Prints and Paintings by Edvard Munch @ Harvard Art Museums: Gift from the Collection of Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus

The Harvard Art Museums announce an extraordinary gift from the collection of Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus: sixty-two prints and two paintings by the Norwegian Master Edvard Munch (1863–1944)

Left: Edvard Munch, Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1906–8. Oil on canvas. Busch-Reisinger Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection, 2023.551. Right: Edvard Munch, Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), 1899. Woodcut printed in orange, yellow, black, and dark greenish blue on tan wove paper. Fogg Museum, The Philip and Lynn Straus Collection, 2023.602. Photos © President and Fellows of Harvard College

The Harvard Art Museums announce an extraordinary gift from the collection of Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus; the gift comprises sixty-two prints and two paintings by Edvard Munch as well as one print by Jasper Johns. The bequest is a final act of generosity from the Strauses following a relationship with the museums that began in the 1980s and that includes multiple gifts of artworks over the years; the support of a 1990s-era expansion, renovation, and endowment of the museums’ conservation center; and the endowment of specific conservation and curatorial positions. The Spring 2025 exhibition Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking will feature many of the recently gifted works.

The works by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) in the Strauses’ bequest join an important concentration of paintings and prints by the artist already at Harvard and build upon multiple past gifts and assisted purchases of Munch’s work by the couple—117 works altogether. The total number of works by the artist in the Harvard Art Museums collections is now 142 (8 paintings and 134 prints), constituting one of the largest and most significant collections of works by Munch in the United States.

Lynn G. and Philip A. Straus (Harvard Class of 1937) have been among the Harvard Art Museums’ most generous benefactors. Both were dedicated patrons of the arts and education, supporting libraries, museums, and institutions affiliated with early childhood education, civil rights, and human services. In 1969, the couple purchased their first print by Munch, Salome (1903), an acquisition that marked the start of their passion for the artist’s work. Following a commitment to a $7.5 million gift in 1994, the museums’ conservation center—the oldest fine arts conservation treatment, research, and training facility in the United States—was renamed the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies. The couple have also supported vital conservation positions of staff who specialize in works on paper, as well as curatorial internship and fellowship positions in the museums’ prints and drawings departments. Philip, a New York investment advisor and portfolio manager, passed away in 2004, and their bequest comes to Harvard following Lynn’s passing in 2023. In total, the couple gifted or enabled purchases of 128 works to the Harvard Art Museums over their lifetimes, including works by Max Beckmann, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Timothy David Mayhew, and Emil Nolde.

“We are immensely grateful to Philip and Lynn Straus for their generosity and stewardship over these many years,” said Sarah Ganz Blythe, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “Their enthusiasm for the work of Edvard Munch ensures generations of students and visitors can experience and study his prints and paintings here in Cambridge. Through their distinct style of collecting Munch’s prints—seeking out and acquiring multiple images of the same theme—they created a collection that affords deep insights into the artist’s practice and is therefore a perfect match for a university museum with a strong teaching and research mission.” Sarah Ganz Blythe continued: “Their support of the conservators and conservation scientists in the Straus Center has had a transformative impact on the numerous fellows who have trained there, as well as provided a facility where every object in our collections can be cared for and scientifically researched.”

The Strauses’ recent bequest includes Munch’s iconic painting Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) (1906–8) and Train Smoke (1910), both of which are now in the collection of the Busch-Reisinger Museum, one of the Harvard Art Museums’ three constituent museums. These paintings join Winter in Kragerø (1915) and Inger in a Red Dress (1896), previously given to the museum by Lynn in memory of Philip in 2012.

In Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), a man and woman stand side by side yet still feel isolated from one another, facing toward the sea and away from the viewer, each embedded in a colorfully sedimented landscape. Edvard Munch first painted this subject around 1892 and returned to it repeatedly in his printmaking and painting thereafter. Train Smoke, which depicts nature disrupted but also dynamically animated by the Industrial Revolution, is a landscape unlike those by Munch already in the collection. Both paintings demonstrate Munch’s experimentation with color and surface texture, through his varied use of thick impasto, diluted paint drips, and even areas of bare canvas, a hallmark of Munch’s artistic legacy.

“It is hard to overestimate the significance of Munch’s painting Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones). Capturing the tension between proximity and distance—spatial as well as emotional—the work addresses the universal theme of the human condition,” said Lynette Roth, the Daimler Curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at the Harvard Art Museums. “The Strauses had generously loaned their painting for the inaugural installation of the renovated Harvard Art Museums building that opened in November 2014, and we are thrilled to be able to teach with and display it alongside the other significant paintings from their collection going forward.”

Over the course of 2024, both paintings have undergone cleaning and other treatments by Kate Smith, Senior Conservator of Paintings and Head of the Paintings Lab, and Ellen Davis, Associate Paintings Conservator, both in the museums’ Straus Center. Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones) had been varnished at some point in its history, which is not consistent with Munch’s practice of leaving his canvases without a unified glossy surface. Train Smoke needed paint stabilization and cleaning to remove atmospheric grime. After careful study, removal of the varnish and grime from the paint surface, and treatment of small areas of paint loss, the paintings are now in closer alignment with their original appearance.

