The Voice (Munch)

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The Voice (Edvard Munch)
The voice
Edvard Munch , 1893
Oil on canvas
88 × 108 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Voice (Edvard Munch)
The voice
Edvard Munch , 1896
Oil on canvas
90 × 119 cm
Munch Museum Oslo

The voice (Norwegian: Stemmen , also: Midsummer Night , Midsummer Night's Mood or Midsummer Night's Dream ) is a pictorial motif by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch , which he executed in two paintings and four graphics between the years 1893 and 1898 . The motif shows a woman facing the viewer in front of the Norwegian coastline. It has often been interpreted as the sexual awakening of an adolescent girl. The title can be interpreted as the inner voice of women as well as the voice of nature. The motif is part of Munch's frieze of life , the compilation of his central works on the subjects of life, love and death.

Image description

A young woman in a white dress is standing alone in a forest. In the background you can see a shoreline and a body of water that reflects the yellow moon - or the low sun - in a long reflection. A boat floats on the water with a couple on board. The arms of the woman in the foreground are crossed behind her back, her head stretched back, and her upper body stretched out. Her wide-open eyes look directly at the viewer. For Karl Ove Knausgård, her pose looks like she is leaning against a tree trunk.

With the help of the alternative titles, the scenery can be located on a Nordic summer night, one of the so-called “white nights” , in which it remains light even at night. This creates a pale light, referred to as “ghostly light” by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston . The contrast of the vertical lines, the pine trunks, the reflection of the moon and the woman with the horizontal beach line creates tension in the composition. Above all, Knausgård emphasizes the lack of depth in the composition: the forest floor, shore and sea are abstract green, white or blue color fields, the trees lack volume. According to Hans Dieter Huber, it is a typical stylistic device of Munch to "fold the background steeply upwards in order to bind what is far to the front very close to the picture surface and to let the foreground sink downwards".

In the repetition of the motif from 1896, the young woman has come to the fore. According to Arne Eggum and Guido Magnaguagno, it appears “fuller and more sensual” than on the first version. In general, the later version is characterized by more painterly freedom and a strong, fresh application of paint (especially in the bright white and yellow tones), which could also be due to an at least partially subsequent overpainting.

Further versions

In addition to the two oil paintings from 1893 and 1896, which are now exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Munch Museum in Oslo , Munch made four graphics based on the motif of The Voice : an etching from 1894, a woodcut from 1896, one Lithograph from 1897 and again a woodcut from 1898. The etching is based on the first oil painting, the woodcut the second. It is also more concentrated, more archaic and reminds Arne Eggum of Kore sculptures . The motif is also very condensed in the second, smaller woodcut, which is more in the style of a vignette .

interpretation

Sexual awakening

The motif The voice is generally interpreted as the sexual awakening of an adolescent girl. Nic. Stang refers to the zeitgeist in which this topic was popular, such as Frank Wedekind's drama Spring Awakening , published in 1891 . Munch had already painted a picture on the subject at puberty . Dressed in white, the “color of innocence”, the girl exudes longing and fear for Stang. Lured by the hustle and bustle of young people in the boats, it subconsciously suggests itself in her pose with the protruding breasts. For Reinhold Heller, there is something evasive in this pose. It is a typical attitude of a pubescent girl who is torn between erotic display and insecure retreat in her awakening sexual feelings.

According to Arne Eggum, the mood of the picture is already erotically charged by the formal language. The pillar of the moon acts like a phallic symbol , the vertical and horizontal lines can be deciphered as male and female symbols for Ulrich Bischoff, even without deep knowledge of psychoanalysis . Eggum locates the scene in the Borre forests north of Åsgårdstrand on the Oslofjord . The scenery could spring from a Midsummer Night, which is celebrated in the Nordic countries as the return of summer and often gives rise to erotic escapades. The exuberant festivities often extend to boats at sea. In general, the forests at the Norwegian fjords are often used for lovers' get-togethers. As is often the case with Munch, the subject could be based on an experience of the painter, such as the affair with Millie Thaulow in the summer of 1885.

