Patricia G. Berman – författare

The jarring emptiness following the loss of a loved one, the expansive out-of-body sensation of sensual touch, the lassitude of melancholy and the ecstatic receptivity to sunshine. His ability to capture and convey sensation and feelings through the materials of art, places the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) at the forefront of European art at the turn of the last century.Interestingly, Munch’s artistic exploration of perception, and his persistent questioning of the objectivity of vision, intersect with ideas that matured within the fields of psychology and experimental optics at the time.Edvard Munch: Inner Fire examines these connections, demonstrating his continuing exploration of the conditions of sight. The essays in this catalogue examine this phenomenon while also probing a lesser-known aspect of the artist’s work: Munch’s relationship to Italy.The first essay, Lasse Jacobsen’s ‘Edvard Munch. Italian Impressions’, explores this connection explicitly, as part of a general overview of Munch’s life and work.The second text, ‘Reflections in Munch’s Inner Eye’ by Patricia G. Berman, charts the art historical context of Munch’s exploration of experience’s subjective dimension. Emil Leth Meilvang’s ‘Seeing without Sight. Munch’s Vision’, on its part, explores the relationship between Munch’s artistic development and simultaneous developments within the perceptual sciences. Edvard Munch. Inner Fire includes essayistic pieces by authors Melania G. Mazzucco and Hanne Ørstavik: ‘I am a Romantic’ and ‘Who Am I’. Each demonstrates Munch’s continuing ability to light the inner fires of other artists.

An authoritative new publication that revisits Munch’s work in its entirety. Edvard Munch occupies a pivotal place in artistic modernity. His work is permeated by a singular vision of the world, with a powerful symbolist dimension that goes beyond the masterpieces he created in the 1890s, and which gives his art a great coherence. For Munch, humanity and nature were united in the cycle of life, death and rebirth, which is reflected in the unending recurrence of certain motifs and colour combinations in his work. He wrote: ‘These paintings, which are, admittedly, relatively difficult to understand, will be […] easier to grasp if they are integrated into a whole.’ Published to accompany the major exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay, Edvard Munch: A Poem of Life, Love and Death presents about a hundred works – paintings, drawings, prints and engraved blocks – reflecting the diversity of Munch’s practice. Seven essays explore the artist in his philosophical and scientific milieu and the places that shaped the man and his art, as well as offering a rare glimpse of Munch’s attempts at creative writing. They also examine the historical evolution of his monumental Frieze of Life series and the world-famous Scream. This publication invites readers to revisit the painter’s work in its entirety by following the thread of an ever-inventive pictorial thinking: a vision that is both fundamentally coherent, even obsessive, and at the same time constantly renewed.

Between 1790 and 1910, Danish painters developed a national school of art that matched the artistic centres of France, Germany and Britain. The range of outstanding works created by Nicolai Abildgaard, Jens Juel, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Christen Købke, P. S. Krøyer and Vilhelm Hammershøi reflect and refract the great stylistic tendencies of European art of the 19th century, including Classicism, Romanticism, Impressionism and Symbolism. Illustrated with over two hundred key works of art drawn from the leading Danish collections, this is the only book available in English that surveys Danish painting across the 19th century. Written by a major scholar in the field, and featuring all the icons of the Danish Golden Age, this is an essential addition to all art libraries.

How did advancements in modern medicine influence artists at the turn of the 20th century? How, in turn, did visuality come to dominate health culture? The human body has perennially been a focus of the visual arts, yet the idea of the ‘perfect’ body is a largely modern one. This book explores the ways in which visual culture shaped, as well as reflected, public perceptions of health at the turn of the 20th century. In Germany, Austria and Norway, images of idealized or diseased bodies proliferated in illustrated media and visual art, and anxieties over good health dominated popular culture. Newly independent, these countries viewed health and well-being as an issue of national importance; a means of creating social cohesion and strength of identity. Moreover, the drive to enhance medical literacy gave impetus to new forms of medical illustration and narration as well as a burgeoning interest among artists in the medicalized body.This book presents ten case studies in how modernity manifested in the visual narration and public display of bodies, exploring contexts as diverse as early Swiss sanatoriums, Germany’s Freikörperkultur movement, Edvard Munch’s vegetarianism, and changing reproductive rights, among others. Together, they reveal the vital role of visual culture in our understanding of what constitutes ‘good health’; an ideological construct where health, technology, nationhood, gender, and race are at play. Novel artistic approaches, from interactive pop-up books to over-exposed nude photography, celluloid “stitching” to Oscar Kokoschka’s intimate letters to a tuberculosis sufferer, show how modern art offered new understandings of the human body and humans’ position in the world. Combining original research and unpublished documents, Picturing Health and Illness in Northern Europe reveals how preconceptions around health and body-image can be traced to a defining moment in modern European history.

The Scandinavian Home is the first publication to examine the entangled notions of home and homeland that were central to the art and material culture of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland in the second half of the nineteenth century. “Home” was a central metaphor in the nation-building activities of each country. The arts played a crucial role in reinforcing a shared sense of belonging amongst Nordic countries as they strove to identify and celebrate authentic local and national identities. The linkages among land, landscape, handicraft, and domestic dwellings as dimensions of home are embedded in this survey of the extensive David and Sue Werner Collection of Scandinavian art, presented to the public for the first time. Encompassing an impressive range of almost 150 painting, drawing, furniture, textiles, glass, metalwork, ceramics, and works on paper, highlights include rare tapestries and a wooden cabinet by the Norwegian artist Gerhard Munthe; Finnish ceramics by Willy Finch; landscape paintings by Hilma af Klint, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Gustav Fjaestad and Pekka Halonen; and anonymous functional objects by outstanding handicraft artists – covering embroideries, metalwork, and wooden implements.

Ever since Munch first came up with the Scream motif at the end of the 19th century, countless artists, including Andy Warhol and Marina Abramović, have modified it within their own work. In addition, the open-mouthed figure has cropped up in popular cultural productions such as Wes Craven’s Scream film franchise, the poster for the kids’ movie Home Alone, and in scores of satirical cartoons – on everything from Brexit to Donald Trump’s presidency and tax rises – as well as on innumerable political banners and placards, most recently in protests about the climate emergency. In recent years, the Scream image has also taken a prominent place on digital screens in the form of its own emoji and as the basis of countless memes. At the same time, the quantity of souvenirs and other objects decorated with or shaped like Munch’s figure of desperation has increased immeasurably. In short: these days The Scream haunts pretty much every layer of culture. It is without doubt one of the most frequently reproduced images in the history of art, equalled only perhaps by Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, and is the originator of a constantly expanding network of analogue and digital mutations. Via these three texts, and a rich selection of illustrations – including all known Scream images ever made by the artist himself, a selection of his Scream texts and countless so-called Scream mutations – this book embraces Munch’s best-known image as a cultural phenomenon.