The 62 prints in the Strauses’ recent bequest have entered the collection of the Fogg Museum. The majority are highly prized impressions that Munch exhibited in his lifetime, and they speak to the aesthetic he preferred for the display of his prints: some of the impressions are cut to the image, and adhered to larger, heavy brown paper, which Munch signed and often dated. Also included are multiple states of single compositions. They showcase the range of techniques the artist used in his printmaking practice: drypoint, etching, lithography, mezzotint, and woodcut, and innovations through the addition of hand-applied color such as watercolor, crayon, and oil, or printing with woodblocks sawn into pieces.

“With this bequest, the Harvard Art Museums have become an important destination for the research of Munch’s prints,” said Elizabeth M. Rudy, the Carl A. Weyerhaeuser Curator of Prints at the Harvard Art Museums. “There are innumerable ways the collection offers opportunities for teaching, exhibition, and further study. Noteworthy for its groups of versions, states, and variations of single compositions, this collection offers wide-ranging insights into Munch’s innovative practice as a printmaker.”

Highlights from the Strauses’ recent gift of prints by Edvard Munch include:

• Six prints from the series Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones), ranging in date from 1894 to 1917, join an impression that the couple previously gifted in 1991. Together, they showcase the various intriguing woodcut and etching techniques the artist utilized and also show how he manipulated his jigsaw woodblocks to print different parts of a single work in different colors. Closely related to this group is the gift of Young Woman on the Beach (1896), which is a rare example of the artist’s brief exploration of the mezzotint technique.

• Three versions of Vampire II, dated 1895–1902 and all either hand colored or printed in color, join a black lithographic state from 1895 that the couple previously assisted with purchasing. These prints show how Edvard Munch sometimes combined lithographs with hand coloring and also used woodblocks to add color.

• Four impressions of Madonna, dated 1895–1902, join a black lithographic state and a drypoint from 1894 that the couple previously assisted with purchasing. The lithographic prints show a range of examples of hand-applied color (drawn/painted) and printed color.

• One impression of the woodcut Woman’s Head against the Shore (1899) joins two other impressions from the same year, both previous gifts from the Strauses: Woman’s Head against the Shore (1899), printed in turquoise-green and pale and dark orange inks; and Woman’s Head against the Shore (1899), printed in red and three different colors of green ink. These prints show how Munch selectively printed his jigsaw woodblocks, omitting a piece from one of the blocks (the water) in two of the impressions.

• Four different self-portraits are the first such representations of the artist to enter the collection: Self-Portrait (1895), lithograph in crayon and tusche printed in black ink; Self-Portrait with Cigar (1908–9), lithograph printed in black ink; Self-Portrait (1911–12), woodcut; and Self-Portrait with a Bottle of Wine (1930), lithograph printed in black ink.

• There are also rare examples of prints that Edvard Munch printed himself with his small hand-crank press, including Melancholy II (1898), a woodcut (sawn in three pieces) printed in black, red, blue, and yellow inks.

The Jasper Johns print included in the bequest, Savarin (1982), is a lithograph and monotype; it depicts a Savarin-brand coffee can filled with paintbrushes of various sizes. The backdrop incorporates the artist’s signature “crosshatch” work of the 1970s, which is represented in other prints by Johns in the museums’ collections. The arm shown at the bottom of the print is a reference to the skeletal arm shown in Munch’s Self-Portrait from 1895—a connection the couple noted by hanging the two prints near each other in their own home.

HARVARD ART MUSEUMS

32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

harvardartmuseums.org

Updated 06-03-2025

Impressionism and Beyond @ Saint Louis Art Museum

Impressionism and Beyond

Saint Louis Art Museum

February 1 - July 31, 2022

“Due to a surge of COVID positive cases among our staff and the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, the Museum is closed to the public. At this time, we anticipate reopening to the public on Tuesday, February 1"

EDGAR DEGAS

French, 1834–1917

"Ballet Dancers in the Wings", c.1890–1900

Pastel; 28 x 26 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 24:1935

ODILON REDON

French, 1840–1916 

"Eyes in the Forest", 1882

Charcoal on pale brown paper; 

framed: 23 x 19 1/2 x 1 1/2 inches 

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morton D. May 234:1959

The Saint Louis Art Museum presents “Impressionism and Beyond,” an exhibition of works on paper drawn exclusively from the museum collections.

Through 59 European drawings, pastels and prints dating from the 1850s to the 1930s, “Impressionism and Beyond” highlights the many conversations occurring in the art world between tradition and innovation, representation and abstraction, and the artist’s studio and the art market.

During this period, European life underwent dramatic social, political and psychological changes, which contributed to significant artistic developments. Artists responded to this fluid environment in many ways—visualizing modern life as it was, but also viewing the world through an imaginative lens.

