edvard munch's mermaid || edvard munch: graphic revelations in paris

25
Edvard Munch: Graphic Revelations in Paris Author(s): Shelley R. Langdale Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 93, No. 393/394, Edvard Munch's Mermaid (Summer, 2005), pp. 24-47 Published by: Philadelphia Museum of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3795498 . Accessed: 30/04/2014 11:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Philadelphia Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Upload: shelley-r-langdale

Post on 23-Dec-2016

214 views

Category:

Documents


1 download

TRANSCRIPT

Edvard Munch: Graphic Revelations in ParisAuthor(s): Shelley R. LangdaleSource: Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 93, No. 393/394, Edvard Munch's Mermaid(Summer, 2005), pp. 24-47Published by: Philadelphia Museum of ArtStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3795498 .

Accessed: 30/04/2014 11:55

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Philadelphia Museum of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toPhiladelphia Museum of Art Bulletin.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Edvard Munch: Graphic Revelations in Paris SHELLEY R. LANGDALE

E dvard Munch's Paris sojourn of 1896-97 proved to be pivotal to his creative experience. In addition to embarking on his first decorative

painting, Mermaid (foldout), commissioned by the Norwegian collector Axel Heiberg, Munch developed vital new avenues for his artistic expression through the graphic arts. He had been to Paris before, but it was not until he returned in 1896 with a newly dis- covered interest in printmaking that he took advantage of the city's thriving print activity. Inspired by the example of the French avant- garde painters, Munch began to experiment with color print processes and learned new printmaking techniques. An important cre- ative dynamic developed between his prints and paintings as graphic art became an inte- gral part of his oeuvre.

Munch's immersion in printmaking at the time he created Mermaid encourages an exploration of compositional and thematic connections between the painting and his prints to illuminate the context in which the image was conceived. A watercolor from the same year, Encounter on the Beach: Mermaid (see fig. 14), 1896, may be seen as an alter- nate perspective of the Mermaid scene, a side view that includes the male object of the mer- maid's seductive gaze in this confrontation at the shoreline. So, too, may the prints Munch made in Paris reveal aspects of Mermaid's conceptual origins, as well as the painting's position in his oeuvre as a whole. But first an understanding of Munch's initial engagement with printmaking and his development as a printmaker during 1896-97 must be esta- blished in order to appreciate fully the correlations that can be drawn.

Munch began to make prints during 1894-95 while he was living in Berlin, moti- vated by the desire for his work to reach a

larger audience and the need for an alterna- tive source of income. These early drypoints, etchings, and lithographs were mostly por- traits or reprisals of his paintings and already reveal a certain sensitivity for, as well as skill in handling, the distinctive linear and coloristic characteristics inherent to whatever print medium he was using.' The range of his facility is evident in two of his portrait prints. His stark Self-Portrait of 1895 (fig. 19) displays his affinity for the drawing-like qualities of the lithographic crayon used to describe the details of the face, the rich solid blacks that could be achieved by brushing layers of tusche (a liquid ink used to create washlike effects) on the lithographic stone, and the subtle highlights that could be created by finely scratching into the crayon or tusche. In its use of broad, flat areas of black in an aggressively frontal composition, the image also suggests Munch's awareness of the wood- cuts of the contemporary Swiss printmaker Felix Vallotton, while the disembodied head set in a spatially ambiguous setting recalls the mysterious prints of the French Symbolist Odilon Redon.2 This print contrasts sharply with the delicately drawn drypoint portrait of Axel Heiberg's wife, Ragnhild Heiberg (see fig. 2), made during Munch's stay in Norway after leaving Berlin, probably during the fall or early winter of 1895-96, before he relocated to Paris. Perhaps feeling more constrained in approach than he had in his own portrait, Munch chose a traditional profile view for this portrait of his patron's wife, which is executed with a minimal use of fine drypoint lines, using concentrations of burr3 to emphasize certain areas of the hair and brow. The manipulation of burr and the use of broad untouched areas of paper to "complete" forms undescribed by line suggest the stylistic influence of prints by the contemporary

*Fig. 18. Woman's Head Against the Shore, 1899.

Color woodcut printed from

two blocks (each cut into

two interlocking sections) on

Japanese paper. Key block printed in dark teal green

and dark rust orange; color

block printed in light bluish

green and bright orange. Image: 181/4 x 161/8 inches

(46.4 x 41 cm); sheet (irregular): 233/8 x 191/16 inches (59.4 x 48.4 cm). Schiefler 1 29b, ii/ii; Woll 152-Il. Inscribed in graphite

below image, lower right: E. Munch. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift (by

exchange) of Mrs. Helene Koerting Fischer, the A. E.

Gallatin Collection, and the

John D. McIlhenny Fund, 1957-61-2

25

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Ut -

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

I .

- -1

. s _~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I

*Fig. 19. Self-Portrait, 1895. Lithograph on grayish white Chinese paper. Image/sheet: 18x121/2 inches (45.7x

31.8 cm). Schiefler 31; Woll 37-Il. Inscribed in graphite within image, lower right: 30 - Jun 1912 / a Christian Brinton, cordialement E. Munch [the signature appears to have been written before the dedication was added]. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Christian Brinton, 1941-79-41

Berlin portraitist Karl Stauffer-Bern4 and, more generally, Old Master printmakers Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt. Munch showed equal finesse in the use of aquatint and etching techniques to create atmospheric effects, as in Summer Night (The Voice) of 1894 (fig. 20), or contrasting interior and exterior spaces, as in The Kiss of 1895.5

There is no documentation indicating that Munch ever received any formal training in printmaking. He seems to have been self-taught, although he most likely received some technical guidance from printmaking colleagues and the printers whose workshops he used.6 By this point in his career he had already developed non-traditional methods in his paintings: incising lines into paint, scraping the canvas, leaving areas blank or thinly painted to reveal the texture and color of the canvas (as in Mermaid), and exposing

unvarnished works to the elements by leav- ing them outdoors in what became known as his hestekur (horse-cure) treatments.7 His experimentation with painting techniques inspired a similarly creative approach to graphic processes, enhanced by his apparently instinctive ability with printmaking tools.

Making Prints in Paris There were a number of excellent professional printers in Munch's previous home base of Berlin, but Paris was the center of cutting- edge graphic art in the 1890s. Artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and members of the Nabi circle, notably Edouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, revolutionized color lithogra- phy by promoting it as a legitimate fine-art form. Paul Gauguin and Felix Vallotton initiated the revival of the artist's woodcut, which had regressed over the century into a skillfully executed but mundane form of newspaper and periodical illustration. At the same time, artists like Mary Cassatt continued to broaden interest in intaglio processes that had enjoyed an earlier revival in the 1860s by exploring new color-printing techniques in concert with highly skilled printers.

Munch's artistic temperament was well suit- ed to printmaking. His habit of repeating and refining his subjects through slight changes in his paintings corresponded naturally with the process of altering an image through multiple states on a plate, stone, or woodblock and printing variant impressions using different inks and papers. His concentration in Paris on the inherently repeatable medium of print- making led him to discover new expressive qualities in individual techniques. By varying compositions and taking advantage of the distinctive characteristics of each medium to distill forms, emphasize or integrate compo- nents of a composition, or modify the mean- ing of an image, Munch sought to articulate the complexities and ambiguities of life experiences through his work. Many of the Symbolist artists working at the time were similarly drawn to printmaking through their fascination with the role of process and mate- rials in the communication of artistic ideas.8

Printmaking opportunities undoubtedly contributed to Munch's decision to move to Paris in search of increased artistic exposure and advancement. Other factors included the encouragement of his recently transplanted

26

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

SPAI WWI'

*Fig. 20. Summer Night (The Voice), 1894. Etching,

drypoint, and aquatint on off-white wove paper. Platemark: 91 3/16 x 1 211/16

inches (24.9 x 32.2 cm); sheet: 1 33/16 x 1 67/8 inches (33.5 x 42.9 cm). Schiefler