Munch recorded such an experience in his notes: “When we stand like this - and my eyes look into your big eyes - in the pale moonlight - you know, there - fine hands weave invisible threads - which are tied around my heart - come through my eyes guided - through your big dark eyes - into and around your heart - your eyes are so big, now that they are so close to me - they are like two big dark skies. "He added the text to a preliminary study for the painting:" Your eyes are as big as half the sky when you stand near me and your hair has gold dust and I can't see your mouth - just look, you're smiling ”.

be right

The pictures were only given the title The Voice afterwards. It is not known how Munch himself felt about the title. For Arne Eggum, however, it helps the viewer to grasp “the lyrical, listening character of the picture”. The title has been interpreted differently. For Nic. Stang listens to the girl in her own inner voice, the awakening feelings. However, it is also the voices of the young people from the boats that it hears and that attracts it. Arne Eggum identifies a tension between the couple in the boat and the lonely woman in the foreground. He refers to the motif melancholy , also called the yellow boat : There it is a lonely man who sits at the booth while a couple wants to board a boat on the jetty. Like the voice , melancholy is one of the six pictures that Munch presented in Berlin in December 1893 under the title Study for a series “Die Liebe” . The frieze of life later developed from this combination .

The most common interpretation, however, is that the voice that the woman in the foreground is listening to is the voice of nature. Eggum points out that the Borre Forest with its graves from the Viking era is a mythologically particularly charged place. The influence of natural forces on people is a classic topic in Norwegian literature, often linked to the fact that beings from the underworld seduce people. Munch was open to such mystical currents and even gave a painting from 1892 the title Beach Mysticism . Eggum mentions Émile Bernard with Madeleine au Bois d'Amour (1888) and Paul Gauguin with Jeanne d'Arc (1889) as a forerunner of the topic of listening to the voice of nature or the inner voice .

Role of the observer

For Karl Ove Knausgård, a single woman is depicted in the picture, but everything about the scenery refers to the confrontation with a second person. The viewer himself becomes this when he looks at the picture: “It is I who she is looking at, it is I to whom she leans forward. And it's me who scares her. ”The request that the female figure emits makes her a siren for him , who simultaneously promises lust and ruin. The image changes through the respective experiences that the viewer brings in. He has a choice of how to face the image. The fact that this choice does not take place in the picture itself, but outside, makes it a picture for him “full of longing. Yes, as if the longing itself was represented here. "

In Uwe M. Schneede's interpretation, it is the sea itself that attracts the viewer: “the attractive and at the same time deadly voice of the sea.” He refers to Stanisław Przybyszewski, who in his epipsychidion reports of an alluring voice of the sea: “First of all I knew! That was the voice that was bleeding from the eyes I was looking for. It was the sea […], the voice of the sea ”. For Schneede, the girl becomes "the lure to death with her promise of love."

Moonlight (Edvard Munch)
Moonlight
Edvard Munch , 1895
Oil on canvas
93 × 110 cm
Norwegian National Gallery , Oslo

Moonlight

The painting Moonlight from the Norwegian National Gallery from 1895 is a version of The Voice without the figure in the foreground. According to Ulrich Bischoff, this has made the lunar column "the real main actor". What remains is the image space itself and its tension, which it gains from the contrast between vertical and horizontal (ie “male” and “female”) lines. What remains is the soft application of paint, the light-dark contrasts and the imagery that runs through many motifs of the life frieze: the beach line of Åsgårdstrand, the bare tree trunks with individual branches that are simplified to triangular sails, the moonlight that opens up the sea as a column of color, the shape of which is reminiscent of a test tube. Even in moonlight there is no shortening of perspective, which means that the entire landscape rises as steeply as the parallel tree trunks. This brings out the "softly flowing color", for example at the transition from the bank to the water.

