Munch: Van Gogh Exhibition, Amsterdam
Earlier this week I visited the newly opened Munch: Van Gogh exhibition at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. As many of my friends and family — who absolutely adore Van Gogh and curious about Munch — couldn’t enjoy the exhibition, I decided to bring the exhibition to the web.
The art historian in me wanted to see how — the most successful museum in the Netherlands — will tell the story of these iconic artists, while the art lover in me just wanted to see the new entrance to the building and the gift shop!
So, sit back and let me walk you through this ambition, overwhelming and impressive exhibition. I didn’t include all the images, because you will feel like your head is spinning from too much of a good thing. Follow this link to see more photos from the exhibition — click here.
Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) and the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) are often mentioned in the same breath. Their art is colourful, intense, expressive and radical. The lives and careers of these two iconic artists also saw striking parallels. This is the first exhibition to explore those similarities in depth.
At its heart, Munch and Van Gogh’s work is about real life — its painful and elusive aspect, but also its astonishing beauty: the cycle of birth and death, consolation, love, human suffering and fear. They wanted their works of art to express the emotions of human existence, and to move and comfort people. They both sought new ways of communicating these feelings as powerfully as possible — through colour, composition and brushwork — even if that meant going to extreme.
By combining groundbreaking techniques with timeless themes, both artists created powerful images that still fascinate us today.
The exhibition has selections on three levels of the building. Level -1: The Early Years, In Paris and Gauguin Influence. Level 0: An Expressive Style and Universal Emotions. Level 1: A Symphony.
Part 1: The Early Years, In Paris and Gauguin Influence.
During his short life, Van Gogh did not allow his flame to go out. Fire and embers were his brushes. I have thought, and wished, that I would not let my flame to go out, and with a burning brush paint until the end. Edvard Munch, 23 October 1933
The Early Years
In 1880, the year when both Munch and Van Gogh set out to become artists, they modelled themselves after naturalistic painters of sentimental subjects in muted colours. Munch was ispired mainly by Christian Krohg and Hans Heyerdahl, while Van Gogh greatly admired Jean-Franćois Millet and Joseph Israël. Soon, the two artists began to approach traditional themes in their own personal, expressive ways.
This is clearly illustrated by the most ambitious paintings from their early years. In The Potato Eaters, van Gogh chose to paint a humble peasant family around a table, but he was criticized for his muddy colours and the expressive faces of the farmers, which look almost like caricatures. Similarly, the girl in Munch’s masterpiece Morning was not a surprising subject, but he painted her with disturbing honesty, and that met with disapproval. The two artists both knew that to continue their education, they had to move on — to Paris, the centre of modern art.
Joseph Israël and Jean-Franćois Millet were great inspiration to Van Gogh. He saw this particular painting in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum in 1885. In a letter to his brother Theo, he called it ‘mastery’: ‘the technique, the mixing of colour, the modeling of the Zandvoort fisherman, for instance, is to my mind superb’. The sentiment also appealed to him, and even touched him. In Norway, Munch was looking at similar art by painters such as Heyerdahl and Krohg.
In Paris
Munch discovered Paris around the same time as Van Gogh, but their stay in the city never overlapped. Still, they moved in the same artistic circles, and both show the influence of French modern art in their work.
They both admired Claude Monet’s use of light and colour, drew inspiration from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s figures, experimented with Camille Pissarro’s pointillist technique and Caillebotte’s unconventional compositions, and wanted, like Edouard Manet, to devote themselves to the modern portrait.
Munch and van Gogh were like sponges, soaking up all these new ideas. They combined different styles and techniques, sometimes in a single work of art, with results that were surprising and original. Paris was the place where each of them found his own individual path.
In Paris, Van Gogh conducted many experiments in portrait painting. Here we see the Italian model Agostina Segatori, who had a brief affair with Van Gogh. He placed her against a flat, bright yellow field of colour, which contrasts with the blue and red in the painting. This shows the influence of the modern colour theories of that period. The patters in the dress and along the margins are reminiscent of Japanese prints, a major source of inspiration for Van Gogh.
Gauguin’s Influence
Of all the forces at work on Munch and Van Gogh during their Paris periods, Paul Gauguin’s influence was the strongest. Van Gogh first met Gauguin in Paris, and they worked together for a short while in 1888. Van Gogh adopted Gauguin’s large areas of colour with heavy outlines. Munch, too, experimented with this style, which can be seen clearly in his prints. Gauguin’s woodcuts, in particular, had a profound impact on Munch’s graphic work.
Yet Van Gogh and Gauguin found that their artistic visions were diametrically opposed. Gauguin looked to dreams, stories and memories for inspiration, while Van Gogh took reality and the natural world as his starting point. Munch did paint experiences from memory, but he stressed that his paintings were always based on actual events. Munch and Van Gogh wanted to penetrate to the core of life, while Gauguin was more interested in escaping everyday reality.
The Mango Tree was Gauguin’s most ambitious work during his time in Martinique. Van Gogh admired it and persuaded his brother Theo to buy it for their art collection. He felt that Gauguin had found a poetic way to communicate his experience of exotic places and of everyday life, so that his art touched the soul. Van Gogh wanted his work to have the same effect.
