This melancholy London. I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.- William Butler Yeats, letter to Katharine Tynan (1888-08-25)
Edvard Munch (12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944) was a Norwegian Symbolist painter, printmaker and an important forerunner of expressionist art. His best-known composition, The Scream, is part of a series The Frieze of Life, in which Munch explored the themes of love, fear, death, melancholia, and anxiety.
4 comments:
Interesting video.
I was unaware that he had done so much work in this genre.
I was surprised as well. He seems to illustrate the "nature" of the Lacanian "objet petit a" in his paintings through a process of "automatic painting"... he paints his own face, a nude woman, and another man in at least two of the featured paintings.
His paintings all seem to emphasize or celebrate the "lost object"... desire.
Munch lost his mother at age 5, and sister at age 15. The "lost object" hit him twice deeply. And when he finally attached it to real woman and consumated it, she jilted him. 3 strikes... and you're out. The blankish-faces, or backs to the viewer... who should he attach the "lost obect" to?
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