A glimpse into Edvard Munch 'Beyond the Scream'

Edvard Munch's hand-colored lithograph of "The Scream" (1895) is one of over 140 works brought together for "Beyond the Scream" at the Seoul Arts Center's Hangaram Art Museum — the Norwegian painter's largest retrospective ever held in Asia. Courtesy of Reitan Family Collection, Trondheim, Norway

By Park Han-sol

• Published May 28, 2024 5:01 PM KST
• Updated May 29, 2024 2:16 PM KST

An angst-filled soul, cringing beneath a blood-red sunset, in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” has undoubtedly become an iconic fixture in today’s cultural psyche.

The figure’s haunting face, tormented by nature’s deafening scream, has been endlessly caricatured and parodied both in art and on screen.

But what’s less known about “The Scream” is that Munch (1863-1944) produced several different “originals” during his lifetime — two paintings in tempera and two drawings in pastel, as well as four dozen black-and-white lithographs, at least two of which he hand-colored himself in 1895.

It is this hand-tinted print of the most recognizable image in existence that sets the tone for the Norwegian painter’s largest retrospective ever held in Asia, shedding light on his prolific career as well as enduring influence in modern art.

“Edvard Munch: Beyond the Scream,” at the Seoul Arts Center’s Hangaram Art Museum in southern Seoul, accomplishes two things with its curated selection of around 140 works.

First, through the sheer number of artworks put on display — which begins with one of his earliest self-portraits (1882-83) and ends with his very last (1940-43) — it traces the painter’s symbolically charged oeuvre that embraces love, pain, melancholy, existential dread, isolation and death.

These themes are closely intertwined with the brooding creative’s own life. As a young boy, he endured the loss of both his mother and sister to tuberculosis. He battled depression and anxiety for decades and saw his other sister committed to a mental institution. Only in his later years, as he withdrew into a relatively reclusive existence, did he slowly begin to recover from inner anguish and alcoholism.

Second, the exhibition underscores just how beautifully — and obsessively — “repetitive” Munch was as an artist. Until his death from pneumonia at age 80, he revisited many of his favored motifs again and again in his paintings, drawings and prints, as he did with “The Scream.”

However, these results were far from mere identical reproductions. Each time, he reconfigured the images with slight variations in color, composition and medium — sometimes as hand-tinted lithographs, at other times as coarsely textured woodcuts or canvas works with visceral brushstrokes.

“Beyond the Scream” brings together multiple versions for each of Munch’s representative motifs — including “The Sick Child,” “Madonna,” “Vampire” and “The Kiss” — thus providing visitors ample opportunity to trace the subtle changes among them and engage in their own game of “spot the difference.”

Enduring legacy

Munch is widely regarded as the godfather of Expressionism that emerged at the dawn of the 20th century. This movement is known for emphasizing subjective, psychological experiences over physical reality, often using distorted forms and dramatic brushstrokes as a vehicle to respond to the horrors of the world wars.

Yet, what’s fascinating about the Norwegian painter is that his art has clearly outlived this Modernist era. Well over a century after their creation, “The Scream,” and many of his other uncanny paintings and prints, with their focus on angst and disquietude, continue to captivate audiences today.

In addition to the alienating moods his works evoke, what makes Munch “contemporary and of our time,” according to the exhibition’s curator Dieter Buchhart, is his penchant for challenging traditional boundaries of medium and artistic technique.

As seen in his repeated exploration of the same motifs, he was less concerned with producing the “one-and-only original” and more with discovering the varied visual effects that each medium offered.

For instance, one hand-colored lithograph of “The Sick Child I” (1896) zooms in on the face of a young invalid on her deathbed, depicting her in nothing but blazing red lines. Compare this version with any of the six darker oil paintings of the same scene, which includes a grieving woman by the bedside and many more environmental details, and the difference is immediately apparent.

Similarly, the woodcuts of “The Kiss III” (1898) or “Towards the Forest II” (1915) use the natural grain of the woodblock — an element that is, of course, absent in oil canvas works — as a backdrop for the two figures in an embrace.

Munch’s boundary-pushing approach extended to his experimentation with the materiality of his art, notably through his “Rosskur (kill-or-cure)” treatment. He would leave his works outside, exposing them to rain, snow, sunlight, bird feces and mold, thus accelerating their aging process.

“He intended to attack the canvas with the weather, with the help of nature. He called it the cure,” said the curator.

He considered the destruction of actual materials as an essential aspect of the artistic process within material-centric modernity.

The contemporaneity of the painter’s century-old art is evident in one of the last pieces that graces the show: “Disturbed Vision” (1930).

In 1930, an intraocular hemorrhage affected his sight in the right eye. He went on to visually describe how the congealed blood inside became superimposed on his normal field of vision. The result is a remarkably modern gestural painting, with the blood clot rendered as a dynamic presence in the foreground.

“What’s so fascinating is the brilliance and the contemporaneity of how he painted it,” Buchhart said. “[Works like this] could have been painted yesterday and not more than 100 years ago.”

“Beyond the Scream” runs through Sept. 19.