The exhibition reveals that, at this same moment, new attitudes about artistic practice and expressions of modernity elevated drawing and printmaking to prominence among the avant-garde.

In France, which dominated progressive trends, the Impressionists broke with traditional academic modes of representation through formal experimentation and innovative print and drawing techniques. Mary Cassatt, for example, elevated color printmaking to new heights through her adaptation of the Japanese aesthetic that was taking Paris by storm in the 1890s, while her Impressionist colleague Edgar Degas sought multiple avenues for experimentation in print. Degas and other Impressionists also developed inventive drawing styles that allowed them to capture movement and intense effects of color and light in their works.

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944 

"The Scream", 1895

Lithograph; image: 13 3/4 x 27 1/4 inches, 

sheet: 23 1/2 x 16 3/8 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum 

Private Collection 2019.348

EDVARD MUNCH

Norwegian, 1863–1944

"Moonlight", 1896; printed c. 1906

Color woodcut on Japan paper; 

image: 15 13/16 x 18 9/16 inches, 

sheet: 18 7/8 x 23 5/16 inches

Saint Louis Art Museum

Gift of General and Mrs. Leif J. Sverdrup 338:1952

This experimental impulse in turn provided a launchpad for later generations to push formal and technical innovations even further. Paul Cézanne’s early-20th-century watercolors transformed natural environments into abstract washes of color, while Odilon Redon focused on the expressive power of black to create images that blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. Edvard Munch rethought the ancient medium of woodcut printmaking, cutting his blocks into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle to print in multiple colors.

“Impressionism and Beyond” explores several themes that guided artists in their examinations of modernity. Subjects of modern urban life such as the domestic interior and the modern woman of fashion abound during this period. Meanwhile, experimental treatments of figures and landscapes highlight news ways artists viewed the world around them, sometimes giving way to quirky, even frightening, visions.

“Impressionism and Beyond” is curated by Abigail Yoder, research assistant, and Elizabeth Wyckoff, curator of prints, drawings and photographs.

SAINT LOUIS ART MUSEUM

One Fine Arts Drive, Forest Park, Saint Louis, Missouri 63110

www.slam.org

Edvard Munch @ British Museum, London - Love and Angst

Edvard Munch: love and angst
British Museum, London
11 April – 21 July 2019

The British Museum presents a major new exhibition on the work of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944). Edvard Munch: love and angst focuses on Edvard Munch’s remarkable and experimental prints – an art form which made his name and at which he excelled throughout his life – and examines his unparalleled ability to depict raw human emotion. It is the largest exhibition of Edvard Munch’s prints in the UK for 45 years.

The exhibition is a collaboration with Norway’s Munch Museum, and includes nearly 50 prints from their collection, one of the biggest loans of prints the Oslo-based Museum has given internationally. Displayed alongside important Munch works from the British Museum collection and other loans from the UK and Europe, the 83 artworks on show will together demonstrate the artist’s skill and creativity in expressing the feelings and experiences of the human condition – from love and desire, to jealousy, loneliness, anxiety and grief.

A major highlight of the exhibition is Edvard Munch’s The Scream which is one of the most iconic images in art history. The British Museum displays a rare lithograph in black and white which Edvard Munch created following a painted version and two drawings of the image. It was this black and white print which was disseminated widely during his lifetime and made him famous. Few copies survive and this is the first time any version of The Scream are on show in the UK for a decade.

Other highlights of the exhibition include the eerie but remarkable Vampire II which is generally considered to be one of his most elaborate and technically accomplished prints; the controversial Madonna, an erotic image which features an explicit depiction of swimming sperm and a foetus and provoked outrage at the time; and Head by Head which is a stunning print representing the complex relationship between human beings. All three of these prints are displayed alongside their original matrix (the physical objects which Edvard Munch used to transfer ink onto paper) which have never been seen in the UK before. Matrices are usually lost, but Edvard Munch was determined to keep control of his. It is rare to be able to show these alongside the prints of such a famous artist.

The exhibition is also show how Edvard Munch’s artistic vision was shaped by the radical ideas expressed in art, literature, science and theatre in Europe during his lifetime. His most innovative period of printmaking, between the 1890s and the end of the First World War, coincided with a great period of societal change in Europe which Munch experienced through constant travel across the continent on the vast rail network. The exhibition pays particular attention to three European cities that had major influence on him and his printmaking – Kristiania (Oslo), Paris and Berlin. A small selection of Edvard Munch’s personal postcards and maps are used to give a flavour of Edvard Munch’s journeys.

Edvard Munch is regarded as one the greatest artists of the early 20th century, and was a pioneer of modern art. Born near Kristiania (today’s Oslo) in 1863, his childhood was plagued by family death and illness. His later life saw him lead a bohemian lifestyle and was marked by frequent tumultuous love affairs. Two key sections of the exhibition demonstrate his passion, but also his fear, of women. He was deeply influenced by contemporary ideas, thinkers and artists including Max Klinger, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Henrik Ibsen and his work would go on to influence many other artists both during his lifetime and after his death in Oslo in 1944. A number of works by other artists are displayed here to highlight these links.