Gauguin’s Volpini Suite caused a commotion during the World’s Fair of 1889 in Paris. The strange, primitive scenes and the yellow colour of the paper were bold innovations. These prints made a strong impression on Munch. In the mid-1890s, Munch began devoting great energy to making etchings, lithographs and woodcuts. The woodcuts are clearly experimental, with forms even more simplified than those in his paintings. Munch often used the natural grain of the woodblock.
Part 2: An Expressive Style and Universal Emotions
To convey as powerfully as possible the feelings and ideas behind their art, Munch and Van Gogh took their artistic method to extremes. Their colours leap from the canvas. They accentuated forms and lines and simplified reality. They searched for new perspectives, compositions and ways of cropping the picture, strongly emphasising the use of paint and other materials.
Yet style and technique were never their ultimate goals, but ways of communicating, of expressing emotions on canvas. Munch took a freer approach than Van Gogh, who felt the need to ‘practise, practise, practise’. Despite their complex techniques, the results often appear very simple. This is exactly what puts Munch and Van Gogh in a class by themselves. Their art is easily accessible but, at the same time, extremely complex and deeply human: they touch the heart and the mind.
An Expressive Style
Colour
Line and Form
Van Gogh was passionate about drawing throughout his career. He approached it with the same energy he brought to his paintings. ‘What’s always urgent is to draw,’ he wrote in 1888, ‘and whether it’s done directly with a brush, or with something else, such as a pen, you never do enough.’ Drawing helped him to simplify things and arrive at their essence. The same was definitely true of Munch, as Women by the Water superbly illustrates.
Space
Spirituality
Alongside all the similarities — and differences — in their approaches to painting, Munch and Van Gogh are connected in a deeper, more fundamental way. In their work, they seek the essence and meaning of human existence.
Their greatest masterpieces, a selection of which are on display here, explore the life cycle, suffering, fear, consolation and spirituality. Within these themes, Munch and Van Gogh sometimes chose very different subjects from one another. But they both dedicate their artistic careers to the existential questions that all of us ask, and which no one can ever truly answer.
They searched for the answers not only in their visual art, but also in their many letters, diaries and other writings, which described their emotions and the difficult challenges they faced. They both felt a continual urge to write: to commit their thoughts to paper, to shed light on their art and to try to grasp their work and life itself.
Universal Emotions
Van Gogh wrote that he had ‘a tremendous need for, shall I say the word — for religion — so I got outside at night to paint the stars.’ It was essential for him to experience and paint the night sky above him. He also depicted his surroundings: the waterside in Arles, the river and a couple out for a stroll, insignificant underneath the majestic sky. The surroundings also play a role in Munch’s Starry Night, where human forms may be present among the shadows in the foreground. Like starts that meet in the darkness of the universe, as Munch wrote in a poem.
Life Cycle
Suffering
When Van Gogh was at the asylum in Saint Rémy, he made five paintings of olive groves as he experienced them, ‘seeking the different effects of a grey sky against yellow earth, with dark green note of the foliage’. As Van Gogh struggled with his illness in this period, his direct, intuitive artistic work in the landscape helped him to heal. Out in nature, he found peace.
Anxiety
A feeling of fear, existential fear, is the theme of this work. It has its roots in Munch’s personal experience: ‘I was walking along the road with two friends — Then the sun went down — The sky suddenly turned to blood and I felt a great scream in nature.’ The figure in the foreground holds his hands to his ears to shut out this scream, while opening his mouth wide in his own scream of terror. The wavy lines in the landscape seem to carry the sound and feeling far and wide. The heavy, ‘unpleasant’ colours amplify the effect. The piercing impact of The Scream has made it one of the world’s most famous image.
Consolation
Munch called this painting Madonna, and also Loving Woman, and he framed other versions with images of sperm cells and an embryo. These represent the victory of life over death, thanks to woman, who brings new life. The halo-like shape behind her head gives her a transcendent quality, a higher meaning. The viewer can take comfort from this Madonna. In a sense, Van Gogh’s woman rocking a cradle has the same purpose. This ordinary woman — who holds a rope attached to the cradle — may remind viewers of lullabies sung to them in their childhood, of comfort and warmth.
Munch, as a fragile old man, stands between his bed and a large clock, which symbolises the passage of time. His life’s work hangs on the wall behind him. It is as if he is ready for death, the next step in life. Van Gogh’s The Bedroom also communicates intimacy and a kind of peace. But there the painter is conspicuously absent — although his personal belongings convey the feeling of his presence.
Part 3: A Symphony
We think of paintings like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers and Munch’s Vampire as isolated, individual works, but they actually belong to larger series. Both artists hoped that their paintings, which were sometimes difficult to interpret on their own, would enhance and illuminate each other when they were hung together. Munch and Van Gogh often described their series as symphonies.
In the southern French city of Arles, Van Gogh painted his most important series, which he called Décoration. It was intended to decorate the walls of his house and studio, in preparation for a visit from his friend and fellow artist Gauguin. The series consists of landscapes cityscapes, portraits and still life, which have the greatest power and meaning when viewed together. Munch spent years working on his great series, the Frieze of Life. In these paintings and prints, he dedicated human life form birth to death. He was in search of a more meaningful way to exhibit his art and hoped that the series as a whole would find a permanent home.
In this part, Van Gogh Museum offered two series, which were in constant development. Munch and Van Gogh never declared them completely finished.
The texts are written by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and edited by me for the web. It’s an incredible and very ambitious exhibition. I hope you will get the chance to experience it for yourselves, but if not — here is the next best thing after the exhibition catalogue :)
