both ears are visible, but in these works the light is often shining on the right side. Could the severe rheumatic fever that he had since childhood have been the cause of his hearing loss? Unfortunately, I am unable to answer this question. Although it is difficult to draw a quick conclusion based on inferences made from the impression of the self-portrait, it is possible that Munch's experiences of auditory hallucinations could have been a compensation for the hearing disorder in his right ear. (Note 1)
Conclusion
Very sensitive, yet strong-willed. Cheerful and cheerful, he had a dark side, as seen when he was arrested by the police for violent crimes. He was afraid of crowds and could not face people directly, but he also had a worldly side. He also thought that scandals were useful for publicity. Munch seemed to be a mysterious person even to those who were close to him during his lifetime. Thomas M. Messer wrote, "More than a quarter century after his death, Munch's personality remains ambiguous, and against the powerful investigative techniques of our time, he imposes a certain silence on those who think they know more than those who are willing to speak (6)."
But he was also a child of his time. The significance of the total denial of the values of the time entrusted to his self-confessional works can be understood as an aggressive ideology against the hypocritical bourgeois morality that swept across Northern Europe at the time. Therefore, just as Freud's psychoanalytic therapy, being a therapy, inevitably means belonging to old morality, the modernity of Munch's human expression also has a fatalistic limit.
The term "modernity" or "modern anxiety" that has been used to evaluate Munch's art must be said to have changed in meaning today. Even within the field of contemporary art (which in fact cannot be limited to), the avant-garde aims for the global liberation of the individual beyond gender. In other words, it is fighting constructively with accusation and enlightenment, aiming to fundamentally reexamine and reform all institutional ideas related to individual identity. It is a trend that has emerged by overcoming the evil of narcissism that leads to nihilism. Or, it is a rather extreme assertion, at least for artists, that cannot be fully realized unless the evil of narcissism is overcome. In some cases, it is necessary to declare the abandonment of art. In that respect, although it seems contradictory, it can be said that there is in fact no brilliant vision in contemporary art at all. Moreover, we modern people cannot live in personal fear of death like Munch did. We must live facing mass death, and in the case of individuals, certain death. We cannot look away. Children make balloon dolls of the protagonist from Munch's "The Scream," and with a touch of affection and teasing, they punch him and laugh heartily (note 2).
(Note 1) I learned after the paper was published that Munch had a retinal hemorrhage in his left eye in 1930, and that he had become weak-sighted after that. If this is true, it is possible that he turned his right eye instead of his left eye, which was poorly able to see. I cannot rule out the possibility that he was deaf, but for now I will list these two here.
(Note 2) At the time this paper was written in 1995, a large balloon doll of the main character from The Scream was on sale.
References
(1)-(4) Ragnar Stang, "Edward Munch," translated by Inatomi Masahiko, Kodansha.
(5) Miyamoto Tadao, "Hallucinations and Creativity," in "The Foundations and Practice of Hallucinations," edited by Takahashi, Miyamoto, and Miyasaka, Igaku-Shoin.
(6) T.M. Messer, "Munch," translated by Takumi Hideo, Bijutsu Shuppansha.
References
(1) R. Heller, "Munch: The Scream," translated by Sato Setsuko, Misuzu Shobo.
(2) Miki Miyahiko, The Age of Munch, Tokai University Press.
(3) J.P. Hodin, Edvard Munch, translated by Minato Noriko, PARCO Publishing.
(4) Miyamoto Tadao, Reflections on Human Abnormality, Chikuma Shobo.
(5) Nakano Hisao, The Light and Shadow of Contemporary Art, Jiji Press.
(6) Tokuda Yoshihito, The Anthropology of Art, Bijutsu Shuppansha.
(7) Munch Exhibition catalogue, National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo.
(8) Munch Exhibition catalogue, Idemitsu Museum of Arts.
(9) M. Brillon, Fantastic Art, translated by Sakazaki Otsuro, Kinokuniya Shoten.
©Tadami Yamada. All Rights reserved.
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