19, i/iii; Woll 12-1. Inscribed in graphite below image, lower right: E. Munch 4te Dr. I Z. 1894. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, W1 950-4-3

colleagues from Berlin and the positive review of his 1895 exhibition in Kristiania (now Oslo) in the November issue of the French avant-garde journal La Revue blanche, followed by the reproduction of his lithograph The Scream in the December issue (see fig. 3). Soon after his arrival in Paris at the end of February 1896, Munch became engaged in a variety of stimulating projects and exhibitions (see pp. 9-12 above), many of which involved printmaking. He was invited to contribute a lithograph (fig. 21) to a portfolio of prints, Album des peintres-graveurs, published by the influential art dealer and publisher Ambrose Vollard, a champion of the painter-printmaker. The portfolio was exhibited in Vollard's gallery in June, with Munch's lithograph presented alongside prints by some of the leading avant- garde artists of the day, including Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, Henri Fantin-Latour, Odilon Redon, Auguste Renoir, Felix Vallotton, and Edouard Vuillard. He also began to make lithographs at the workshops of the famous Paris printers Auguste Clot, a master of color printing, and Lemercier

(where he printed etchings as well), and he experimented with a burnished aquatint technique with the printer Alfred Porcaboeuf, working from dark to light by using a bur- nisher and drypoint to scrape out images on zinc plates prepared with a textured aquatint ground.9 Munch received several print commissions that spring, in Paris as well as from home, including illustrations for Charles Baudelaire's poems Les Fleurs du mal for the Socidt6 des Cents Bibliophiles10 and a print portfolio of portraits of Norwegian artists commissioned by Axel Heiberg just prior to his request for the Mermaid painting." Unlike Mermaid, the portfolio was never completed, although Munch did make a number of por- traits of Scandinavian writers and artists with whom he associated, including a lithographic portrait of a former Berlin colleague, the Swedish playwright (and painter) August Strindberg.12

Strindberg and another associate of Munch's from Berlin, the German art critic and journal editor Julius Meier-Graefe, were instrumental in enticing Munch to Paris in

27

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

4~~~~~~~~~~~~~~04

Fig. 21. Angst, from Album

des peintres-graveurs, 1896. Color lithograph printed in red and black on off-white wove paper. Image: 161/4 X

1 51/4 inches (41.3 x 38.7

cm); sheet: 221/2 x 1615/16

inches (57.2 x 43 cm).

Schiefler 61 b/lI; Woll 63 Ilc. Epstein Family Collection

1896 and advancing his career during his stay there. Strindberg had established a significant reputation in France since his arrival in 1894: His play The Father had been produced at the Theatre de l'Euvre; his controversial novel Confessions of a Fool (Le Plaidoyer d'un Fou) had been published in French; he frequented the prestigious artistic salons at the home of William Molard (a good friend of Gauguin's; see pp. 12, 16 above); and he had close ties to the journal La Revue blanche. Strindberg's companionship with Munch-prior to the onset of the playwright's mental illness in the summer of 1896-provided the artist with an important entr&e into the Parisian art world.13 Meier-Graefe had taken an early interest in Munch's work in Berlin, overseeing the publication of a small portfolio of the artist's intaglio prints, for which he wrote an

accompanying promotional essay in the sum- mer of 1895, shortly before moving to Paris.14

Monographic Exhibition at the Gallery L'Art Nouveau For several months before Munch's arrival in Paris, Meier-Graefe had been tempting him to move to the city with the promise of an exhi- bition at the gallery where he worked, L'Art Nouveau. He made good on his word almost immediately, arranging Munch's first mono- graphic show in Paris, held in late spring of 1896 and favorably reviewed by Strindberg in La Revue blanche in June.15 L'Art Nouveau was run by Siegfried Bing, an important dealer and influential advocate of modernism in all areas of the arts but especially architecture, interior design, decorative arts, and prints. Bing's commitment to the avant-garde and to

28

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

1- I 1-

*Fig. 22. Vampire 11, 1895-96.

Lithograph on smooth greenish gray wove paper,

hand-colored with watercolor.

Image: 147/8 x 211/2 inches

(37.8 x 54.6 cm); sheet:

177/8 x 233/16 inches

(45.3 x 58.9 cm). Schiefler 34 11; Woll 41-I. Inscribed in

graphite below image, lower right: E. Munch 96 No. 10.

National Gallery of Art,

Washington, D.C. Rosenwald

Collection, 1950.17.210

the integration of the arts was evident in the gallery's decor, designed by Belgian artist Henri Van de Velde, with murals and addi- tional furnishings by other artists (see pp. 10-11 above). Bing was also well known for his collection of Japanese objects and wood- block prints and for promoting the aesthetics of Japonisme in Western art. In Munch's provocative and controversial art,16 Meier- Graefe saw an opportunity to advance his own as well as Bing's role in the promotion of the international avant-garde, particularly in light of the polarized reactions Munch's paint- ings typically received, including at the recent Salon des Independants.17 The advantages for Munch were even greater. The exhibition gave him increased visibility while the success of his paintings at the Salon was still being debated18 and presented him with an extraor-

dinary opportunity to display for the first time a substantial group of prints in multiple, variant impressions (different states, hand- colored, and black and white) alongside paint- ings of the same subject. His mixed installation, coordinated by Meier-Graefe, was in keeping with the gallery's interest in emphasizing the aesthetic interrelationships of works in all mediums.19 The exhibition at L'Art Nouveau undoubtedly influenced Munch's increased concentration on the possibilities of print- making and the role of prints in his work.

Of the sixty works Munch showed at Bing's gallery, twelve were paintings, six were draw- ings, and forty-two were prints, and several of his most famous and daring images were included: The Scream, Madonna (see fron- tispiece and fig. 5), and Vampire (fig. 22).20 Because Munch had only been in Paris for a

29

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

few months, the majority of the prints were etchings, drypoints, and lithographs that he had made in Berlin. Those few produced in Paris included five untitled burnished aqua- tints with drypoint (two described as printed in color)21 and two lithographs, Death in the Sickroom and By the Deathbed.22 Hand-colored impressions of some of the Berlin prints are dated 1896, indicating that a few were proba- bly colored specifically for the exhibition,23 perhaps to complement the hand-colored and black-and-white impressions of the new Paris lithographs. These prints reveal Munch's increasing exploration of color and variation in his graphic work, and his inclination to create prints both as unique and as multiple works of art.24

Frieze of Life Among the works displayed at Bing's gallery was a group of eight paintings and fourteen prints described in the exhibition catalogue as

. &.'?..

4 4' )

-4.

*Fig. 23 (below). The Woman 11 (Sphinx / The Woman in

Three Stages), 1895. Drypoint and aquatint on

beige wove paper. Platemark: 11 5/8 x 1 31/2 inches (29.5 x

34.3 cm); sheet: 1413/16 x

195/8 inches (37.6 x 49.8

cm). Schiefler 21 b, v/v; Woll 22-VIII. Inscribed below image, lower right: Edv. Munch. Philadelphia Museum

of Art. Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, W1 950-4-2

Fig. 24 (opposite). The Woman (Sphinx), 1893-94. Oil on canvas, 281/2 x 391/2

inches (72.5 x 100 cm).

Munch-museet, Oslo (M 57)

belonging to an ongoing series titled "Love"25 (later variously titled "Life of the Soul" and, eventually, "Frieze of Life"). This was the first time Munch identified prints as well as paint- ings as part of this series. His idea to create a definitive set of pictures that would capture the powerful modern experience of universal life forces-lust, love, suffering (pain and anx- iety), and death-became a career-long quest. He felt that his images would be more readily comprehensible and their impact enhanced if they were displayed together rather than indi- vidually.26 This idea was probably, at least in part, a response to critics' negative reactions to some of his more explicit subjects, such as Death and the Maiden (c. 1893), in which a nude woman lustfully embraces a skeleton, and Madonna (1893-94; see fig. 5), which originally had an elaborate frame embellished with images of spermatozoa and a fetus (the frame has since been lost but is recorded in the border of the lithographic version; see frontispiece).

