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“My art is based on a
only reflection: why
“I’m not like the others?”
(Edvard Munch)
I saw again in Oslo, in the National Gallery, the interesting painting The Dance of Life (1899 / 1900), a brilliant representation of the flow of human life. It is part of the Frieze of Life, a compilation of key works that the author, Edvard Munch, described as a “poetry about life, love and death.” January 23rd commemorates the 80th anniversary of the death of this emblematic Norwegian painter.
We arrived in Oslo on a bright and cold day, we stayed at the Radisson hotel with a comforting sauna. We want to delve into the work of one of his most distinguished artists, Edvard Munch, the Norwegian painter and engraver who characterized his artistic career with a strong drama and chromatic intensity that made him a reference for the expressionist movement.
Munch’s work (Loten 12-12-1873- Ekey 1-23-1944) is characterized by a tragic sense of life and death and had a particular affinity with the social realism of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, with whom he collaborated making the sets and costumes of the play Peer Gynt in 1896.
In search of his identity, he became involved with the bohemian group of Cristianía, founded by the philosopher and political activist Hans Jaeger with a group of radical and anarchist artists.
After this experience he will spend a period of his life in Paris and Nice, where he will be in contact with the work of impressionist and post-impressionist painters such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who will influence his work.
For Edvard Munch, his way of using colors, materials, incisions in painting and engravings helped him release his own concerns. His hermetic and elusive temperament, his shyness and melancholy were perpetuated in his works.
He himself would express the following: “I began as an impressionist, but when the violent storms and vicissitudes of the Bohemian era arrived, impressionism was no longer enough for me. I had to try to translate what stirred my soul.”
He immediately leaned towards the idea of ??capturing feelings, of externalizing the human being’s feelings of anguish and loneliness, giving it an absolute value, as something from which man cannot free himself. She soon created a very personal style, based on accentuating the expressive force of the line, reducing shapes to a symbolic and realistic use of color.
The painter said that, in the same way that Leonardo da Vinci had studied human anatomy and dissected bodies, he tried to dissect souls, therefore, the most frequent themes in his works were those related to human feelings and tragedies, such as loneliness (Melancholy), anguish (The Scream), death (Death of a Bohemian), eroticism (Lovers, The Kiss). He is considered a precursor of expressionism, due to the strong expressiveness of the faces and attitudes of his figures.
In Munch’s painting, the face of the world appears, represented in his main project The Frieze of Life (1893-1918), to which his most representative paintings belong, where he reflects human feelings and obsessions. 22 of these paintings were exhibited in 1902 in the exhibition of the Berlin group Sezession. Most of them reflect the disillusionment of the end of the century and the image of man as a victim.
In The Kiss, 1892, he refers to the drama that occurred during his childhood: the death of his mother and sister. The characters reflect suffering and are united by a serpentine line that runs across the entire surface of the painting. There are no shadows, only flat colors and pronounced contours that mark the visual rhythm, an ideal medium to express the anguish of the spirit.
In Munch’s The Kiss, not only the dedication and passion between a man and a woman could be elucidated, but also the absolute fusion of both, the escape from the anguish of existence.
The kiss blurs the individuality of each face to make it one. The line that defines the contour of the figures’ bodies delimits the volume and fusion of the couple. The atmosphere of the place is permeated by halos of energy and feelings that emanate from the lovers.
In Melancholy, an individual is observed in a pensive-melancholic state, absent from everything around him and reflecting on himself and his surrounding world. His clothing is black, which further accentuates that idea of ??loneliness and sobriety. The atmosphere is sad, it seems like the end of a day. The shapes of the landscape are very synthesized and undulating, reminding us of one of his best-known paintings, The Scream (1893), where he most intensely reflected the horror, anguish and loneliness of human beings.
The figure in the foreground expresses immeasurable terror. The anguish due to loneliness, the despair of not finding meaning in life, and a great psychological burden are intensely reflected in the painter’s work.
In The Dance of Life, the painter shows us a summer scene, an outdoor summer dance on the Norwegian coast, with soft horizontal lines in which a palette of delicate pastel tones merges with the strength of dark tones.
The painter achieves the rhythm of the work by arranging the figures in narrative planes. The horizontal shapes are charged with an intense force that the painter resolves with undulating lines, barely suggested with the brush. The vertical plane is defined by the characters and the reflection of light. The protagonists are three female figures that represent the different stages of life and love.
The author focuses the composition on the couple dancing in the foreground. A man dances with a woman dressed in red, a color that symbolizes passion. Both characters are absorbed in their own world, without caring about their surroundings, and the wavy lines of the dress and hair melt the lovers into a single figure.
On the left is a young woman in a white dress; She smiles and highlights her rosy cheeks, revealing that she may be in love with her, but unlike the woman in red, she represents the illusion and innocence of love.
On the right side, a mature woman, dressed in black, perhaps in mourning, with a serious face and clasped hands, observes the dancing couple with disapproval, but at the same time resigned to her own loneliness; symbolizing the transitory nature of life and love. The two figures indicate, beyond the age difference, the juxtaposition between the illusion of love and disappointment: they are two sides of the same coin.
These four main characters are accompanied in the background by other figures, who seem to be completely devoted to the enjoyment of the summer dance.
Symbols in art are a visual device to convey meaning, often indirectly. Thus in many Christian paintings the saints can be recognized by their attributes: Saint Peter carries the keys of paradise and Saint John holds a book.
The symbols allow us to talk about the virtues of the human being and tell complete stories: the white lilies represent purity, while the apple evokes the temptation of Adam and Eve. Allegory and myth also function as symbols to represent different levels of meaning in art.
Looking at the canvas I thought I saw the muse of Greek dance, Terpsichore, and even her name has rhythm and harmony… Muse and dance were the result of a thoughtful observation of Nature, where everything moves rhythmically, describing figures.
To understand the spirit of the dance, just immerse yourself among the leaves of a leafy tree and feel how the wind moves them. Without detaching their stem, the leaves dance and sing, offering a green symphony that enchants the eyes and ears. All you have to do is sit in front of the sea for a moment and let yourself be carried away by the inexorable rhythm with which the waves beat against the shores. It is enough to see a bird fly, or see a dancing leaf fall when autumn signals its time. Just watch the clouds slide by, dancing across the sky.
The painting The Dance of Life was donated in 1910 by the Norwegian art collector Olaf Schou to the National Gallery of Norway.