The sun (Munch)

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The sun (Edvard Munch)
The sun
Edvard Munch , 1911
Oil on canvas
455 × 780 cm
University of Oslo
The sun (Edvard Munch)
The sun
Edvard Munch , 1910/11
Oil on canvas
450 × 772 cm
Munch Museum Oslo
The sun (Edvard Munch)
The sun
Edvard Munch , 1912/13
Oil on canvas
324 × 509.5 cm
Munch Museum Oslo

The sun (Norwegian: Solen ) is a painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch from 1911. It was created for a competition to decorate the auditorium of the University of Kristiania , today's Oslo . The sun is the central image of a total of eleven-part painting cycle. Munch worked on the motif in various preliminary studies and later repetitions, which are now in the possession of the Munch Museum in Oslo .

Image description

According to Ulrich Bischoff , the center of the picture is “a huge sun, which spreads its radiation field over an ideal coastal landscape”. Hans Dieter Huber locates the landscape in Kragerø , a small town on the southern Norwegian coast where Munch had settled since his return to Norway in 1909. It is an archipelago landscape with its typical rounded rock formations. Between two such semicircular rocks, the viewer's gaze falls on a bay in which the sea reflects the low morning sun.

The image structure is almost completely mirror-symmetrical . The large, clear, hard-outlined forms of the monumental image stand for a reduction to the essentials while at the same time renouncing everything that is random and changeable in the composition. Stylistically, Munch takes up a stripe technique that he had developed since 1907 in pictures such as Marat's Death II , Amor and Psyche and Self-Portrait in the clinic .

Reinhold Heller describes a "combination of naturalistic observation and stylized simplification", which in the representation of light and radiance is almost reminiscent of abstract painting . The rays of the white sun take on all the colors of the rainbow. According to Hans Dieter Huber, the “light gray-silvery basic tone” of the colors of the picture is coordinated with the planned exhibition location in the university auditorium, the walls of which are made of light gray marble and adorned with subtly gilded strips, friezes and capitals .

interpretation

The "great, eternal forces"

Munch saw the pictures in the Oslo auditorium as a further development of his frieze of life , the compilation of his central works from the 1890s: “This was in some respects a forerunner, without which the aula paintings might not have been made. The 'frieze of life' developed my sense of the decorative. "Above all, he described a connection between the ideas behind the works:" The 'frieze of life' represents the worries and joys of the individual, seen from close up; the images of the university, on the other hand, are the great, eternal forces. "

The sun forms the center of the eleven-part painting cycle and, for Simon Maurer, is the “pivot for the entire composition”. The rays of the “source of life and light” (according to Munch) reach into the neighboring pictures, in each of which a man and a woman are depicted walking towards the light of the sun. For Matthias Arnold, the sun becomes "an aggressive force, a symbol that unites everything", in whose portrayal Munch went beyond van Gogh's yellow sun discs. According to Anni Carlsson, people are drawn to light, to the sun and to enlightenment , which is reflected in the education of young people in the images on the side.

Sun worship

The sun worship, which is expressed in Munch's monumental painting, corresponded to the zeitgeist of the time , in which the sun was raised to the source of health. In Germany and Scandinavia, a real sun cult developed , which was expressed, for example, in nudism . The maxim “Back to nature” prevailed among many artists and intellectuals, many works were influenced by Friedrich Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra , for example Theodor Däubler's epic The Northern Lights , which originated from a mythical time when the earth was united with the sun and sought to reunite the feminine principles of the earth with the masculine principles of the sun.

Munch also linked the sun with a personal meaning, which he explained back to the painting Spring from 1889: “There is a direct connection between spring and the auditorium pictures. The assembly hall pictures show people in their striving towards light, towards the sun, towards revelation, towards light in times of darkness. Spring shows the terminally ill girl's longing for light and warmth, for life. The sun in the auditorium was the same as the sun that shone through the window in spring . She was the sun of Osvald. ”He referred to a character from Ibsen's drama Ghosts . Munch's own life situation after a life crisis and the successful rehab also resulted in a changed, optimistic worldview for the artist. According to Anni Carlsson, "after his recovery he had become a new person, a 'sun worshiper', completely turned towards life."

Pictorial history

The sun on the front of the auditorium of the University of Oslo , left Die Geschichte , right Alma Mater

In April 1909 Munch returned to Norway for the first time after seven months of rehab in the Copenhagen sanatorium from Daniel Jacobson , a Danish psychiatrist and neurologist . Only a few days later, on May 15th, he announced his participation in a competition to decorate the auditorium of the University of Kristiania on the occasion of its 100th anniversary in 1911. In the following years, Munch's proposals, as well as those of his competitors, rejected several times, and it took a combination of public pressure because of the artist's increased reputation, a fundraising collection and international offers such as that of the University of Jena , before the contract was finally awarded to Munch in 1914. The eleven pictures were presented to the public for the first time on September 11, 1916. Munch claims that he received 46,000 Norwegian kroner for his more than seven years of work on the project.

Instead of the sun , a different image was originally intended as the center of the ensemble: the human mountain, in which human bodies tower up to a mountain that strives towards the sky and the sun, a variation on the theme of “ metamorphosis ” that Munch had already worked on. After the jury rejected the design as “unusable”, the sun itself became, according to Simon Maurer, “bigger and stronger” and the center of the arrangement. The other two main works of the cycle are the pictures The story , an old man who passes on his knowledge to the younger generation, and Alma Mater , a mother in the midst of her children and fertile vegetation. With the latter picture, Munch replaced the original motif The Researchers . Matthias Arnold considers the other smaller pictures in the cycle to be less important and, from today's perspective, also ideologically questionable due to a cult of strength through joy .

  • The Story (1911, 1914–16), oil on canvas, 455 × 1160 cm, University of Oslo

  • Alma Mater (1916), oil on canvas, 455 × 1160 cm, University of Oslo

  • The Researchers (1911 / 1925–27), 480 × 1100 cm, oil on canvas, Munch Museum Oslo

Despite the difficult situation, the official commission for the auditorium pictures ensured a reconciliation between Munch and his Norwegian homeland and brought him the recognition that he had long been denied despite all international successes. Today the decoration of the auditorium is a sight of Oslo. In addition to the early frieze of life , the cycle of Aula pictures is considered to be one of the painter's main works and the most important work of his late creative phase. Matthias Arnold calls it "the most important decorative work by the Norwegian at all". The paintings have remained together as an ensemble, making them the only compilation of Munch's works that is still in the arrangement he had planned.

literature

  • Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 116-119.
  • Anni Carlsson: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Belser, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-7630-1936-7 , pp. 94-96.
  • Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , pp. 124-127.
  • Hans Dieter Huber : Edvard Munch. Dance of life. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , pp. 134-140.
  • Simon Maurer: The sun, 1912. In: Edvard Munch. Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 90.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ulrich Bischoff : Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 22-24.
  2. ^ A b Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , p. 140.
  3. ↑ a b c d Simon Maurer: The sun, 1912. In: Edvard Munch. Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 90.
  4. ↑ a b Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , pp. 124-125.
  5. ↑ a b c Anni Carlsson: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Belser, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-7630-1936-7 , p. 94.
  6. ^ Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , p. 137.
  7. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , p. 119.
  8. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 116-118.
  9. ↑ a b Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , p. 124.
  10. ^ Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life. Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , pp. 134-140.
  11. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , p. 116.
  12. ↑ Menneskeberget (1909–1910) at the Munch Museum Oslo .
  13. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 117-119.
  14. ^ Matthias Arnold: Edvard Munch. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1986. ISBN 3-499-50351-4 , pp. 116, 119.