30

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Initially conceived as a painted series, the concept of a "Frieze of Life" naturally lent itself to exploration in graphic formats that could more easily be grouped together and disseminated to a wider audience.27

Munch's "Frieze of Life" subjects were influ- enced by the philosophical ideas advanced among the group of Norwegian artists and writers informally known as the Kristiania- Boheme, with whom he associated at the end of the 1880s. Hans Jaeger, the unofficial leader of the group, actively promoted utopian prin- ciples of free love, encouraging his colleagues to engage in experimental love affairs and record their impressions.28 Munch pursued this practice of autobiographical record, doc- umented in notes, letters, and drawings that he revised and rewrote, culling from his past as well as current experiences.29 Jaeger's free- love experiments (and Munch's own first affair with a married woman) ultimately failed, plagued by inevitable problems of

jealousy, the desire for monogamy, or dis- agreement over the conclusion of the rela- tionship, which rendered the theoretical cycle of reciprocated attraction, consummation, and separation unviable. Munch's ruminations on the raw emotions ignited by his first serious relationship with a woman and by the memories of the deaths of his mother and sister during his childhood (reawakened by his father's death in 1889) served as primary sources for the themes of love, anguish, and death that began to appear with greater intensity in his pictures of the early 1890s.

After 1892, when Munch relocated to Berlin, the "Frieze of Life" images were fur- ther influenced by a new circle of progressive artists and intellectuals-Scandinavian, Polish, and German-who gathered at the cafe known as Zum schwarzen Ferkel (At the Black Piglet). While members of this circle shared similar philosophies with the Kristiania-Boheme, they placed particular

I -- I - I -- -

31

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 25. Summer Night (The Voice), 1893. Oil on canvas, 357/8 x 465/8 inches

(90 x 118.5 cm). Munch-

museet, Oslo (M44). Munch added the boats and height- ened some areas of this

painting around 1907-8

(note the white outline of the moon's reflection).

emphasis on using subjective personal experi- ence to analyze the nature of "woman" and her mysterious powers of attraction, procre- ation, transformation, and destruction com- monly associated with the concept of the femme fatale.30 Munch first articulated these enigmatic, multifaceted qualities of woman during 1893-95 in several paintings and drawings and two prints of a subject variously titled The Woman, Sphinx, or The Woman in Three Stages (figs. 23, 24).31 The three females depicted represent the artist's conception of the changeable nature of woman.32 The Virgin, at left, is shown as an innocent young girl in a flowing white gown, facing the sea and gazing longingly at the moon, which in the etching casts a phallic reflection in the water. The Temptress, at center, is a woman at the height of her sexual prowess, brazenly flaunting her nude body in a confident, daring

pose, lush hair flowing over her arms, which are raised behind her head. The Widow-Mother at right, an older woman dressed in black, disappointed in love and life, stands with arms lowered in stoic acceptance of her fate. This tripartite image served as an archetype of the female figures that Munch used to represent the universal "woman" throughout his career.

Although Munch exhibited groups of paintings and pastels of his "Frieze" subjects over a period of more than thirty years, the series never reached fruition in a permanent, definitive installation as he had envisioned.33 Instead, the concept of the "Frieze of Life" remained a perpetual source of inspiration for the artist throughout his life as a driving force behind his imagery, which he continually sought to refine in expression-in painted, drawn, and printed forms. A number of the prints that Munch produced in Paris in 1896-97

32

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

explore the "Frieze of Life" subjects and related themes in new ways, some of which have rele- vance for possible readings of the painting Mermaid. The mermaid herself, a mythical creature, does not belong to the realm of direct life experiences that Munch sought to capture in his "Frieze." Nonetheless, there are parallels between the legendary mermaid-the long- haired enchantress who captures men's imagi- nations and preys on their desires, luring them to a watery doom on a rocky shore- and the artist's constructs of "woman" as por- trayed in his prints of 1896-97.

Cycle of Love One of the major undercurrents in Munch's "Frieze of Life" is the cycle of love: its emergence (sexual awakening), its consum- mation (attraction), and its dissolution (sepa- ration). Mermaid may be seen as occupying an intermediate place between the first two stages.34 Munch explored the dynamics of attraction and sexual tension in lovers' relationships in subjects such as that depicted

in Summer Night (The Voice), executed in two paintings (figs. 13, 25), an etching (fig. 20), and a woodcut (fig. 26), as well as in a num- ber of drawings.35 Nature's irresistible call to give in to one's feelings in expectant pursuit of love is captured in the first 1893 painting (fig. 13) and the 1895 etching of the subject: A young girl, full of longing and seemingly innocent in her high-collared dress, her hair neatly tucked under a halo-like hat (most pronounced in the etching), offers herself to the viewer in the enchanting setting of moonlit woods along the shore. It is a warm summer night, and the moon's phallic reflec- tion and the couple in a boat in the back- ground allude to the hoped-for tryst. In the second painted version, also from 1893 (fig. 25), Munch emphasized the nocturnal setting and moved the figure closer to the fore- ground-and to her unseen suitor-increas- ing her scale so that she is barely contained within the picture plane. Her hair is loosened around her shoulders, and her softly modeled face has a dreamlike expression emphasized

.11

.7-. -, .

`- - --- M --- - - -

I.- -

*Fig. 26. Summer Night (The

Voice), 1896. Woodcut printed from two blocks (color block cut into three interlocking sections) and hand-colored with yellow and blue water- color on cream wove paper. Key block printed in black; color block printed in

violet and orange-brown. Image: 15 x 223/16 inches

(38 x 56.3 cm); sheet: 18 x

227/8 inches (45.7 x 58 cm). Schiefler 83; Woll 92-Ill.

Munch-museet, Oslo (G 572-4)

33

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

by the enlarged dark circles around her eyes.36 It is this version that inspired one of Munch's earliest woodcuts, executed in Paris in late 1896 (fig. 26), which renders the dark- ness even more pronounced and heightens the emotional pitch with broad black areas and gouge marks, transforming the feeling of innocent yearning to one of primal lust, the menacing side of passion.

The shoreline, whether of lake or sea, is a frequently recurring setting in Munch's images of sexual tension, particularly those related to the second and third phases of the cycle of love-attraction and separation. In Philadelphia's painting (foldout) the mermaid, whose beguiling expression and seductive pose suggest the unseen male object of her desire, is provocatively presented in a

tightly cropped composition, directly con- fronting the viewer at the edge of the sea. This favored location relates to the predominant shoreline in Munch's native country as well as to his desire to convey the symbolic associations of the shore as a dividing border (separating land from sea or man from woman) and his own experience of clandestine meetings in forests and on the shore of the Kristiania Fjord during his first love affair.37

Munch produced several lithographs in 1896 that focus on couples either drawn together or torn apart against a coastal backdrop. Attraction II (fig. 27) is loosely based on earlier paintings and related etchings,38 and the lithograph Separation I (fig. 28) is closely related to a painting of the same title and date (see fig. 8).39 The Separation composition is also connected to the iconic Munch image The Woman /Sphinx / The Woman in Three Stages (fig. 24), painted in 1893-94. The settings in these works are essentially the same, and the isolated male figure who appears in the Woman painting-omitted from the 1895 etching (fig. 23)-is present in Separation, but the central and right-hand female figures are not. The focus instead lies on opposing the positions of the woman on the shore, who gazes out to sea, and her jilted lover, who turns away toward the forest clutching his wounded heart. The fluid Art Nouveau lines and notably schematized forms of the 1896 painting have led Arne Eggum to suggest that the style of execution was influenced by the economical graphic language of the lithograph,40 implying a new form of interchange between Munch's graphic and painted work.

*Fig. 27. Attraction II, 1896.

Lithograph printed in brown

on bluish gray wove paper.

Image (irregular): 161/16 x

251/16 inches (40.8 x 63.6

cm); sheet: 1911/16 x 253/8 inches (50 x 64.5 cm). Schiefler 66; Woll 76-1.

Epstein Family Collection

34

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

/2 iiz-

>6.