BRITISH MUSEUM
Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG
www.britishmuseum.org

Hodler Monet Munch @ Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris : Peindre l'impossible

Hodler Monet Munch. Peindre l’impossible
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Jusqu'au 22 janvier 2017

Ferdinand Hodler

La Femme courageuse, 1886

Huile sur toile, 98,9 x 171 cm

Bâle, Kunstmuseum

© Kunstmuseum Basel, Martin P. Bühler

 

Ferdinand Hodler
Le Lac de Thoune et la chaîne du Stockhorn, 1904
Huile sur toile, 71 x 105 cm
Collection Christoph Blocher

Pourquoi réunir le temps d’une exposition Ferdinand Hodler, Claude Monet et Edvard Munch ? Un Français né en 1840 et mort en 1926, un Suisse né en 1853 et mort en 1918 et un Norvégien né en 1863 et mort en 1944 : la composition du trio peut paraître étrange. Ils ne se sont même pas rencontrés, et, s’il ne fait aucun doute qu’Hodler et Munch ont souvent regardé Monet, la réciproque n’est  pas démontrée. Circonstance aggravante : l’histoire de l’art a pris l’habitude de les classer dans des catégories différentes, impressionnisme, postimpressionnisme ou symbolisme. Or c’est ce classement que cette exposition se propose de remettre en cause en montrant que leurs oeuvres ont bien plus à se dire entre elles qu’on ne le croirait.

Claude Monet

Impression, soleil levant, 1872

Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet

© Christian Baraja

Claude Monet
La Débâcle à Vétheuil, 1880
Huile sur toile, 60 x 100 cm
Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
© Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Une évidence historique d’abord : ces peintres sont des contemporains, bien qu’ils appartiennent à des générations différentes. Ils vivent dans le même monde en cours de mutation, l’Europe d’avant et d’après la Première Guerre Mondiale. Ils en éprouvent les mutations techniques, politiques et sociales. Celles-ci affectent leur mode de vie et leurs pratiques artistiques. Ainsi tous trois sont-ils  des voyageurs et découvrent des lieux et des motifs auxquels, un demi-siècle plus tôt, ils n’auraient pu accéder. Monet se rend en Norvège, Hodler monte jusqu’aux glaciers alpins, Munch va et vient du nord au sud de l’Europe. Ainsi sont-ils aussi les contemporains du développement accéléré des sciences physiques et naturelles qui procèdent par expérimentations et séries – modèles que  tous trois, à des degrés divers, introduisent dans leur processus créatif.

Edvard Munch

La Pluie, 1902

Huile sur toile, 86,5 x 115,5 cm

Oslo, Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design / Photo © Børre Høstland

Edvard Munch
Le Soleil, 1912
Huile sur toile, 123 x 176,5 cm
Oslo, Munchmuseet
Photo © Munch Museum

Ces expérimentations, ces séries, c’est-à-dire une conception méthodique, tous trois la mettent en oeuvre pour affronter les difficultés de la représentation de motifs qui, en raison même de leurs particularités, deviennent pour eux des obsessions. « J’ai repris encore des choses impossibles à faire : de l’eau avec de l’herbe qui ondule dans le fond… c’est admirable à voir, mais c’est à rendre  fou de vouloir faire ça. » Ces mots sont de Monet, mais ils pourraient être ceux du peintre qui, jusqu’à sa mort, s’obstine à étudier l’horizon des Alpes depuis sa fenêtre, de l’aube au crépuscule – Hodler. Ou de celui qui, insatisfait, revient jusqu’à la dépression sur les mêmes motifs, une maison rouge, des marins dans la neige, le couchant regardé en face, la nuit boréale – Munch. Comment  peindre de face l’éclat éblouissant du soleil, avec de simples couleurs à l’huile sur une simple toile ? Comment peindre la neige dont l’éclat et la blancheur ne cessent de varier à la moindre nuance de la lumière ? Comment suggérer les mouvements et variations de la lumière sur l’eau, malgré l’immobilité de la peinture ? Tous trois mettent ainsi la peinture à l’épreuve de l’impossible.

L’exposition les suit pas à pas dans ces recherches en comparant sans cesse leurs tentatives, en organisant des confrontations visuelles entre les trois artistes dans un espace repensé pour l’occasion afin d’accueillir une vingtaine d’oeuvre de chacun. Les sujets, c’est-à-dire les problèmes : haute montagne, soleil, neige, eau vive. Le parcours les réunit une dernière fois sous le signe de la  couleur dégagée du devoir d’imitation, jusqu’à leurs oeuvres ultimes, elliptiques et libres – si libres qu’elles n’ont guère été comprises de leurs contemporains. Grâce à partenariat exceptionnel entre le Munchmuseet d’Oslo et musée Marmottan Monet, elle présente des oeuvres du peintre norvégien qui, pour certaines, n’ont jamais été vues à Paris. La générosité de plusieurs collections privées  suisses permet d’y réunir un ensemble Hodler non moins exceptionnel, que ce soit par sa qualité ou sa rareté.

