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Famous and unknown at the same time, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch is in majesty at the Musée d’Orsay. The opportunity to discover the extent of the artist’s career, of which the general public most often only knows the iconic work: The cri. Table absent from the exhibition and for good reason.
Indeed, Norway, burned by the theft of the painting in 2004, no longer lends its masterpiece. The Musée d’Orsay nevertheless presents an engraved version of the painting. The Cri in which is represented a man with an emaciated face opening his mouth wide in the shape of an O against a background of glowing sky and green and black sea is part of our collective imagination. But for Claire Bernardi, curator of the exhibition, The cri can be found throughout Munch’s career: ” Munch said it himself in his time: there is the pre Scream, there is The Scream, there are later versions of the Scream. And so this pre Scream, for example, this despair that we show in the exhibition, there are already all the elements in germ of his future painting, with this perspective along this bridge, this very present nature, this fjord of ‘Oslo with this glowing, blazing sky, which seems to express the distress of the man who is in the foreground. »
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Despairthis painting where deaf the anguish precursor of the Cri opens the exhibition as well as the child sick where we see a teenager dying on a bed in front of her collapsed mother. Death and pain are the leitmotifs of the artist. It must be said that Munch is struck early in life. He lost his mother and sister early. Anguish and melancholy are therefore at the heart of his work. And the woman is also very present there. But not always under the best auspices. Munch is uncomfortable in his romantic relationships. The woman in his painting is powerful and frightening at the same time: “ The representation of women is permanent. An often ambivalent woman, the loving woman, the devouring woman as in Vampirethe woman through whom misfortune arrives in Jealousy where Despair. There is also this femme fatale who is often both a woman who attracts, who is sometimes so ambivalent that she is called Madonna. So you see how the sacred and the profane come together in his work. »
► To listen also: The “Cry” by Edvard Munch, emblematic work symbol of anxiety
The exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay provides an insight into a highly coherent 60-year career through around a hundred works including 40 major paintings, drawings and prints. The route is also punctuated by numerous writings by Munch which shed light on his philosophy, such as this sentence which closes the exhibition sums up his thoughts well and which Claire Bernardi reads: “ It’s not us who die, it’s the world that leaves us and abandons us. »
A whole work as a single cry. The exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay reveals this great artist of melancholy who cannot be reduced to a single work.
► Edvard Munch. A poem of life, love and death at the Musée d’Orsay until 22 January 2023.