M

*Fig. 28. Separation 1, 1896. Lithograph on off-white wove paper. Image: 18 x 223/16 inches (45.8 x 56.4 cm); sheet: 197/8 x 259/16 inches (50.5 x 65 cm). Schiefler 67; Woll 77. Munch- museet, Oslo (G 209-9)

Printmaking: Technique and the Use of Color For a painter who shared the Symbolists' concern with the expressive potentials of color and line, as Munch did, it is not surprising that color played a key role in his printmak- ing experiments in Paris. Between his arrival in 1896 and his departure in June of 1897, Munch produced eight burnished aquatints with drypoint, thirteen other intaglio prints (etching, aquatint, drypoint, etc.), thirty-five lithographs, and a dozen or so woodcuts, including his first color prints. The burnished aquatints with drypoint shown at L'Art Nouveau were among the first prints Munch made in Paris. Several of these are intimate sketchlike studies of nude women, presum- ably inspired by the works of such artists as Edgar Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec. A few impressions were printed with different color inks carefully daubed by hand onto specific

areas of the plate before running it through the press.41 These are interesting studies of form and light in space. In Standing Nude of 1896 (fig. 29), for example, there is a subtle shift in hue between the warm tones of the woman's flesh, her red hair, and the careful articulation of light falling on her shoulder; the woman's glowing body appears dreamlike as she wades in the ambiguous green-gray background, hov- ering between tangible presence and imag- ined existence. This image of a female figure emerging from the darkness resonates won- derfully with Philadelphia's Mermaid painting, in which the figure is bathed in moonlight against the dark Norwegian Sea.

These burnished aquatints seem to be the only graphic works that Munch printed in color prior to his exhibition at Bing's gallery,42 although he had previously used colored papers for some of his black-and-white prints as a means of expanding their chromatic range.43 His desire to introduce more color

35

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

F. , 1. . I I

*Fig. 29. Standing Nude, 1896. Burnished aquatint and drypoint printed in color on beige wove paper. Image: 5 7/8 x 5 inches (1 5 x 1 2.8 cm); sheet: 91/2 x 71/8 inches (24.2 x 18.1 cm). Schiefler 39b; Woll 46b. Inscribed in graphite, lower right: E. Munch. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The Epstein Family Collection, 2003.22.1

into his graphic work is evident in the inclu- sion of both hand-colored and black-and- white impressions of lithographs in the Bing exhibition.44 Munch showed three variant impressions of his Madonna lithograph, two black-and-white and one hand-colored. Alternatively titled Loving Woman or Woman Making Love, this riveting image of a nude woman with deep-set eyes, sunken cheeks, and gently closed lips pointedly alludes to the peak of sexual intimacy, the moment of conception, and simultaneously refers to the succession of life, one generation giving way to the next. The variant hand-colored versions of the lithograph, each an independent work (such as that shown in the frontispiece, signed and dated 1896),45 further amplify the visceral impact of an already highly charged graphic image by the introduction of bright blood-red watercolor in the border, "halo," and lips and a range of purple and blue washes to enhance the watery associations of the repeated wavelike contours surrounding the figure. A similar emphasis is evident in Phila- delphia's painting in the strengthened contour and the aqueous background surrounding the head of the mermaid, whose voluptuous

figure and forthright presentation also share affinities with the Madonna subject.

The hand-coloring in the lithographic ver- sions of Vampire, one of which was included in the Bing exhibition, was typically less extensive than in impressions of Madonna. Originally titled Love and Pain, the ambiguity of the act depicted in this lithograph-is it kissing or biting?-was decisively weighted toward the sinister when Munch's literary colleagues referred to the woman as "Vampire."46 In examples such as the National Gallery of Art impression, printed on greenish gray paper (see fig. 22, signed and dated 1896), hand- coloring is used primarily to isolate and accen- tuate a specific element of the image. A bright reddish orange watercolor has been applied to the strands of the woman's hair, so that they simultaneously appear as grasping tentacles and seeping blood. The purposeful focus on hair is made more explicit by the title listed for the Vampire works in the Bing exhibition catalogue: Les Cheveux rouges (The Red Hair).

Munch mastered color printing in his tour-de-force lithograph The Sick Child of 1896, which was printed from six different stones (a few monochromatic impressions

36

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

were printed from a single stone, and various color combinations were produced using two to five stones-inked in different colors-for each impression). Inspired to revisit the sub- ject when he was commissioned to produce a second version of his earlier painting (The Sick Child, 1886), Munch dramatically cropped the composition in the lithograph to isolate the young girl, subtly layering hot colors in some of the impressions (fig. 30) to evoke her fevered condition. Munch's limited finances in 1896-97 restricted his production of color lithographs such as this one. The charges for the use of printers' lithography stones, partic- ularly for the employment of the multiple stones necessary to produce elaborate color schemes, would have exceeded his meager means.47 So he devised other, less expensive ways to introduce printed color into his litho- graphs. These included his innovative applica- tion of two colors, red and black, to a single stone in Angst (see fig. 21), the lithograph created for Vollard's album in late spring of

1896.48 He also experimented with the use of single colors-blue, warm gray, or brown, for example-to intensify a specific mood or atmosphere. Another way in which Munch modulated his images, in addition to manipu- lating ink color and the densities of litho- graphic crayon and tusche and scraping and incising on the stone, was by enhancing col- oristic and tonal effects through the addition of texture. In Attraction II of 1896 (see fig. 27) he drew the image on a sheet of transfer paper placed on top of a portfolio, and the variegated texture of the fabric cover as well as the outline of a vertical strap (evident to the right of the woman's eye) were picked up and transferred to the litho stone along with the image. This interest in texture is likewise found in his paintings, not only in his varied application of paint but also in his choice of rough, coarse fabrics for canvas, such as that used in Mennaid and Separation.

Munch's predilection for broad expanses of black-solid, shaded, and in silhouette-in

( I.

j

Fig. 30. The Sick Child If, 1896. Color lithograph

printed from five stones. Image: 165/16 x 2213/16

inches (41.4 x 58 cm); sheet: 165/16 x 263/16 inches (41.4 x 66.5 cm). Schiefler 59; Woll 72V. Signed and dated in the stone: E Munch 1896. Munch-museet, Oslo (G 203-22)

37

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

*Fig. 31. Man's Head in

Woman's Hair, 1896. Color

woodcut printed from two blocks (color block cut into three interlocking sections) on brown paperboard. Key block printed in greenish gray; color block printed in

orange and dark greenish blue. Image: 219/16x 151/8 inches (54.7 x 38.4 cm); sheet: 279/16 x 213/8 inches

(70 x 54.3 cm). Schiefler 80; Woll 89 III (1). Inscribed in

graphite, lower right: Edv Munch. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. George Peabody Gardner Fund, 41.728

38

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

works such as Vampire, Angst,49 and Separation I may have led him to take up woodcut in the fall of 1896. One advantage to woodcut is that it is easier to print a continuous span of color by leaving large areas of wood uncut for inking (as in Summer Night, fig. 26) than it is to build up solid areas by shading with lithographic crayon or tusche to hold ink on a stone (as in Vampire, fig. 22). There were other practical benefits for the artist as well, since he could prepare the woodcut block himself without the aid of a professional printer and even print proof impressions without a press, making the technique less expensive than lithography.

