Edvard Munch ~ A Lifetime of Nervous Anxiety

In my younger years I used to get on my friend's nerves talking about Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Okay, I still do at times but I try to contain myself. I simply love his work. I wish I had been born in another place and time so I could have known him. I know the man was severely depressed, Zoloft would have done him wonders, but still he was an artistic genius. Lucky for me, and some 16,000 Facebook fans he willed a large portion of his estate to the city of Oslo. To house this vast collection they built the Munch Museum. His sister, Inger Munch, donated additional items so today the public has access to over half of his life's work. Still in existence; 1,100 paintings, 18,000 prints and 2,240 books. Needless to say, he never had much of a personal life. In fact, he spent the last two decades of his life in almost complete solitude painting. If you aren't an artist you understandably find this fact very sad but to those of us who are there's a part of us that always wants to be painting....a part that envy's the ability Munch had which enabled him to simply be, live and paint.

Unfortunately, not all of Edvard Munch's devotees are honest. In 2004 two masked gunmen entered the Munch Museum and made off in an Audi station wagon with the Madonna and the Scream. I can't tell you how happy I was when I read in a Boston newspaper in 2006 that the paintings had been recovered. I called a friend in Washington but being neither an artist nor art lover he failed to comprehend my excitement. But, I'm sure many of you here read the news and smiled too. Once more these two great masterpieces are safe at home in the Munch Museum. Only this time they are guarded much more closely.



It's hard to believe that someone would try to steal a Master's legacy. These paintings are such a vidal part of art world. They serve as evidence of an important fact. What makes art valuable is not what we see but how what we see makes us feel. Standing in front of these paintings I can still feel the powerful overwhelming nervous anxiety that haunted Munch daily. In the Scream he actually managed to capture that which we have all felt in our darkest hours. The urge to just release all of our pain and frustration into one primeval sound.


"When I paint, I never think of selling. People simply fail to understand that we paint in order to experiment and to develop ourselves as we strive for greater heights."

Edvard Munch


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