The dance of life

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The dance of life (Edvard Munch)
The dance of life
Edvard Munch , 1899/1900
Oil on canvas
125 x 191 cm
Norwegian National Gallery , Oslo

The Dance of Life (Norwegian: Livets dans ) is a painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch , which was created between 1899 and 1900. It is one of the last pictures of his life frieze , the compilation of his central works on the subjects of life, love and death. Against the background of a dance event on the beach, the focus of the picture is on a dancing couple and two women flanking in the foreground. It has autobiographical roots in Munch's relationship with Tulla Larsen, who is depicted in the two women at the edge of the picture. In later work phases, Munch repeated the motif several times, also under the titles Tanz am Strand (Norwegian: Dans på stranden ) or Tanz am Meer (Norwegian: Dans ved sjøen ).

Image description

According to Hans Dieter Huber , the large, horizontal format is characterized by a flatness that is reminiscent of woodcuts . A total of twelve people dance or stand on a uniformly green lawn on the beach, which was first painted by Munch, omitting the outlines of the figures. Its contours are strongly emphasized by multiple brushstrokes. In the center of the painting is a dancing couple, the man dressed in black, the woman in seductive red, with the train of her dress covering his feet. Their expression is serious, their mouths are closed. With pale yellow complexions and dark eye sockets, they appear exhausted or sleepy. In a possibly possessive gesture, the woman has put her arm around her dance partner. While she stares at the person opposite, her hair blows in the wind towards his chest.

To the left of the couple stands a woman in a long white dress decorated with a yellow flower pattern and a belt of the same color. Her arm, slightly bent, points to the couple in the middle, perhaps indicating the wish to relieve the dancer. The woman on the right is dressed all in black and has her hands clasped in front of her lap. She also looks at the dancing couple. Your look slightly downward expresses disappointment.

Four more couples in high-contrast black and white, captured in swirling dance movements, form the background. Only one figure has a face: a round man's face with greedily wide eyes and wide red lips that his dance partner tries to force into a kiss while she shrinks back and turns away. At the head height of the figures in the foreground is the horizon, where the blue sea and the reddish blue sky merge. On the left side of the couple, the moon is reflected in the sea in a "lunar column" typical of Munch.

interpretation

Midsummer Night's Dream

For Ulrich Bischoff Munch in has dance of life a real scene in Åsgårdstrand , where the painter regularly spent the summer months and many pictures of the coastline in the northern summer nights , transformed painted in a ghostly vision. In front of the wild goings-on of the faceless couples in the background, the four figures in the foreground seem trapped in a dream. Their faces are mask-like, and the male grimace in the background is reminiscent of a mask by James Ensor . As if in a trance, the couple moves in the foreground and is completely related to one another. The woman's red dress flows around the man like a wave that pulls the solid ground away from under his feet, and holds him up to his shoulder. The lunar column towering above everything is a phallic symbol of power that casts a spell over people.

Three women

Munch often uses three female figures in his work to symbolize different phases of life or traits. Monika Graen speaks of a veritable "threefold theme" for Munch, whose main work is the painting The Woman in Three Stages from 1894. In the exhibition of Munch's life frieze in Berlin in 1902, it formed the center of the section on the flowering and decay of love . For Ulrich Bischoff, it is not three different women that Munch has grouped together, but three perspectives of the man on the woman as such. At an exhibition of the frieze of life in Leipzig, Munch replaced the woman in three stages with the dance of life , thus giving the three symbolic female figures a narrative framework. In this picture, too, according to Bischoff, “all three women remain related to the man, his wishes, experiences and disappointments.” The red and white picture, which was created at the same time as The Dance of Life , also has its origin in the triple woman theme. The woman in the middle, facing the viewer, is no longer naked, but dressed in bright red. Munch painted over an originally also existing dark figure on the right edge of the picture.