Munch turned the textured pattern of the wood grain and the jagged marks created by gouging with woodcut tools to his advantage, exploiting both characteristics to produce remarkably expressive effects, as is evident in one of his early woodcuts, Man's Head in Woman's Hair of 1896 (fig. 31). This is among the first prints in which Munch experimented with a multi-part woodblock to print areas of color.50 In what would become his signature method, rather than using a separate block for each color, the artist cut a single block into sev- eral interlocking sections that could be inked individually in different colors, reassembled, and printed simultaneously. He also used unsanded and unpolished wood and made his cuts parallel to the wood grain to enhance the irregularities of the wood's surface. In addition to the obvious influences of Vallotton and Gauguin, Munch's inventive approach to woodcut can be attributed in part to his famil- iarity with the prints of such artists as Alfred Jarry and Paul Hermann, who were also involved in the artistic revival of the medium in Paris.51 His woodcuts share an aesthetic, too, with the flat planes of juxtaposed colors and evident wood grain in Japanese woodcuts, which he could have seen at Bing's gallery, among other places. Gauguin is cited most fre- quently as a source of inspiration for Munch because of his innovative and emotive use of the woodcut gouge and chisel and the multi- part color blocks thought to have been used for his Noa Noa woodcuts of 1894.52 Gauguin had left for Tahiti in 1895, and it has not been determined whether Munch ever had direct contact with him, but he certainly would have known Gauguin's prints through their mutual associations in Paris (see pp. 12, 16 above) and through collectors in Scandinavia (Gauguin's

wife was Danish).53 Scandinavian sources may also have contributed to the development of Munch's woodcut technique: In 1892, at the time Munch was having his solo exhibition in Kristiania, the Danish painter and printmaker J. R. Willumsen was exhibiting color etchings that he made using multi-part metal plates comparable to Munch's jigsawed woodblocks. Munch would have encountered similar methods employed in the printing of color fields on maps at the commercial printing firms he occasionally used in Kristiania.54

While Munch may not have invented the multi-part color woodblock, he not only mastered the technique but also transformed the simple process of color application into his own complex system, in which the shaped sections of wood became pictorial elements that carry their own symbolic meaning.55 The puzzle-piece color block and the expressive use of the wood-grain pattern is readily discernable in the highly schematized image Man's Head in Woman's Hair. These iconic heads have been recognized as generalized portraits of the Polish musician and poet Stanislaw Przybyszweski, a leader in Munch's bohemian circle in Berlin, and his Norwegian wife Dagny Juel, who before her marriage was sexually involved with several members of the Berlin group, including Munch.56 The woman's head and hair are emphasized by a specially shaped section of the jigsawed color block, cut to encircle the area of the man's head and usually inked in bright orange or red and printed over the darkly inked key block, which gives this compositional element addi- tional weight. For Munch, a woman's long hair symbolized the mysterious and powerful forces that bind-embrace and ensnare-the male (see also figs. 8, 22, 27, 28). He described the effect in his notes:

She walked slowly towards the sea-farther and farther away-and then something very strange occurred-I felt as if there were invis- ible threads connecting us-I felt the invisi- ble strands of her hair still winding around me-and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea-I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding-because the threads could not be severed.57

In this context the seemingly minor change between the watercolor study for Mermaid (see fig. 7) and the painting itself (foldout), in

39

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

*Fig. 32. On the Waves of Love (Lovers in the Waves /

The Sea of Love), 1896. Lithograph on white wove

paper. Image: 123/16 x 163/8 inches (31 x 41.6 cm); sheet: 135/8 x 181/2 inches (34.4 x 47 cm). Schiefler 71; Woll

81. Inscribed in graphite below image, lower right: Edv. Munch. Epstein Family

Collection

*Fig. 33. In the Man's Brain, 1897. Woodcut printed in reddish orange ink on Asian

paper. Image: 149/16 x

22/716 inches (37 x 57 cm);

sheet: 183/4 x 251/8 inches

(47.6 x 63.8 cm). Schiefler

98; Woll 11 Od. Inscribed in

graphite, lower right: Edv Munch. Epstein Family

Collection

which the mermaid's hair is altered so that a lush swathe cascades over her shoulder, graz- ing her breast, is not insignificant.

Inventing Images in Prints As his printmaking skills increased in Paris, Munch used graphic techniques to create more freely invented images in addition to exploring motifs he had previously developed in paintings. These new images are often linked to his central themes-for example, woman equated with the sea, both of them mysterious, compelling, and endlessly changeable. Among the independent composi- tions that Munch created in 1896 solely in printed form is On the Waves of Love (Lovers in the Waves / The Sea of Love) (fig. 32). First executed as a burnished aquatint with drypoint,58 the image was elaborated in this lithographic version with sweeping calli- graphic strokes of tusche and was printed in black or orange ink. Thematically, this is one of the most literal of Munch's depictions connecting woman with water-the woman's overwhelming powers of seduction explicitly aligned with the natural forces of the sea, her flowing hair barely distinguishable from the waves enveloping her lover's head. A compa- rable analogy is found in the aquatic affilia- tions and irresistible allure associated with the mermaid who is provocatively poised at the very edge of the sea in Philadelphia's painting, her transforming tail intersected by the phallus-shaped moonbeam.

Munch's 1897 woodcut In the Man's Brain (fig. 33) can be seen as an inversion of On the Waves of Love. Whereas in the lithograph woman draws man into her aqueous realm, in the woodcut a female nude floats in the waterlike aura emanating from the man's brain. The implication that this imaginary figure exists only in the man's mind parallels Munch's own paradigm of woman as por- trayed in his work. The woodcut's fantasized nude woman correlates with the sensuous rendering in the Philadelphia painting of the mythical mermaid, who shares a similarly receptive, recumbent pose. Most impressions of the woodcut were printed in a feverish orange-red ink, Munch's favored hue for women's hair (here entwined with the man's thought waves), echoing contemporary liter- ary concepts regarding colors associated with auras of love and desire that surround the

brain.59 In the theoretical philosophies of Munch's bohemian intellectual circles, as well as in the aesthetic ideas advocated by artists associated with the Art Nouveau and Symbolist movements, auras were thought to reveal the enigmatic flow of forces-rhythms of growth, transformation, and decline60- and their visual manifestations are a recurring motif in Munch's images (see, for example, frontispiece and figs. 32, 34).

In 1898 Munch set up his own woodcut and lithography presses in Kristiania, allow- ing him to make new prints and to print fresh impressions of older ones. The woodcut Woman Bathing (Mermaid) of 1899 (fig. 34) is the only print Munch identified by title as a mermaid subject.61 As in the earlier painting from the Munch-museet (see fig. 17) and related drawings (figs. 15, 16), the figure's lower body is undefined, here obscured by the shadow cast by her torso. Unlike Phila- delphia's mermaid, this figure seems more isolated in her world, and her potential trans- formation and emergence from the water, even more uncertain. The composition clear- ly unites the mermaid with the sea: She is contained just below the horizon line, defini- tively separated from the land by the dark span of rugged coast and surrounded by rippling currents that seem to emanate from her body, an effect emphasized by the roughly gouged marks in the woodblock.

By this time Munch had perfected his multi-part woodblock technique, as is evident in such prints as Woman's Head Against the Shore of 1899 (see fig. 18). Although an inde- pendent subject (conceived as a woodcut), the composition shares similarities with his painting Melancholy of 1892 (see fig. 6), in which the head of a single dejected figure, modeled on Munch's friend Jappe Nilssen, is depicted against the rocky shore. It also relates to an early woodcut, similarly titled (fig. 35), from 1896 that shows Nilssen seated alone on the beach looking out to sea.62 The woodcut composition in turn relates to a watercolor from the same year, Encounter on the Beach: Mermaid (see fig. 14), which shows Nilssen in a similar pose facing a mermaid at the shoreline. Woman's Head Against the Shore could be seen as the isolated female counter- part to these earlier subjects. Gerd Woll and Arne Eggum have also pointed to relation- ships between Woman's Head Against the Shore

40

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

41

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

OWN 4

*Fig. 34. Woman Bathing

(Mermaid), 1899. Woodcut

on thick Asian paper. Image: 161/2 x 203/8 inches (42 x 51.8 cm); sheet: 171/2 x 233/16 inches (44.4 x 58.9 cm). Schiefler

128; Woll 151 a. Munch- museet, Oslo (G 569-10)

and Woman Bathing (Mermaid) (fig. 34), both from 1899, and the woodcut Women Bathing, 1898-1900, that suggest broader connections with Munch's mermaid imagery.63 The latter print, in which a bust-length female figure, albeit nude, is shown against the shoreline, with a second woman standing in the water just offshore, combines motifs from the first two, suggesting a developmental link between the compositions. A marked differ- ence between Woman's Head Against the Shore and the related works described above is its daring portrayal of pictorial space, reminis- cent of Asian approaches in the absence of a clearly established horizon line. Two wood- blocks were used for this print, each sawn

into two sections: a two-part key block that carried the contours of the shore and the details of the figure, dividing the land and woman from the sea; and a two-part color block that silhouetted the figure and the rocks beside her. This jigsaw-puzzle method allowed Munch to vary the ink colors of different areas of the composition as well as the sequence in which they were printed to create alternate spatial and emotional effects, ranging from a melancholic misty atmosphere to a disturbing sense of unease. He favored certain color combinations but continually experimented rather than establishing a specific chromatic scheme to be replicated. In some impressions Munch obscured the reading