Commissaire de l'exposition : Philippe Dagen

MUSEE MARMOTTAN MONET
www.marmottan.fr

Munch and Expressionism @ Neue Galerie, New York

Munch and Expressionism
Neue Galerie, New York
February 18 - June 13, 2016

On February 18, 2016, Neue Galerie New York will open "Munch and Expressionism," an exhibition that examines Edvard Munch’s influence on his German and Austrian contemporaries, as well as their influence upon him. The show will offer a compelling new look at works by the Norwegian artist, whose painting The Scream has become a symbol of modern angst. The Neue Galerie is the sole venue for the exhibition, where it will be on view through June 13, 2016.

The show, curated by Expressionist scholar Dr. Jill Lloyd, has been organized in tandem with Munch specialist Dr. Reinhold Heller. Dr. Lloyd has assembled several important exhibitions for the Neue Galerie, including "Van Gogh and Expressionism" in 2007 and "Ferdinand Hodler: View to Infinity" in 2012. As an independent art historian, she has also curated exhibitions at the Tate, the Royal Academy in London, and the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. She has written extensively on Expressionist art.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) was highly regarded for his exploration of dark themes, including alienation, sin, and human vulnerability. Munch’s use of vivid color intensifies the emotional power of his subject matter, an approach which helped to pave the way for an entirely new attitude towards art during the early twentieth century. Although much has been written about the relationship between Munch’s personal life and his art, this exhibition is the first thorough study of the artist’s work in the context of his German and Austrian peers.

The exhibition will be comprised of approximately 35 paintings and 50 works on paper from both public and private collections worldwide. The German artists included in the exhibition are Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Gabriele Münter, and Emile Nolde, and the Austrians included are Richard Gerstl, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. The curator will compare all of these artists’ approaches to key themes such as adolescence, urban anxiety, and self-portraiture, and to innovative developments in printmaking during this time. The exhibition will include several works that have never before been seen in the United States.

A fully illustrated catalogue, published by Prestel Verlag, will accompany the exhibition featuring contributions by leading scholars in the field, including Patricia Berman, Nelson Blitz, Alison Chang, Jay Clarke, Reinhold Heller, Jill Lloyd, Nils Ohlsen, and Øystein Uvstedt. This authoritative and beautifully illustrated book will explore Munch’s impact on German and Austrian artists of the period within an Expressionist context.

Neue Galerie New York
Museum for German and Austrian Art
1048 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
www.meuegalerie.org

Edvard Munch: Symbolism in Print at Princeton University Art Museum

Edvard Munch: Symbolism in Print, Masterworks from the Museum of Modern Art, New York
Princeton University Art Museum
February 8 - June 8, 2014

Revered as one of the most emotionally powerful painters in modern art, Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is also considered among the greatest printmakers of the modern period. Edvard Munch: Symbolism in Print, Masterworks from the Museum of Modern Art, New York traces the artist’s process of translating his personal meditations on the anxieties of life, sexuality, and death into graphic form in arresting etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts, often experimenting with the same image in more than one technique. The exhibition includes twenty-six Edvard Munch’s signature prints.

“The repercussions of Munch’s achievement—his incisive commentary on the psychological tolls of modern life—continue to be felt throughout visual art and culture,” said Museum Director James Steward. “This exhibition reminds us that it is in his prints that we may find most forcefully the raw, unfiltered emotion of his images.”

A poetic visionary and master of the idiom, Edvard Munch was influenced by the emotional insights of Vincent van Gogh as well as the vibrant color and symbolic forms of Paul Gauguin, whose Tahitian woodcuts provided inspiration for Munch’s innovative development as a printmaker. Yet while Gauguin’s woodcuts evoked an imagined Polynesian idyll, Munch turned his prophetic vision inward, capturing what he perceived to be universal experiences of modern life and often drawing from personal memories of his often tragic past. In this way, Munch might incarnate better than any other artist the tenets of Symbolism, a movement that argued that art must reject rational naturalism and move beyond physical reality to embrace the imagination, dreams, and freedom from artistic convention. Best known for his painting The Scream (1893), seen by many as the perfect embodiment of modern-day psychic distress, Munch was in turn instrumental to the development of early twentieth-century European Expressionism. His vividly haunting images have resonated for more than a century, growing more relevant to contemporary sensibilities.

Edvard Munch: Symbolism in Print is organized by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, by Chief Curator Emerta Deborah Wey and Starr Figura, The Phyllis Ann and Walter Borten Associate Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books. The exhibition is curated at Princeton by Calvin Brown, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Princeton University Art Museum.

