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The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., opened a new exhibit on Saturday of 60 of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s most important prints. Munch was known to change an image repeatedly over years, altering colors, lines, details and always experimenting with a variety of print media. He was a master at woodcut, lithography, and intaglio, and made constant adjustments to vary the design and impression of even his most famous pieces.

The exhibit is divided into 5 sections, each section focusing on different aspects of Munch’s modifications, grouping thematically connected pieces together and allowing visitors to compareThe Scream to The Scream and Madonna toMadonna.

The prints come from the National Gallery’s own collection and two privated collections: the Epstein Family Collection and the Collection of Catherine Woodard and Nelson Blitz Jr. These images have never all been collected and exhibited together before and won’t be seen anywhere else.
“Some are unique versions with coloring; they are extremely valuable, printed with different colors each time,” [Elizabeth Prelinger, an art history professor at Georgetown University] explained.
Among the master works, a series of eight Madonnas dated from 1895-1914.
The most famous is a Madonna depicted as a nude; in 1892 when it was sent to a show in Berlin it so shocked the public that the show was shut down.
“People were shocked, they felt it was virtually pornographic,” noted Prelinger, the co-curator.
Years later when he took part in a show in New York, in 1913, Munch sent off a sweeter, self-censored version of a similar Madonna.
The exhibit builds on new research on the exact dating of all the different impressions. It traces the original print made from a given woodblock, say, then pinpoints the future dates Munch printed from that woodblock making small alterations every time. Visitors will be able to see the evolution of Munch’s art and how he reinterpreted pieces in light of new ideas.

Although it is a highly unusual representation, this painting might be of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Until the 20th century Mary was usually represented in high art as a chaste, mature woman.True to the Norwegian cultural beliefs and way of life, the painting is a strong dose of conceivable realism.
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Sigrun Rafter, an art historian at the Oslo National Gallery suggests that Munch intended to represent Mary in the life-making act of intercourse, with the sanctity and sensuality of the union captured by Munch. The usual golden halo of Mary has been replaced with a red halo symbolizing the love and pain duality.
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The viewer's viewpoint is that of the man who is making love with her. Even in this unusual pose, she embodies some of the key elements of canonical representations of the Virgin: she has a quietness and a calm confidence about her.
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Her eyes are closed, expressing modesty, but she is simultaneously lit from above; her body is seen, in fact, twisting toward the light so as to catch more of it, even while she does not face it with her eyes. These elements suggest aspects of conventional representations

HITLER'S ARTWORKS ALSO MADE MUNCH TO CHANGE OVER THE VERSION STYLE OF MADONNA .. HOW...? READ THIS important ..history background.


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The period of creation of Madonna

In his literary diaries Munch describes in detail his affair with "Mrs Heiberg", actually Millie Thaulow (née Ihlen), the daughter of an admiral and married to Carl Thaulow in the naval medical corps and Fritz Thaulow's brother. In his literary writings he refers to himself as "Brandt" and sometimes as "Nansen". He has just returned from a three-week stay in Paris in 1885 and takes the boat down to Borre to spend the summer with his family. He notices "Mrs Heiberg" as she is taking leave of her husband, "The Captain", and recalls spicy stories he has heard about her. At Drøbak she buys some cherries, offers him some and they get into conversation. It turns out that both of them are to spend the summer at Borre, not far from one another.
One day when he is strolling along the road she passes in a carriage, her lap full of yellow flowers. She stops the carriage and with sparkling laughter offers him a flower for each hand. He gradually becomes tormented by his obsession with this woman and loses all concentration, becoming nervous and restless. It develops into a love affair which continues in Christiania that autumn but by Christmas is over. He wanders the streeets of Christiania constantly thinking he sees "Mrs Heiberg", wonders whether she still loves him and vacillates between feeling hurt and annoyance that she is constantly in his thoughts. The vacilation between guilt and recrimination leads to frustration, vertigo and feelings of angst. Their affair marks him for years to come and the remembered images of these painful situations become the basis of a series of pictures which together would constitute his chief work.
When five years later in St. Cloud he hears that she has gone to Vienna with a singer in order to become a "cabaret singer", a procession of images passes in his mind's eye "a little faded, like the slides in a laterna magica". He imagines her "as a singer - through the thick tobacco smoke and all the top hats - With all the gestures I knew so well - such as when she pushed forward her shoulders and puffed out her chest - she smiled over one shoulder with that voluptuous smile of hers - giving the men a come hither look - waggling her hips", and he notes:
What a deep impression she has left on my mind - so much so that no other image can completely efface it -
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Was it because she took my first kiss that she robbed me of the taste of life - Was it that she lied - deceived - that she one day suddenly shook the scales from my eyes so that I saw the medusa's head - saw life as unmitigated horror - saw that everything which had once had a rosy glow - now looked grey and empty
The images of love in Munch's Frieze of Life have their parallel in the literary texts which describe this, his first love affair. Therein lies its deepest secret. The core of the message is that the events of their brief affair are summoned up in memory and the suffering relived. His own first real experiences of love are portrayed with ruthless honesty, and he thus creates universal expressions of human feelings.
By the time Munch, eight years after the events occurred, sets out to transform them into pictures which became his life's work, he has of course created for himself a whole range of new experiences, experiences which, however, ultimately seem to confirm for him the portentous significance of the encounter with the first woman in his life.
Read more the introductions to ANGST and DEATH ...Next.==>>>
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