Ashes (munch)

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Ashes (Edvard Munch)
ash
Edvard Munch , 1895
Oil on canvas
120.5 × 141 cm
Norwegian National Gallery , Oslo

Asche (Norwegian: Aske , also: After the Fall of Man ) is a motif by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch , which he executed in two paintings and three graphics . The main version dates from 1895 and is on display in the Norwegian National Gallery. It is part of Munch's life frieze , the compilation of his central works on the subjects of life, love and death. The picture shows a woman facing the viewer and a crouching man facing away. The topic was interpreted as the moment after the act of love or the end of a love affair.

Image description

Asche's composition is entirely based on two figures. In the lower left corner crouches a male figure dressed in black, his face supported on his arm in a pose that Ulrich Bischoff calls either desperate, grieving or melancholy. The man's face is ash gray, he seems to be turning away. In the center of the picture, slightly to the right of the picture center, stands a woman dressed in white. The bodice of her dress is unbuttoned and reveals a bright red undershirt. Her hair is also reddish brown and flows around her shoulders down to the man's shoulders and neck. Your gaze seems frozen. The wide-open eyes stare directly at the viewer. Her hands clasp her head on both sides, a classic gesture that expresses shock. Male and female figures form a strong contrast in brightness and posture.

The scene is set on a night beach. In the background rise the slender trunks of a forest which Bischoff defines as a pine forest . There are bright stones in the foreground. On the left and below the scene is limited by two frame-like elements. They reveal the shape of a horizontally lying smoldering tree trunk that turns into ash, from which a vertical column of smoke rises to the left. The forms are greatly simplified, the objectivity seems to dissolve above all in the foreground. The lines are flowing, the colors strong with strong contrasts and consciously used color symbols . For Arne Eggum and Tone Skedsmo, the elements of the landscape repeat the poses of the figures: the trees in their columnar shape take up the upright position of the woman, the crouching man is reminiscent of the round stones. It merges with the trunk in the foreground, seems to stare into its ashes or watch the rising smoke.

Versions

Ashes (Edvard Munch)
ash
Edvard Munch , 1899
lithography
35.3 x 45.4 cm
Thielska galleriet , Stockholm

The first oil painting with the motif ashes was made in 1895. It was bought by the Norwegian National Gallery in 1909 and has been shown there ever since. Another oil painting from 1925 is on display in the Munch Museum, Oslo . In 1896 and 1899 Munch made two lithographs . The first lithograph introduces a further pictorial element: the smoke forms a large, made-up woman's head above the couple with the poses known from the painting. The facial expression is calm, almost smiling, and is also taken from the woman in the lower half of the picture. The hair curls like snakes and reminds one of the head of a gorgon . Only a heap of ash remains from the horizontal tree trunk from the painting. The second lithograph has a simpler composition and, for Arne Eggum, fits in better with the style of the other prints in the frieze of life . An etching from 1913/14, also titled Asche , shows a modified motif. The scene is now in an interior room, the woman is lolling naked and the man is in bed.

interpretation

After the act of love

Matthias Arnold interprets the picture as a kind of post-coital fatigue . The man is exhausted after intercourse, feels emptiness and the finiteness of love. He has fulfilled his natural function, donated his seed that will beget new life. Now he is waiting to be eaten like the male praying mantis after mating. The upright triumphant posture of the woman, who is already straightening her hair, is completely different. As is usually the case with Munch, she is the stronger in the relationship between the sexes, who defeats and destroys the man. Male impotence and his failure to have sex are also frequent interpretations of the motive.

The man's hunched, crouching posture, expressing despair, humility and submissiveness, occurs repeatedly in Munch's oeuvre . According to Arnold, it is usually aimed at the painter himself, a kind of self-portrait in which he expresses his feelings. You can find them, for example, in the motif vampire , in which the man buries his face in the woman's lap while the woman bends over his neck. The averted, brooding pose of melancholy can also be mentioned in this context.

End of a love affair

For Arne Eggum , however , the ash motif points beyond a single act of love and shows the end of a love affair. The biblical reference of the alternative title After the fall of man means that the paradise of love is over. According to his interpretation, the woman is only present in the imagination of the man; she arises as it were from the smoke and the ashes. The man still desires her, conjures up an erotically charged pose, although the love has long since cooled down. Tone Skedsmo puts it: “Love is dead, burned to ashes; it has become loneliness and despair. Behind it all lies a deadly fear of being destroyed by women. "

In his notes, Munch wrote about the motif: “The ancients were right when they compare love with a flame, because love, just like the flame, leaves behind only a heap of ashes.” And: “I felt our love like one Pile of ash lying on the floor. "Arne Eggum also relates a literary note to the picture:" She had never been with him for so long - he begged her not to go - he was hotter than ever before - he wanted to hug her again feel her kiss again - again / the glow was extinguished when she got up - she stood very upright and arranged her hair with the posture of a queen. There was something in her expression that scared him - he didn't know what it was - "

For Frithjof Bringager, ash is one of the most pessimistic pictures of the relationship between the sexes that Munch has ever painted. It shows the man as a weak loser, the woman as a strong triumphant. Munch processed personal experiences and a generally contemporary image of women as saints and whores at the same time.

Theater tableau

For Ulrich Bischoff , the real art of Munch lies in the transformation of a banal incident into a theater tableau in which the figures are reminiscent of actors who have "frozen into speaking gestures". Even more than any of his other works, Asche reminds him of a “stage landscape”, and he draws comparisons to Japanese Nō theater, Shakespeare and Ibsen, and especially, with an anticipation of the future, to Samuel Beckett . Like his pieces, which only make sense when performed and otherwise resist any definition of their content, Munch's modernity, which extends to the present day, lies in the fact that it is precisely not possible to put into words what moves the characters in his works, what their poses and gestures express. For Bischoff, the makeup-like face of the female figure and the averted profile of the man elude psychologizing or biographical interpretation, which makes them all the more effective.

literature

  • Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 49-50.
  • Ulrich Bischoff : Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 43-45.
  • Arne Eggum : Madonna . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, pp. 115–120.
  • Tone Skedsmo: Ashes, 1894 . In: Edvard Munch . Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 40.
  • Gerd Woll: Ashes . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , pp. 76-77.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , p. 43.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Arne Eggum: Madonna . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, p. 117.
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 43-44.
  4. ↑ a b Gerd Woll: Ashes . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , p. 77.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Tone Skedsmo: Ash, 1894 . In: Edvard Munch . Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 40.
  6. ^ Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , p. 44.
  7. ^ A b Edvard Munch: Ashes in the National Museum Oslo .
  8. ^ Aske 1925 in the Munch Museum Oslo .
  9. ^ Gerd Woll: The Complete Graphic Works . Orfeus, Oslo 2012, ISBN 978-82-93140-12-2 , no.79, 146.
  10. ↑ a b Arne Eggum: Madonna . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, p. 118.
  11. ^ Gerd Woll: The Complete Graphic Works . Orfeus, Oslo 2012, ISBN 978-82-93140-12-2 , no.440.
  12. ^ Edvard Munch: Ash in the Beck & Eggeling gallery .
  13. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 49-50.
  14. ^ A b Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , p. 50.