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUM
Princeton, NJ 08544
www.artmuseum.princeton.edu

Warhol After Munch Louisiana Museum, Denmark

Warhol After Munch
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark
Through 12 September 2010

The exhibition Warhol After Munch has a selection of Edvard Munch’s four major print works in various versions and 30 of Andy Warhol’s large, colourful versions of them.

It may seem the strangest choice of all: to place Edvard Munch, whom most people view as the painter of the innermost reaches of the soul, alongside Andy Warhol, who is normally classed as the apostle of the surface. But there are three good reasons to do so.

First, in 1984 Warhol actually made a long series of prints that are copies or rather versions of four major subjects by Munch – the iconic The Scream, Madonna, Self-Portrait and The Brooch.

Secondly, Warhol and Munch both worked intensively with the print medium, with the concepts of quantity and repetition as guidelines. Both made an endless number of prints, and both were preoccupied with varying details from sheet to sheet.

Thirdly, the juxtaposition of Warhol and Munch makes an assertive curatorial point, since the exhibition wants to modulate the image we have of the two artists by showing that Warhol is less superficial than he is normally viewed and Munch correspondingly more a painter of the surface than we think. They are both artists who knew the power of a clear artistic idiom that almost has the impact of the advertising aesthetic, but who knew at the same time that this does not preclude content.

WHARHOL AFTER MUNCH

4 June - 12 September 2010

Louisiana Museum of Modern Art
Gl. Strandvej 13 - 3050 Humlebaek , Denmark

Exposition Carte blanche à Bedri Baykam, Hommage à Edvard Munch, Pinacothèque de Paris

Exposition Art contemporain > France > Ile-de-France > Paris 75008 > Pinacothèque de Paris

Exposition Art contemporain > Bedri Baykam

 

PINACOTHÈQUE DE PARIS

Carte blanche à Bedri Baykam - Hommage à Edvard Munch

Jusqu'au 18 juillet 2010

 

  Bedri Baykam, Munch, une vie, 2010. Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 240 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam.    Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

C’est en 2002, lors de la deuxième biennale d’art contemporain de Buenos Aires où il est juré, que Marc Restellini remarque Bedri Baykam. Fasciné par un style débridé et une vraie liberté de ton  où se croisent un monde de références et un expressionnisme très transgressif, Marc Restellini pense naturellement à Bedri Baykam pour une «  carte blanche » en hommage à Edvard Munch. Marc Restellini voit également en Bedri Baykam une possibilité de donner la parole à un intellectuel turc très engagé qui réintroduit le rapport du politique à l’art dans un contexte tendu sur fond de décor d’une entrée de la Turquie dans l’Europe.

 

  Bedri Baykam, La Sirène, 2010. Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 240 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam.     Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

 

  Bedri Baykam, Résurrection ambiguë de l’amour fou, 2010 
  Travail lenticulaire. 120 x 90 cm. 
  © Bedri Baykam. Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

A travers un ensemble de treize tableaux en relief, de grands formats, où se mêlent les graffitis, le collage  et la photo, Bedri Baykam réinterprète l’oeuvre d’Edvard Munch. L’artiste s’est emparé du procédé lenticulaire, technique utilisée habituellement pour donner du relief aux cartes postales et l’a réadaptée à travers une mixité de matériaux et de champs optiques permettant de développer une quatrième dimension donnant un effet de relief à ses toiles, celle du temps : trait d’union entre le passé, le présent et l’avenir. Cette nouvelle technique qu’il a choisie d’appeler « les 4D » suscite depuis 2007 beaucoup d’intérêt en Europe et aux États-Unis.

 

  Bedri Baykam, Cabaret - Paris, 2010. Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 240 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam.   Courtesy de l’artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

  Bedri Baykam, L’enfant malade, 2010
  Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 120 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

Ses thèmes de prédilection oscillent entre un érotisme plutôt rabelaisien et une réinterprétation de l’histoire de l’art, sans omettre surtout la toile de fond politique perceptible dans la plupart de ses travaux. Car Bedri Baykam, ardent kémaliste, également écrivain, est souvent considéré comme l’un des principaux intellectuels turcs opposés au mouvement islamiste qui domine la scène politique en Turquie actuellement. Après avoir mis en peinture ses « Couches Transparentes » (1998-2000) et exploité divers champs de lumière sur ses photos digitales, (série «  Intrigues Féminines » 2000-2002) il a également produit une série de «  Transparences matérielles » (2006-2007). Le résultat de ces expériences sur la surface lenticulaire lui a permis de creuser en profondeur cette sensation de vertige et de voyage dans le temps.

 

  Bedri Baykam, Mort Orgasmique (Madone), 2010
  Travail lenticulaire.  185 x 120 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

  Bedri Baykam, Voyage dans l’inconnu, 2010
  Travail lenticulaire. 120 x 90 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

A l’occasion de cette «  carte blanche » Bedri Baykam est allé à Oslo sur les pas d’Edvard Munch, poussant ses investigations jusqu’à Aasgaardstrand, village de pêcheurs où l’artiste norvégien fit subir à ses toiles son «  traitement de cheval ».

