Forget about the price tag, Edvard Munch’s artistic legacy is priceless!

Whilst the news bulletins last week reverberated with comment on the latest record breaking price tag for a pastel version of “The Scream” by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch  (1863 -1944), the question that many have asked is “Why pay millions for what seems to appear as childish scribble with coloured chalks?”

As an artist I often have to fend off questions such as these and find myself defending the whole array of modern art against such a backdrop of publicity. Seemingly the debate falls more on the monetary value of artworks that outwardly appear like the “Emperor’s new clothes”, pretentious with a collective denial when others only see a few drips of paint on a canvas. Put the whole of the art world in a room to discuss what makes a piece of art a masterpiece and there will be wholesale disagreement, we can’t escape bringing experience, knowledge and taste to the party!

So how do you judge the importance and influence of an artist?  Who are the great painters? Does it simply come down to auction prices?

My last post testifies to the influence of Picasso on British artists and there is no doubt that his originality and inventiveness is unrivalled by any other, hence the £70 million price ticket on 

“Nude, Green Leaves & Bust”, previously the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. Is Munch an artist of the same calibre to enter into this exclusive realm? Well the price tag for the pastel “Scream” confirms his entry and love it or hate it, Munch’s iconic ‘Scream’ is one of the most recognized images in Western art. Yet I ask myself does one single work make you a great painter? How do you evaluate the significance of an artist?  To help me assess my thoughts on the threads of artistic influence, a quote by Henri Matisse came to mind.

“The importance of an artist is to be determined by the number of new signs he introduces into the language of art”   

Matisse theorized much of his own artistic practice in terms of ‘pictorial signs’, stylized marks that could convey at once the essence of the thing represented. ‘New signs’ therefore are innovations of the pictorial language and as Matisse observed, the truly original artist invents his own signs.  Was Munch an innovator? Did he invent his own signs? 

Greatly Influenced Edvard Munch

If you bring Munch’s body of works into the spotlight, it’s clear that in order to give form to his inner visions, the artist had to push the visual language of art far beyond that he had initially experienced through Naturalism and Impressionism. As a young artist studying in Paris, Munch became aware of the highly charged personal representations of the artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, which encouraged him to paint with bold colours and radical simplification in order to convey a personal expression.

However, Munch was not a painter of symbolic ‘sunflowers’, he had a perpetually troubled background and the environment he expressed was the nature of his mind, life and soul.  Munch recreated his life’s events on canvas merging the observed world with his own intuitive perception declaring 

“I do not paint what I see, but what I saw”.

For the 1890’s this conceptual thinking seems shockingly early for what one might consider a current modern theme but Munch was the pioneer in developing what he called ‘the modern life of the soul’ in paint.

As a result, Munch’s quest for an explanation to the human psyche became an ever changing repertoire presented as ‘The Frieze of Life’.    A prolific search for an unique personal symbolism through the language of art using rough unfinished scrawls, scraped paint, visual distortions, figurative elongation, claustrophobic space with intense direct colouration whatever the media, whether oils, pastel or ink.

Amongst this ambitious mission for art, Munch produced the “Scream” a series of artworks that captured the essence of what he wanted to represent, the turmoil of a panic attack that he had suffered. To give form to his sudden overwhelming onslaught of anxiety, Munch portrayed his shockwave of emotion with a composition of brash colour using the simplest of marks to render a figure gesturing the internal sound of a terrifying howl of despair.

Consequently “The Scream” crystallizes more than any other work by Munch, what he wanted his art to express, the communication of powerful emotions rendered through the painted image. Stare at the picture and you can’t help but hear a shriek and feel a sense of dread. Extraordinary for a scrawl with coloured chalk!   Munch turned a personal trauma into a universal one creating a piece of art history, now with an astonishing price tag!

Gained Inspiration from the
 works of Edvard Munch

But forget the price tag, it diverts from Munch’s real legacy, his profound insight into rendering human emotions upon a canvas. Munch’s originality of representation provided a rich source of inspiration for long list of subsequent painters, who utilized and expanded Munch’s approach to expressive imagery. 

His inventive pictorial signs showed painters how to heighten the strength of their expression, significant and priceless!

Munch was committed to the idea of painting as an exploration of personal biography, follow this link for a closer view!