42

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

. -7-. r;

j

- 1, -

*Fig. 35. Evening (Melan-

choly 1), 1896. Color wood- cut printed from two blocks (each cut into two interlock- ing sections) on Asian paper. Key block printed in light blue (with a darker color for the landscape on the hori-

zon); color block printed in

light green and orange. Image: 1413/16 x 1715/16

inches (37.6 x 45.5 cm); sheet: 1 7 7/8 x 223/4 inches (45.4 x 57.8 cm). Schiefler 82b; Woll 91 IV (3). Inscribed in graphite, lower right: Edv Munch. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. William Francis Warden Fund, 57.356

of land and sea by abandoning the divergent colors used to suggest land (usually dark) and sea (generally lighter) and applying one color to both sections of the key block (fig. 36), rendering the division indistinct. These experiments accentuate the vagueness of the woman's location in the composition: Is she a woman standing at the water's edge, or is she a mermaid who has just come ashore or returned to the sea?

The themes of ambiguity and duality inherent in the metamorphic being Munch portrayed in Philadelphia's Mermaid run throughout his work. His juxtapositions of opposites-ensnarement and embrace (Vampire), love and pain (Separation), life and

death (Madonna)-and the uncertainty they create in the viewer effectively articulate the complexities he sought to portray in his "Frieze of Life" and related subjects. We are left to draw on our own experience and imagination to discern the meaning of his pictures. The printmaking strategies that Munch developed in Paris during 1896-97 expanded his ability to manipulate images in order to exploit such multiple, ambiguous meanings in his art. In the process, printmak- ing became a fundamental part of his artistic expression.

43

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Fig. 36. Woman's Head Against the Shore, 1899. Color woodcut printed from two

blocks (each cut into two interlocking sections) on Asian paper. Key block print- ed in turquoise green and light brown; color block printed in beige and light

orange. Image: 181/2 x

161/2 inches (46.3 x 41.2

cm). Schiefler 129; Woll 152 11. Collection of Philip and Lynn Straus

g hi, S~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~n

s; ,7 ; . e in 0 . at -~~~~~~~~~V2 ;,- ;~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~o

Notes

I would like to thank the following colleagues, who provided invaluable assistance in the development of the exhibition and this essay: Gerd Woll, Magne Bruteig, and Karen Lerheim at the Munch-museet, Oslo; Jay Clarke at The Art Institute of Chicago; Elizabeth Prelinger at Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.; Gregory Jecmen, Judith Walsh, and Marian Dirda at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Patrick Murphy and Annette Manick at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Sarah G. Epstein and Vivian Spicer; Alison W Chang; Innis Howe Shoemaker, John Ittmann, John Zarobell, Sherry Babbitt, Kathleen Krattenmaker, Richard Bonk,

Suzanne Wells, Danielle Rice, Bethany Morris, Stacy Kirk, Jason Wierzbicki, Lilah Mittelstaedt, Mary Wassermann, and Linda Martin-Schaff at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Lynn Straus, Phil Straus, and Joseph Giuffre.

1 The skill evident in these works has led to speculation about when Munch actually began to make prints, but aside from a modest booklet of transfer drawings print- ed as lithographs in 1882, there is no evidence of any attempt by the artist to engage in printmaking before 1894. See Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works (London: Philip Wilson in associa- tion with the Munch-museet; New

York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001), p. 10, and Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch 1895: forste dr som grafiker / First Year as a Graphic Artist (Oslo: Munch- museet, 1995), pp. 9-10.

2 The Danish artist Johan Rohde had a substantial collection of French prints-with particular strength in works by Redon and other Symbolist artists-that he shared with his Scandinavian colleagues (including Munch) in the early 1890s. See Gerd Woll, "Le graveur," in Munch et la France (Paris: Reunion des Musees nationaux, 1991), p. 242.

3 Burr is the term used for the tiny metal pilings that form on either side of the incised line as the

44

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

drypoint needle is drawn across the plate. When the drypoint plate is inked for printing, these bits of metal retain ink, causing the incised lines to print with a blurred rather than a clean, crisp edge. The burr is flattened fairly quickly in the press, becoming less pronounced and thus holding less ink with each printing, so that the lines become sharper and the initial velvety effect is soon lost.

4 Suggested by Jay A. Clarke in discussion with the author.

5 For an illustration of The Kiss, see Woll 23.

6 See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, p. 10 n. 15, p. 38.

7 Jan Thurmann-Moe, Edvard Munch's "Hestekur" (Oslo: Munch-museet, 1995). See also p. 53 n. 11 below.

8 For further discussion, see Elizabeth Prelinger, "Edvard Munch and the Techniques of Symbolist Graphics," in Elizabeth Prelinger and Michael Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch: The Vivian and David Campbell Collection (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1996), pp. 1-22.

9 This unusual technique, new to Munch, was probably introduced to him by his friend Paul Hermann, a German printmaker who was work- ing in Paris at the time. See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, p. 12.

10 Although the commission was canceled when the president of the society died later that spring, Munch's study of Baudelaire's text and his sketches for the illustrations inspired lithographs, such as The Flower of Love of 1896 and Mefabolism of 1897. See Bente Torjusen, "The Mirror," in Arne Eggum et al., Edvard Munch: Symbols and Images (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1978), pp. 201-4.

11 Munch may have suggested this portrait commission to Heiberg. See ibid., p. 195. The exact date of the commission for Mermaid is not known, but the project was first mentioned in correspondence from August 1896 (see p. 13 above).

12 See Woll 66 for Strindberg and Woll 62, 83-86 for other portraits.

13 Torjusen, "The Mirror," p. 196. 14 For translations of Meier-Graefe's

text "Edvard Munch: Acht- Radierungen" and the list of works included in the portfolio, see Woll, Edvard Munch 1895, unpaginated insert and pp. 11-12.

15 August Strindberg, "LIexposition d'Edvard Munch," La Revue blanche, vol. 10, no. 72 (June 1896), pp. 525-26.

16 For opposing critiques and the accompanying controversy sur- rounding his earlier exhibitions in Berlin and Kristiania, see Arne Eggum, "Edvard Munch: A Biographical Background," and

Carla Lathe, 'Munch and Modernism in Berlin, 1892-1903," in Arne Eggum et al., Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life, ed. Mara-Helen Wood (London: National Gallery Publications, 1992), pp. 16-21, 3840, and "Chronology," p. 137; Woll, Edvard Munch 1895, p. 13; and Jan Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen zwischen 1892 und 1912 (Worms, Germany: Wernersche Velagsgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 80-85.

17 For a detailed discussion of the relationship between Munch, Meier- Graefe, and Bing and of the organi- zation and critical reception of Munch's exhibition, see Gabriel P. Weisberg, "S. Bing, Edvard Munch, and L'Art Nouveau," Arts Magazine, vol. 61, no. 1 (September 1986), pp. 58-64, and Jay A. Clarke, "Meier-Graefe Sells Munch: The Critic as Dealer," in Festschrift fir Eberhard W. Kornfeld zum 80. Geburtstag, ed. Christine E. Stauffert (Bern, Germany: Kornfeld, 2003), pp. 189-90.

18 The Salon exhibition (April 1-May 31, 1896) overlapped briefly with the Bing show, which opened on May 19, so that for a short time both were on view.