  • The Woman in Three Stages (1894), oil on canvas, 164 × 250 cm, Bergen Art Museum

  • Red and White (1899/1900), oil on canvas, 93 × 129 cm, Munch Museum Oslo

title

The title of the picture The Dance of Life could go back to a drama by the Danish writer Helge Rode , which was owned in Munich in 1898: Dansen Gaar (German: The dance goes on ). There the figure of an artist declaims the words: “The dance of life. My picture should be called dance of life! There must be two dancers in flowing clothes [...] He holds them close to him. He is deeply serious and happy. [...] He has to hold her so tight that she is half sunk in him. [...] Power flows from him into her. "

Autobiographical reference

According to Iris Müller-Westermann, the origin of the painting The Dance of Life lies in Munch's relationship with Mathilde, known as “Tulla”, Larsen. In 1898 Munch met the daughter of a wealthy Norwegian wine merchant, who was six years his junior. In the following years Munch spent some of his summer stays in Norway at Larsen's side and also took her on trips abroad. The relationship was problematic, however, Matthias Arnold speaks of a love-hate relationship: Munch felt erotically attracted to the young, possessive woman, but also harassed and robbed of his freedom. The relationship reached its dramatic climax and end in 1902, when a gunshot from a revolver broke out in an unresolved argument and Munch lost the top link of his left middle finger.

In the dancing couple in the foreground, Munch and his first love Milly Thaulow can be recognized, the two years older wife of a cousin who soon ended the short affair with Munch. Their unity is emphasized by the flow of the dress and a common contour line. In contrast to the erotically charged scenery in the background, the dance of the young, inexperienced Munch is stiff and awkward. The women on either side both wear Tulla Larsen's face. The caricature exaggerated features of the man in the background can be attributed to the Norwegian playwright Gunnar Heiberg . The former friend had founded the relationship between Munch and Larsen and was blamed by Munch for its negative course and stylized as his personal nemesis.

Munch wrote in a note accompanying the picture: “I danced with my first love; it was a memory of her. The smiling, golden-haired woman enters the scene and wants to pick the flower of love, but it doesn't want to be picked. On the other hand, she is dressed in black and looks sadly at the dancing couple - an outcast, just as I was expelled by their dance. And in the background the mad crowd whirls around in wild embrace. "

Iris Müller-Westermann describes a parallel between the two figures dressed in black and their posture related to one another: Just as Munch was once rejected by his first love, he now rejects Tulla Larsen. For her, the picture marks a key moment in Munch's vita, which at the turn of the century withdrew more and more from life and love in order to devote himself only to art. For Uwe M. Schneede , the individual who feels expelled from society, unable to open up to love and pleasure, is a symbol of the artist's situation.

Predecessors and later versions

Immediately before Munch began work on the dance of life in the fall of 1899 , two thematically similar pictures were created: in student laps, kissing couples sit on benches in a park in Kristiana, today's Oslo . Dance on the beach shows girls dancing exuberantly on the beach. With a white cat in the foreground, this picture also contains a symbolic reference to a nickname Tulla Larsen.

  • Studenterlunden (1899), oil on canvas, 101 × 91 cm, JAPS Collection, Mexico City

  • Dance on the Beach (1899/1900), oil on canvas, 96 × 98.5 cm, National Gallery Prague

In his later work, Munch repeatedly took up the motif of the dancing couple on the beach, flanked by two women dressed in white and black, especially in his large friezes , the linden frieze (1904), the Reinhardt frieze (1906/07) and the Freia frieze (1922). Some of the later pictures are titled Tanz am Strand or Tanz am Meer , see also the list of paintings by Edvard Munch .

Provenance

The painting The Dance of Life from 1899/1900 was donated in 1910 by the Norwegian factory owner and art collector Olaf Schou to the Norwegian National Gallery , which has since exhibited it together with various other key works by Munch.

literature

Web links

  • Livets in the Norwegian National Gallery.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life . Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , pp. 99-100.
  2. ^ Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life . Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , p. 100.
  3. ↑ a b Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , p. 50.
  4. ^ Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 44-47.
  5. ↑ Arne Eggum, Guido Magnaguagno: Rot und Weiss, 1896 . In: Edvard Munch . Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 38.
  6. ↑ Ellen J. Lerberg on Livets in the Norwegian National Gallery.
  7. ↑ a b Iris Müller-Westermann: The Dance of Life . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , p. 78.
  8. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 88-91.
  9. ↑ a b Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993. ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , p. 105.
  10. ↑ Iris Müller-Westermann: The Dance of Life . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , p. 79.
  11. ^ Uwe M. Schneede : Edvard Munch. The early masterpieces. Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88814-277-6 , to plate 31.
  12. ^ Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life . Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , p. 99.
  13. ↑ Livets dans in the Norwegian National Gallery.