 

  Bedri Baykam, Puberté (1), 2010
  Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 120 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

  Bedri Baykam, Puberté (2), 2010
  Travail lenticulaire. 120 x 90 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

Bedri Baykam, La danse de la vie et le sphinx, 2010
Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 120 cm.
© Bedri Baykam
Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

Parallèlement  à  l’exposition  Edvard Munch ou l’« anti-Cri » ses versions  personnelles sur la « Madone », « Le Baiser », « Puberté », « La Sirène », « La danse de la vie », « L’enfant malade », ou encore « Jaeger et les autres » et inévitablement « Le Cri », transcrivent l’importance du vécu personnel dans l’œuvre de Munch : une orchestration se jouant entre ses sources d’inspiration, ses nombreuses réflexions et explorations artistiques, ses tourments et ses démons. Un Munch multidimensionnel à vrai dire, pure synthèse de complexité, de sensibilité et de créativité à l’état brut.

 

  Bedri Baykam, Le Cri, 2010. Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 240 cm.
  © Bedri Baykam.    Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

  Bedri Baykam, Le Baiser, 2010.
  Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 120 cm. 
  © Bedri Baykam.
  Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

 

Bedri Baykam, La Bohème de Christiania (Hans Jaeger et les autres), 2010 
Travail lenticulaire. 185 x 240 cm.
© Bedri Baykam.    Courtesy de l'artiste / Pinacothèque de Paris

 

 

Carte blanche à Bedri Baykam – Hommage à Edvard Munch
15 avril au 18 juillet 2010

PINACOTHÈQUE DE PARIS
28, place de la Madeleine
75008 Paris
Tél. : 01 42 68 02 01

Directeur : Marc RESTELLINI
Assisté de Françoise KÜNZI

HORAIRES ET TARIFS
La Pinacothèque de Paris est ouverte tous les jours de 10h30 à 18h. Fermeture de la billetterie à 17h15. Le samedi 1er mai et le mercredi 14 juillet 2010, ouverture de 14h à 18h. Nocturne tous les mercredis jusqu’à 21h (fermeture de la billetterie à 20h15)
L’exposition « Carte blanche à Bedri Baykam – Hommage à Edvard Munch » se déroule dans le patio du musée en accès libre.

ACCES
Métro : lignes 8, 12 et 14, station Madeleine, sortie place de la Madeleine
Bus 42 et 52, arrêt : Madeleine et Madeleine-Vignon. Bus 24, 84 et 94, arrêt : Madeleine
Stations Vélib’ : face 4 Bd Malesherbes / 4 rue Godot de Mauroy / 4 place de la Madeleine
Parcs de stationnement : Madeleine Tronchet Vinci / Rue Chauveau-Lagarde / Rue Caumartin
Le musée est accessible aux personnes à mobilité réduite.

 

A LIRE AUSSI SUR WANAFOTO

Exposition retrospective Jean-Michel Basquiat, Fondation Beyeler

Strip-Tease integral. Retropective Ben, MAC Lyon

Edvard Munch – Signes de l’art moderne – Fondation Beyeler

Edvard Munch

Signes de l’art moderne

Fondation Beyeler, Riehen / Bâle

18 mars – 15 juillet 2007

Pionnier de l’art moderne, précurseur et fondateur de l’expressionniste, le peintre et graveur norvégien EDVARD MUNCH (1863-1944) est un des plus grands noms de l’histoire de l’art. La Fondation Beyeler consacre à Edvard Munch, une grande rétrospective,  la plus importante exposition de ses oeuvres organisée en Suisse depuis une vingtaine d'années.

Edvard Munch porte un regard pénétrant, proche de l’obsession, sur la solitude, l’amour et la mort. Son oeuvre traite de la crise, de la précarité et de la disparition de l’individu au siècle de l’industrialisation. Ses propres ruptures existentielles prêtent à sa création une cohérence suprême.

Cette exposition s’interroge sur la modernité des oeuvres d’Edvard Munch et présente le peintre comme un maître de la matière et de l’expérience artistique. Son caractère thématique permet de redécouvrir sous un jour nouveau des œuvres que l’on croyait pourtant connaître et réunit, à côté d’icônes de l’histoire de l’art comme « L’Enfant malade », « Madonna », « Mélancolie », « Vampire », « Puberté » ou « Autoportrait en enfer », de nombreuses pièces qui n’ont plus été montrées, ou rarement seulement, depuis la mort de l’artiste ; elles proviennent de près de 50 collections publiques et de plus de 50 collections particulières. Les œuvres très colorées de Munch témoignent de son apport original autant que décisif à l’art moderne. Pour la première fois, le thème de l’apparition et de la disparition du motif, qui est une particularité majeure et novatrice de son oeuvre, fait l’objet d’une présentation spécifique.