For Marianne Yvenes, moonlight is one of the most simplified depictions of the Norwegian coast in the light of a summer night in Munch's oeuvre. Unlike many of Munch's other motifs, the picture does not depict human feelings or actions, but expresses a mood. It is a natural mood completely without human presence.

literature

  • Arne Eggum : summer night . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, pp. 57–64.
  • Arne Eggum, Sissel Biørnstad: The Voice . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , pp. 58-60.
  • Arne Eggum, Guido Magnaguagno: The Voice, around 1893 . In: Edvard Munch . Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 36.
  • Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch: The Scream . Viking Press, New York 1973 ISBN 0-7139-0276-0 , pp. 45-46.
  • Karl Ove Knausgård : So much longing in such a small area. Edvard Munch and his pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87589-7 , pp. 35–39.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Edvard Munch. The early masterpieces . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88814-277-6 , to Fig. 14.
  2. ^ Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch: The Scream . Viking Press, New York 1973 ISBN 0-7139-0276-0 , pp. 45-46.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Arne Eggum: Summer night . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, p. 59.
  4. ↑ a b c Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch: The Scream . Viking Press, New York 1973 ISBN 0-7139-0276-0 , p. 46.
  5. ↑ Karl Ove Knausgård: So much longing in such a small area. Edvard Munch and his pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87589-7 , p. 35.
  6. ↑ "eerie light" Quoted from: Summer Night's Dream (The Voice) in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston .
  7. ↑ Karl Ove Knausgård: So much longing in such a small area. Edvard Munch and his pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87589-7 , pp. 35–36.
  8. ^ Hans Dieter Huber : Color design and color symbolism in landscape pictures by Edvard Munch . Originally published in: Jürgen von Schemm (Hrsg.): Edvard Munch. Summer night by the Oslofjord, around 1900 . Exhibition in the Kunsthalle Mannheim from February 27 to April 17, 1988. Städtische Kunsthalle, Mannheim 1988, ISBN 3-89165-050-7 , pp. 60–69. Here p. 61 + note 4. ( PDF file )
  9. ↑ a b Arne Eggum, Guido Magnaguagno: The Voice, around 1893 . In: Edvard Munch . Museum Folkwang, Essen 1988, without ISBN, cat. 36.
  10. ↑ Sommernatt. Stemming in 1894 in the Munch Museum, Oslo .
  11. ↑ Sommernatt. Stemming in 1896 in the Munch Museum, Oslo .
  12. ^ Young woman from the Latin Quarter and Evening, the voice . Double lithograph at artnet.com.
  13. ↑ Kvinne i måneskinn. Mortising in the Munch Museum Oslo .
  14. ^ Gerd Woll: The Complete Graphic Works . Orfeus, Oslo 2012, ISBN 978-82-93140-12-2 , No. 12, 92, 106, 129.
  15. ^ Arne Eggum: Summer Night . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, pp. 59–60.
  16. ↑ Nic. Stang: Edvard Munch . Ebeling, Wiesbaden 1981, ISBN 3-921452-14-7 , pp. 56-57.
  17. ^ Ulrich Bischoff : Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , p. 32.
  18. ↑ Arne Eggum, Sissel Biørnstad: The Voice . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , p. 58.
  19. ↑ a b Arne Eggum, Sissel Biørnstad: The Voice . In: Mara-Helen Wood (ed.): Edvard Munch. The Frieze of Life . National Gallery London, London 1992, ISBN 1-85709-015-2 , p. 59.
  20. ^ Arne Eggum: Summer Night . In: Edvard Munch. Love, fear, death . Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld 1980, without ISBN, p. 60.
  21. ↑ a b Nic. Stang: Edvard Munch . Ebeling, Wiesbaden 1981, ISBN 3-921452-14-7 , p. 56.
  22. ^ Hans Dieter Huber: Edvard Munch. Dance of life . Reclam, Stuttgart 2013, ISBN 978-3-15-010937-3 , pp. 65-66.
  23. ^ Edvard Munch: Mystery on the Shore at Pubhist.com.
  24. ↑ Karl Ove Knausgård: So much longing in such a small area. Edvard Munch and his pictures . Luchterhand, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-630-87589-7 , pp. 36–38.
  25. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Edvard Munch. The early masterpieces . Schirmer / Mosel, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-88814-277-6 , to Fig. 14.
  26. ^ Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch . Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 32-33.
  27. ^ Moonlight in the National Museum Oslo .