Munch, The Storm

Art History

1848-1907 Industrial Revolution II

Symbolism & Art Nouveau

Gustav Klimt, Beethoven Frieze
Gustav Klimt's The Kiss
Klimt, Death and Life
Böcklin, Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Khnopff, I Lock the Door Upon Myself, 1891
Khnopff, Jeanne Kéfer
Stuck, The Sin
Munch, The Storm
Rodin, The Gates of Hell
Gaudí, Sagrada Família

Munch, The Storm Edvard Munch, The Storm, 1893, oil on canvas, 36 1/8 x 51 1/2" (91.8 x 130.8 cm), (MoMA) Speakers: Dr. Juliana Kreinik, Dr. Amy Hamlin

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Munch, The Storm

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[piano music]
We're in the Museum of Modern Arts
and we're looking at Edvard Munch's "The Storm", from 1893.
This is an amazing representation of something
both psychic and naturalist.
Yeah, external and internal, simultaneously.
The one thing that has really struck me about this painting
is how dark it is compared to "The Scream".
Which is the same here. There is such contrast.
It's interesting to think about dark and light, and external and internal.
If you look at the house - the lights inside are the only source of bright warmth.
I'm then drawn to the woman who's standing right in the front.
This is called "The Storm". They must be in the midst of a storm,
which we can tell if we look around and see the tree bending,
and their hair flying behind them.
They're standing right near a harbour...
Right, or on the water's edge.
The painting was made in a small Norwegian seaside resort
that Munch frequented in the summer.
So all these women gathered together in this mob scene,
they all look really frantic, worried about their fishermen husbands out at sea.
They're not sure if their men are going to come back because of the storm.
What do you make of the townscape? It's such an overwhelming presence.
The women are human anchors in the picture,
but there is something really animate about those houses.
Those windows look like eyes, kind of staring back at us.
The distance between those women and the house
is somehow psychologically really far.
The houses on the sides blur into the background,
and it almost looks like a twilight scene.
You know what it is?
It's the Northern Lights!
It looks... in the upper left there's a bit of green,
and it blends in the corner but it also calls your eye back to the center green of the trees.
I've seen pictures of the Northern Lights and those can be really green in the sky.
They look otherwordly.
It looks like Munch is working on the emotion of the women.
And proto-Expressionism, too.
The Expressionist painters of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter,
both really looked to Munch in terms of guidance in terms of how brushstrokes
and mark making become an index of emotion.
You see that especially in the sky. You can actually feel
how his paintbrush moves back and forth, back and forth.
You can see that also in the women.
The gestural stroke that represents their hair flying off.
The woman in the center does anchor the picture now that I look at it more.
If you put your hand up to the image, and you take her form out,
the composition becomes unmoored.
She's the central figure in terms of the painted composition.
Everything swirls around that.
Psychologically, who knows how she linked to these other women...
All angst-ridden and worried, their looks similar to Munch's "Scream".
They are bringing their arms up to their faces, gasping with expressions of fear and anxiety.
The woman in the center has the most easily readable bodily feature.
You can really see some sort of anxiety externalized.
In an abstract way, too. You can see the gesture more,
and the white-clad solitary woman, whereas this clutch, their arms,
their facial features are indistinct.
It almost becomes an abstract picture.
If you take out that piece, it's an abstract painting.
The rocks are all gathered up at the bottom of the painting,
on the right side, in the right corner.
And then look behind the wall that bears down the lane.
You can see the woman in the middle with the blue dress.
There's something that feels very claustrophobic, but also very open at the same time,
in the way that the composition is mapped out.
Munch is also pulling you in to the space.
He's using a very Renaissance technique of using the orthogonal
to bring us into that vanishing point.
It's an amazing painting.
[piano music]

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