Le traitement du substrat du tableau et de la matière n’a rien de conventionnel chez Edvard Munch. Il franchit les frontières traditionnelles entre les différents modes d’expression artistique — gravure, dessin, photographie, collage et peinture. Devenir et disparition, destruction et création, autant d’états que le peintre représente de façons diverses : cela va de la dissolution des figures et de leur fusion dans le fond au dépassement opiniâtre de la marge du tableau et au grattage de la surface picturale, sans oublier l’exposition de nombreuses œuvres à l’air libre, soumises aux effets de la pluie et de la neige. Par ce « remède de cheval », Edward Munch n’intègre pas seulement dans son processus de création le hasard, mais également la décomposition naturelle. Dans son oeuvre tardive, il érige ce qui relève du processus et du temporaire, disparition physique concrète de la matière, en expression générale du caractère éphémère d’une modernité fondée sur la matière. En cela notamment, Edward Munch offre, dès le tournant du siècle, un aperçu de l’évolution artistique du XXe siècle.

Cette exposition présente 130 toiles, 85 dessins et gravures, retraçant toutes les phases de création de l’artiste. Elle s’articule en sept chapitres, et commence par la rupture précoce de Munch avec le naturalisme scandinave dans des oeuvres comme « L’Enfant malade » (1880–1892), dont la présentation en 1886 provoqua une indignation générale. Malgré leurs commentaires accablants — « facture grossière » ou « esquisses à moitié inachevées » —, les critiques n’ont pas pu s’empêcher, dès les premières années, de reconnaître le rôle de précurseur de Munch et l’originalité de ses visions artistiques.

L’intérêt d’Edvard Munch pour les expériences picturales des années berlinoises (1892–1895), objet du deuxième chapitre, conduit à un changement de style marquant et à des oeuvres d’une expressivité incomparable. Ses motifs, influencés par l’impressionnisme et le post-impressionnisme français, cèdent alors la place au thème de l’angoisse existentielle de l’homme civilisé, de la solitude et de la douleur. On voit naître avec « Madonna », « Puberté », « Baiser » ou « Vampire » de grandes œuvres qui l’accompagneront toute sa vie et s’associeront plus tard en une « frise de vie ».

Le troisième chapitre de l’exposition aborde les incroyables expériences que Munch a faites dans le domaine de la gravure pendant ses années parisiennes, en 1896/1897. Ses toiles deviennent ensuite plus monumentales et plus planes. Après des années de bohème marquées par une crise personnelle et d’innombrables voyages en Europe, ainsi qu’un changement de style caractéristique, les oeuvres de Munch prennent une intensité chromatique et une expressivité uniques, comme le révèle de façon impressionnante le quatrième chapitre (1898–1909) de l’exposition.

Après sa dépression nerveuse de 1908 et son rétablissement ultérieur, Edvard Munch poursuit encore avec cohérence ses recherches en matière de photographie et de mouvement (1909–1919), avant de s’intéresser au film muet (cinquième chapitre).

Son œuvre tardive (1920–1944), objet du sixième chapitre, est marquée par la dissolution rapide et la disparition de la matière et du motif, aboutissement logique de ses travaux précédents. Le chapitre final propose une vaste présentation de ses gravures tardives.

Cette exposition rassemble des prêts de nombreux musées américains et européens et montre en outre un grand nombre d’oeuvres appartenant à des collections privées qui n’étaient pas accessibles jusqu’à ce jour. Cette exposition a été montée par Dieter Buchhart, en collaboration avec Christoph Vitali, Ulf Küster et Philippe Büttner.

Ces précieuses oeuvres proviennent du Munch-museet d’Oslo, du Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bergen, du Musée National des Beaux-Arts, d’Architecture et de Design d’Oslo, du konstmuseum de Göteborg, du Moderna Museet de Stockholm, du Statens Museum for Kunst de Copenhague, de l’Ateneum Art Museum, de la Galerie nationale finlandaise d’Helsinki, du Museum of Modern Art de New York, du Museum of Fine Arts de Boston, du and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution à Washington D.C., de la Tate de Londres, de la Nationalgalerie de Berlin, de la Kunsthalle de Hambourg, du Sprengel Museum de Hanovre, de la Staatsgalerie de Stuttgart, du Musée Folkwang d’Essen, du Von der Heydt-Museum de Wuppertal, de la collection Würth de Künzelsau, du Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte de Münster, de la Neue Pinakothek de Munich, de l’Osterreichische Galerie du Belvédère de Vienne, de la Narodni Galerie de Prague, du Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza de Madrid, du Kunstmuseum de Bâle et du Kunsthaus de Zürich ainsi que de nombreuses collections privées.

Cette exposition est accompagnée de la publication d’un catalogue richement illustré édité chez Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, avec des articles de Dieter Buchhart, Oivind Storm Bjerke, Philippe Büttner et Ulf Küster ainsi que de textes introductifs aux différents chapitres. Ce volume comprend 288 pages avec 258 illustrations en couleur et est vendu au prix de CHF 68.

FONDATION BEYELER

Baselstrasse 101, CH-4125 Riehen/Bâle

www.beyeler.com