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REVIEW
Edvard Munch and the Portraits that Watched Over Him
The National Portrait Gallery shows us a more sociable Symbolist
On occasion, seeing a familiar painter through the lens of the National Portrait Gallery can be a strange experience. Particularly if that painter isn’t known for doing portraits.
Edvard Munch’s most enduring work, The Scream, has the kind of pop-culture recognition that rivals works like the Mona Lisa and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Most people view Munch as a Post-Impressionist and Symbolist painter first — a painter of emotional and mystical themes. And much has been made of his tortured psyche and illnesses — his breakdown, his alcoholism, his angst and paranoia. This is, after all, the man who gave us paintings with titles such as Anxiety, Separation, and Despair.
Munch has often been portrayed as an isolated man, obsessed with illness, emotional strife, and death. But this new portrait exhibition — the first of its kind in Britain — isn’t designed to be an overview of Munch. Instead, it looks at his developing style through six decades of work, and reveals a painter who is less isolated and angst-ridden.
Instead, Munch is an artist at the centre of a vibrant and quickly changing art scene stretching from Norway to France to Germany. And…
