The Munch exhibition “Jordsvingninger” at the Munch Museum is tremendously good – Dagsavisen

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ART

Edvard Munch

“Earth Oscillations”

The Munch Museum

Until August 25

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Our knowledge of Edvard Munch is becoming increasingly faceted and diverse. Now the perspective is further expanded with “Earth fluctuations”, the exhibition which has Munch’s visions of nature as its pivot point. It has become a tremendously good exhibition. That in itself is surprising, because he is considered a portrayer of man’s great emotions. But even if traditional landscape depictions are conspicuous by their absence, the exhibition shows that he was interested in nature throughout his life: He cultivated the earth himself, and he was inspired by nature-related philosophical perspectives on life and the life cycle.

At the same time as the special approach gives a rather unusual overview of the artistry, there are certain things that give reason to adopt a questioning attitude towards the exhibition. The first can be found in the title, “Earth oscillations”. The term is Munch’s own, but the word does not appear in the leading Norwegian dictionary, NAOB. He didn’t use it much himself either; as far as is known, it appears only once in a drawing where he defines “man and his three power centres”. When there is no official definition, we have to think for ourselves. One can, for example, think that it gives relatively vague associations about something ominous, a kind of “feeling” without concrete content. It can also be understood more positively, as a vibration that links man and nature together.

When we see the exhibition and develop our understanding of the term “Earth oscillations”, there is reason to think about how differently the art in this exhibition appears. Compared to the visual image we usually associate with Edvard Munch (1863–1944), a large part of the pictures are lighter and more pastel-oriented than his most famous pictures. With 120 works in the exhibition, there is of course dark art. But it is not the mood from “Dagen derpå” or “Melancholy” that forms the main impression.

One dark motif can be found in “Stormen” (1893), painted in the same year as “Scream”. We recognize the familiar landscape from Åsgårdstrand and “The Girls on the Bridge”, but here there is a dark atmosphere and several figures holding their faces in the same way as the icon from “Scream”. The most important thing in this painting is how the wind bends the big tree in front of the white house in the background. In this context, it is nature and the storm that shape the motif. The tree becomes the most important element next to the white-clad figure in the foreground. Parenthetically noted, there is also reason to point out that this is a very rare loan, since it is the only Munch painting in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The exhibition has several rare loans.

Although it is important, “The Storm” is more of an exception in this exhibition. A broad presentation of his artistry would not have been possible without Munch’s interpretations of emotional and relational challenges. They are of course represented, but this is primarily an optimistic and positively oriented exhibition. And when it ends in a life-affirming, yellow-painted room with rarely shown drafts of the Aula decorations, then the impression is formed of a more complex and broadly oriented person than the depressed and occasionally mentally ill artist who carries the clichéd narrative.

Edvard Munch’s interest in nature was both practical and philosophical. His art and thinking were shaped by the currents of the times. As a supplement to the art, the exhibition shows selected examples from his library. Science made great progress in Munch’s time. He was broadly oriented, but he was also particularly concerned with certain theories that we see today as rather curious. Central to this is the theory of “crystallization”, which, according to the Munch Museum, “claimed that living organisms had arisen from inorganic (‘dead’) substances.” Whether Munch believed in this is uncertain, but he was so concerned about it that he used crystallization as an artistic starting point several times. The exhibition presents two works from 1894 and 1930 in which man emerges from a rock formation: Life is created from dead matter.

From these parareal motifs there is a big leap over to the earthy and bright paintings that derive their motifs from the cultivation of the earth. An entire wall of paintings early in the exhibition, with mowers, apple pickers and horses plowing the fields, sets the tone for the experience. The public is witnessing an exhibition that opens up an expanded understanding of artistry. The thread is taken further with naked bathers and pictures from the beach where the special colors make each individual stone appear as a soulful personality.

The exhibition’s presentation of Munch’s long-term interest in nature meets a trend of the times. Nature-oriented exhibitions abound nowadays, and it is easy to point out that the museum world has finally (read: only now) opened its eyes to the environmental disaster. While artists have been concerned with this for a long time, if not for all time. Therefore, it is felt to be unnecessarily educational when the museum points to parallels to contemporary environmental threats in the wall texts. Some comments are OK, others are unnecessary.

The Munch Museum makes other communication moves that are perceived to be far more successful. The Scottish writer Ali Smith’s essay in the catalog is based on “Dark spruce forest” (1899), a low-key painting with distinctive tree forms and a very special light. Several artists associated with the Smaltown Supersound record company, including Deathprod (Helge Sten) and Lost Girls (Jenny Hval and Håvard Volden), have composed music that forms a lovely, acoustic backdrop to the exhibition.

Research on Edvard Munch and his art has developed by leaps and bounds in recent years. With ground-breaking exhibitions such as “The modern eye” (Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011, shown in Oslo 2012), “Munch becomes “Munch”” (2008) and the large anniversary exhibition in 2013, the understanding of a long and content-rich artistry has been expanded. Previously, the image of him was shaped by the most famous paintings, with “The Scream” and “The Frieze of Life” as pegs on which we could hang Munch’s coat. Together with the aforementioned exhibitions, “Jordsvingninger” expands the image we form of Edvard Munch as a complex artist in constant development. Those who have followed the Munch Museum’s exhibitions for a while can now confidently say that they know him through his full wardrobe.