19 Clarke, "Meier-Graefe Sells Munch," pp. 189-90, and Weisberg, "S. Bing, Edvard Munch, and L'Art Nouveau," p. 60.

20 For a complete list of works in the exhibition, see Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen, pp. 92-94. Which prints were shown is difficult to determine precisely because Munch frequently used variant titles and some were listed simply as "Study" or "Portrait." The intaglio prints included The Sick Child, Tete-a-Tete, Girl by the Window, Moonlight (Night in Saint Cloud), Kristiania Bohemians I and HI, The Lonely Ones, probably Attraction I and II (listed as "Anziehung / Le Regard" and "Deux-Tbtes"), Summer Night (The Voice) (listed as "Le Crepuscule"), The Kiss, The Cat, The Woman II (Sphinx / The Woman in Three Stages), Death and the Woman, five burnished aquatints listed as "ttude" (most likely three etched nude studies, and possibly Young Woman on the Beach, Boys Bathing, or On the Waves of Love; Woll 46-48, 49, 61, and 50, respectively), unidentifiable etchings listed as "ttude" (Study), "Jeune Fille" (Young Girl), and three drypoint "PortraitfsI." The lithographs dis- played were Vampire, Madonna, The Alley, The Hands, The Scream, Death in the Sickroom, By the Deathbed, Tingeltangel, and Self-Portrait.

21 These may have been Boys Bathing (Woll 61) and Young Woman on the Beach (Woll 49), which were printed mostly in color impressions. But one cannot rule out the possibility that one or two of the three nude studies

(Woll 46-48) were shown in both monochrome and color-printed impressions, especially since the non-specific title "Study" listed for each work in the catalogue is more suggestive of these than it is of the other burnished aquatint subjects. See items 49-53 on the exhibition list in Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen, p. 93.

22 See Woll 64 and 65. 23 Munch would often sign and/or

date works after they were printed (at the time he applied hand- coloring or when he attached them to a special mount) or when they were printed at a date later than the original matrix was created. See Torjusen, "The Mirror," p. 187. Correspondence with a Berlin print- er from this time also indicates that Munch did not have many impres- sions of his prints on hand in Paris and had to order some lithographs (unspecified) for inclusion in the Bing exhibition. See Woll, "Le graveur," p. 244.

24 Munch created hand-colored prints throughout his career, sometimes using them as a way of exploring possibilities for printing black-and- white images in color. But he also clearly viewed the process as an equally valid means of producing unique alternative versions of his images. See Woll 39, 41, and 89 for examples of the former, and Woll 69, 88, and 203 for examples of the latter.

25 See Weisberg, "S. Bing, Edvard Munch, and L'Art Nouveau," p. 60 n. 16, and Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen, p. 93, nos. 25-38, p. 94 n. 85.

26 Munch expressed this concern in a letter to Johan Rohde in March of 1893, as quoted by Reinhold Heller, "Form and Formation of Edvard Munch's Frieze of Life," in Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life, p. 30: "I am currently occupied with making a series of paintings. Many of my paintings already belong to it.... Up to now, people have found these quite incomprehensible. When they are seen together, however, I believe they will be more easily understood. Love and death is the subject matter."

27 During 1896-97 Munch had begun to conceive of a portfolio version of his "Love" or "Frieze" theme that included new imagery. He displayed prints (mostly made in Paris) for the planned portfolio series "The Mirror" in his major exhibition in Kristiania in the fall of 1897 and announced the forthcoming project in the catalogue. Although he pre- pared several portfolio covers, and mounted at least one set of prints, the project was never realized. See Torjusen, "The Mirror," pp. 185-227.

28 Heller, "Form and Formation of Edvard Munch's Frieze of Life," pp. 28-29.

29 Most of this material is catalogued

45

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

in the archives of the Munch- museet, Oslo.

30 Heller, "Form and Formation of Edvard Munch's Frieze of Life," pp. 32-33.

31 Munch produced various painted and printed versions of this subject from 1893 to 1925.

32 I rely here on the interpretation in Prelinger and Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch, cat. 12, p. 88. See also Reinhold A. Heller, "The Iconography of Edvard Munch's Sphinx," Artforum, vol. 9, no. 2 (October 1970), pp. 72-80.

33 The number of works displayed, and the subjects included, varied as Munch continued to add to and alter his conception, including the order in which the works were displayed. For detailed discussion of the various permutations of the series, see Heller, "Form and Formation of Edvard Munch's Frieze of Life," pp. 30-35. Munch's show at Bing's gallery in 1896 should be added to Heller's exhibition listings for the series.

34 The artist compared his married lover, Mrs. Milly Thaulow (whom he called "Mrs. Heiberg" in his writ- ings), to a mermaid when he described his burgeoning attraction to her during one of their strolls along the shore: "She let down her hair-let it slide down over her shoulders.... How lovely she was in the soft warm glow from the horizon. She noticed his admiration -and smiled again. . . -and again he felt the voluptuous warmth surge through his veins. / You look like a mermaid he said." See Arne Eggum, Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life from Painting to Graphic Art-Love- Angst-Death, trans. Hal Sutcliffe and Torbj0rn St0verud (Oslo: J. M. Stenersens Forlag, 2000), p. 70.

35 For examples of drawings of this subject, see Dieter Buchhart, "The Voice," in Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation, ed. Klaus Albrecht Schroder and Antonia Hoershelmann (Vienna: Albertina; Ostfildern-Ruit, Germany: Hatie Cantz, 2003), pp. 114, 120-21. There are also two later prints: the lithograph Evening (The Voice), 1897 (Woll 106), and the woodcut Woman in Moonlight (The Voice), 1898 (Woll 129).

36 This motif was presumably derived from Munch's notes regarding his adulterous relationship with Mrs. Milly Thaulow in the late 1880s: "When we stand like this-and my eyes look into your big eyes-in the pale moonlight-you know, where-delicate hands spin invisible threads-that are bound around my heart-are pulled through my eyes-through your big, dark eyes-into and around your heart-Your eyes are so large, now, when we are so close- They are like two vast, dark skies."

Munch-museet archives, Oslo, T 2782, as translated in Buchhart, "The Voice," p. 113.

37 Heller, "Form and Formation of Edvard Munch's Frieze of Life," p. 29.

38 The profile view of the couple facing each other derives from Munch's painting Eye in Eye, 1894 (Munch-museet, Oslo), while the setting draws on both Summer Night (The Voice), 1893 (see fig. 13), and Moonlight, 1895 (fig. 12). See also two etchings, Attraction I (Woll 19) and II (Woll 20) from 1895.

39 Both the 1896 painting and litho- graph derive from the 1893 painting of the subject (Munch-museet, Oslo, M 884), reproduced in Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation, p. 27, fig. 5.

40 See Arne Eggum, Gerd Woll, and Marit Lande, Munch at the Munch Museum, Oslo (London: Scala Books in association with the Munch- museet, 1998), p. 48.

41 Munch produced more complex color prints using this technique, such as the exquisite Young Woman on the Beach of 1896 (Woll 49), but he essentially abandoned the process after he left Paris, having discovered preferable ways of making color prints.

42 This is based on the fact that no color-printed lithographs were described in the Bing exhibition cat- alogue. Given the comprehensive display of prints in this exhibition, Munch certainly would have shown at least one color lithograph had any been available. The two-color lithograph of Angst that he made for Vollard's album that spring may not have been completed by the time the Bing exhibition opened, but if impressions did exist it is possible that Vollard wanted to hold them for the exhibition of the album prints, which opened at his own gallery in June.

43 Examples of The Scream of 1895 exist on red and purple papers, and some of the other Berlin lithographs were printed on a thin grayish board (see frontispiece) or on blue-gray or greenish gray papers (fig. 22). See Gerd Woll, "Paper in Prints by Edvard Munch," in Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation, pp. 41-51.

44 There are hand-colored impressions of some Berlin lithographs dated 1895, and there are undated hand- colored impressions, but quite a few of the hand-colored examples seem to have 1896 dates, which would correspond to Munch's exploration of color (printed and hand-applied) in his prints while he was in Paris.

45 The full inscription on this impres- sion has been recorded as "E. Munch 1896 Paris" (Edvard Munch: Symbols and Images, p. 217), but in a recent viewing "Paris" was very difficult to discern and needs to be confirmed. The prospect of this

particular impression being the one exhibited at Bing's gallery is tantalizing.

46 See Stanislaw Przybyszewski, Das Werk des Edvard Munch: Vier Beitrage (Berlin: S. Fischer, 1894), pp. 19-21; Munch appears to have adopted this title accordingly, as it was first used for a Vampire painting in his 1894 exhibition in Stockholm.

47 For documentation of Munch's generally poor financial state, and his letters pleading for money to complete his printing projects, see Eggum et al., Munch at the Munch Museum, p. 23; Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch: Grafikk fra 1896/Prints from 1896 (Oslo: Munch-museet, 1996), pp. 20-21; and Reinhold Heller, "Love as a Series of Paintings," in Edvard Munch: Symbols and Images, p. 101.

48 It is uncertain whether Munch or the printer Auguste Clot was responsible for this novel approach to inking the stone for this print. See Woll, "Le graveur," p. 248.

49 This print was in fact mistakenly identified as a woodcut in one listing of Vollard's portfolio, for which it was made. Munch pro- duced a woodcut version later the same year (1896). See Torjusen, "The Mirror," p. 195.

50 Exactly when Munch started to use multi-part woodblocks to print color is unknown. Many of his early color woodcut printings (most of them undated) were highly experi- mental, and the exact process he used is not always easy to discern. See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, cat. 90, pp. 113-15. Munch's strong interest in and experimentation with color printing during his Paris sojourn makes it tempting to speculate that he would have developed his multi-part color-block method fairly quickly after learning the woodcut technique in the fall of 1896, before he returned to Norway in the sum- mer of 1897. In fact, Summer Night (The Voice) of 1896 (see fig. 26 above) exists only in a few experi- mental impressions (presumably executed at the same time), three of which were printed from a multi- part color block, lending support to the argument that the artist adopted the method in Paris very soon after he began making woodcuts. See Buchhart, "The Voice," p. 114, and Woll, Edvard Munch: Complete Graphic Works, cat. 92, p. 117. However, the apparent absence of color-printed impressions of wood- cuts in his major exhibition at the Diorama in Kristiania in the fall of 1897 (those displayed seem to have been either monochromatic or hand-colored impressions of prints) suggests that Munch may not have begun to make prints using multi- part color blocks until sometime after

46

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

he returned to Norway (Woll, 'Le graveur," pp. 264-66). According to Elizabeth Prelinger, Man's Head in Woman's Hair, 1896 (see fig. 31 above), may have been the first print for which Munch used a multi-part color block. See Prelinger and Parke-Taylor, The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch, p. 152, no. 34. Although Man's Head in Woman's Hair was executed in 1896 while Munch was in Paris, this does not preclude the possibility that he printed only monochromatic impressions initially (perhaps including some hand-colored examples), making the multi-part color block after he left. Munch's development of a poster version of Man's Head in Woman's Hair for his Diorama exhibition, as well as his use of impressions of the woodcut for his planned print portfolio "The Mirror,' may have prompted his creation of a cut-up color block for the print in the summer or fall of 1897. See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, cat. 89, pp. 111-12; cat. 107, p. 126. As the earliest examples of Munch's use of the technique, Woll has suggested two other, less sophisticated prints that exist only in impressions from multi-part blocks: Seated Nude (Woll 111) and Women Bathing (Woll 113), both made sometime in 1897. In fact, a two-color printed impression of the latter woodcut may have been included in the 1897 Diorama exhibition (see Kneher, Edvard Munch in seinen Ausstellungen, p. 113, nos. 124-25, p. 413 nn. 154, 155), but if so, it would seem to have been the only example of the technique shown, supporting the idea that this was a recent development in Munch's practice.

51 Hermann, a close friend of both Strindberg and Munch, made color woodcuts and around 1895 began to use woodcut to add color and textural pattern to his lithographs. See Richard Field, "Henri Heran (pseudonym for Paul Hermann)," in Jacquelynn Baas and Richard S. Field, The Artistic Revival of the Woodcut in France, 1850-1900 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Museum of Art, 1984), p. 128. Printmaker and playwright Alfred Jarry published a journal devoted to woodcuts during 1895-96, and he would have known Munch through their mutual association with the Theatre de l'Euvre, where Munch designed the program and worked on sets for Ibsen's play Peer Gynt in the fall of 1896. See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, p. 13, and Woll, "Le graveur," p. 242.

52 Whether or not Gauguin actually used the multi-part color woodblock technique has not been determined absolutely (though if he did, Munch could have seen examples at the Paris house of their mutual friend

William Molard, with whom Gauguin had entrusted woodblocks and other works when he left Paris). See Barbara Shapiro, "Shapes and Harmonies of Another World," in George T. M. Shackelford and Claire Freches-Thory, Gauguin Tahiti (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 2004), p. 133. See also Richard S. Field, "Gauguin's Noa Noa Suite,' Burlington Magazine, vol. 110, no. 786 (September 1968), p. 507, for a discussion of Gauguin's use of multi- part woodblocks, and Elizabeth Mongan et al., Paul Gauguin: Catalogue RaisonnW of His Prints (Bern, Germany: Galerie Kornfeld, 1988), cats. 13-22, pp. 47-115, for color illustrations of the prints and descriptions of an alternative color-stencil technique.

53 For an extensive discussion of the relationships between these artists' woodcuts, see Woll, "Le graveur," pp. 242-43; Torjusen, "The Mirror," pp. 198-200; and Richard S. Field, 'Edvard Munch," in Baas and Field, The Artistic Revival of the Woodcut in France, pp. 142-44.

54 See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, p. 13, and Woll, "Le graveur," p. 242.

55 Prelinger, "Edvard Munch and the Techniques of Symbolist Graphics," pp. 18-22.

56 Alternate readings of these heads include allusions to Judith and Holofernes and Salome and John the Baptist.

57 Munch-museet archives, Oslo, T 2782-1, as quoted in Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation, p. 167.

58 See Woll 50. 59 Prelinger and Parke-Taylor, The

Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch, cat. 3, p. 160.

60 Ibid., p. 159; Christoph Asendorf, "Power, Instinct, Will-Munch's Energetic World Theater in the Context of the Fin de Siecle," in Edvard Munch: Theme and Variation, pp. 83-90, and Heller, "Love as a Series of Paintings," pp. 92-93.

61 Both titles are listed in Gustav Schiefler's catalogue of Munch's prints, Verzeichnis des graphischen Werks Edvard Munch bis 1906 (Berlin: Verlag Bruno Cassirer, 1907), cat. 128, p. 102. Given Schiefler's close consultation with the artist in documenting the prints for the catalogue, the title Mermaid was undoubtedly provided by Munch.

62 Munch reversed the areas of land and sea in the color impression illustrated above (fig. 35). This com- position reprises that of two earlier paintings: Melancholy, 1894-95 (Rasmus Meyers Samlinger, Bergen Kunstmuseum), and Melancholy, 1891 (private collection), though the image is reversed in the wood- cut. See Eggum at al., Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life, cats. 42, 44, pp. 86-87.

63 See Woll, Edvard Munch: The Complete Graphic Works, cat. 142, pp. 150, 158-60, and Eggum, Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life from Painting to Graphic Art, pp. 65-70. Such correlations with the mermaid theme may be expanded further in a narrative approach, linking the imagery in these prints, in Evening (Melancholy I), 1896 (see fig. 35), and in the woodcut Towards the Forest I (Woll 112). In the latter example a clothed man (similar to the Evening figure) and a nude woman with long hair (in a barely discernible transparent dress) walk with their arms wrapped around each other, away from the shore into the dark woods, as if the trans- formed mermaid is being led ashore by her lover. In his writings about his walks on the beach with "Mrs. Heiberg" (whom he likens to a mer- maid; see note 34 above) Munch notes two of her remarks that are particularly revealing in establishing a link between these prints: "See how like a woman's head that boul- der looks said Mrs. Heiberg delight- edly [see the pairing of boulder and female head in Woman's Head Against the Shore]-Oh how strange- ly silent in the forest-How nice it would be to live in there-not alone-but as a couple." As quoted in Eggum, Edvard Munch: The Frieze of Life from Painting to Graphic Art, p. 70.

47

This content downloaded from 89.101.53.114 on Wed, 30 Apr 2014 11:55:56 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions