Spring (munch)

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Spring (Edvard Munch)
spring
Edvard Munch , 1889
Oil on canvas
169.5 x 264.2 cm
Norwegian National Gallery , Oslo

Spring (Norwegian: Vår ) is a painting by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch that was first exhibited in 1889. It takes up the motif The Sick Child , on which Munch had worked in 1885/86, and shows a sick girl lying on a pillow and an elderly woman at his side. The mood is more optimistic than in the previous one, also due to the incoming spring light. The naturalistic - Impressionist painting of spring is often seen as a response to the scandal, the Munch with the raw processed sick child had triggered, and the large-scale painting is considered Renno Mier piece in the academic style .

Image description

In the center of the picture of a room is a young girl sitting in an armchair. It has turned its head, laid on a white pillow, away from the incident daylight. His figure is framed by a large brown cupboard in the background. Next to the girl is an older woman who could be his mother. The healthy complexion of the woman forms a striking contrast to the very pale face of the girl. While the woman is knitting, the girl is holding a handkerchief with red blood stains on it. In the lower left corner of the picture is a round table covered with a tablecloth. On it are a glass carafe and a medicine bottle as accessories accompanying the disease. They form a counterpoint to the potted plants on the window ledge with their lively greenery, which stand in the bright daylight entering through a window. The white, translucent curtains are puffed up in the spring wind. While the left half of the picture is determined by dark gray and brown tones, the white, yellow and green tones of the right half of the picture are bright and flooded with light.

Autobiographical Background and The Sick Child

Edvard Munch had experiences with illness and death from an early age. At the age of 33, Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868 when he was just five years old . In 1877, Munch's older sister Sophie died of the same disease at the age of 15. His father died twelve years later. As a child, Munch was weak and often ill; his childhood and youth were overshadowed by constant fear of death. He later said: “Illness and death lived in my parents' house. I probably never got over the misfortune from there. It was also decisive for my art. "In the armchair in which the sick girl in the picture is bedded, his family members would have" sat winter after winter and longed for the sun - until death took them ... "

Munch's earliest artistic processing of the death of his sister Sophie and his own fear of death was the motif The Sick Child , which the artist wrestled with for about a year until its completion in 1885/86, and which he repainted at regular intervals from then on. The emergence of spring coincided with recovery from a serious illness in early 1889. Thus, according to Ulrich Bischoff , this picture can also be seen against the background of regaining one's own strength.

interpretation

Motive of death or glimmer of hope

The sick child is generally interpreted not only as a sick scene, but as a representation of an imminent death. Uwe M. Schneede sees a form of transcendence in the pale face of the girl , "the strange appearance that is no longer local". In spring , however, Munch wanted to prove “the sense of happier picture exits”. The decisive factor here is the function of the window: in the first image almost outside the field of vision and dark, with no light entering. In the second picture, the prospect promises hope of life. Josef Paul Hodin describes how the girl turns away from the warm sunlight as if she couldn't stand it. Nevertheless, the billowing curtains remind him of sails, "the sails of hope and dreams of life and beauty". Ulrich Bischoff also sees it as a sign of “the life-giving power of the fresh air that penetrates the darkness of the hospital room.” Arne Eggum, on the other hand, recognizes a “monumental, naturalistic death motif” in spring and refers to the bright red blood on the handkerchief.

Naturalism and Impressionism

Another art theoretical interpretation comes from Ulrich Bischoff: Against the background that Munch wanted to address the academic art world with his work, it can also be understood as a juxtaposition of two art movements: the naturalism determined by material loyalty and attention to detail , which is also something rigid In the right half of the picture, Munch has contrasted lively Impressionism with its airy, light colors that are determined by open-air painting . For Arne Eggum, the picture is just as much the sum of Munch's experiments with the naturalism of his Norwegian predecessors around Christian Krohg as it is the sum of his experiments with Impressionism as he understood it. JP Hodin, on the other hand, sees the whole picture caught in a lyrical naturalism with its meticulously precise details. It shows Munch at the height of his naturalistic abilities, which, however, amounted to a regression after he had already advanced into Expressionism with the sick child .

Pictorial history

Edvard Munch, around 1889

Although spring is mostly dated to the year 1889 today, for example in 2008 in Gerd Woll's catalog raisonné , Munch's own records indicate the year 1887. According to Arne Eggum, this would also be more in line with Munch's painterly development. He described the profound changes in his style in retrospect: “With spring - the sick girl and the mother at the open window with the incoming sun, I said goodbye to impressionism and realism. - With the sick child I broke new ground - it was a breakthrough in my art - Most of what I did later has its origin in this picture. ”Eggum also sees this departure as a departure from the pleasing art that Success in art salons could have led to Munch's new self-image as an experimental artist who wanted and had to find his own way.

An X-ray analysis from Frühling has revealed that the composition of the image was originally much closer to the sick child . As in this picture, the viewer was looking directly at the sick girl. Additional figures were grouped around the mother-child combination, including in particular a male figure who had the features of Christian Munch, the artist's father. For Arne Eggum, this also suggests that the sick child could have been a preliminary stage to spring , which was soon developed further .

The emergence of spring is largely seen as Munch's reaction to the vehement rejection of the presentation of the sick child at the autumn exhibition in Kristiana, today's Oslo, in 1886. According to Arne Eggum, the “shock-like effect” of the picture was “unique in Norwegian art history”. Munch, on whom the drastically formulated criticism had an effect, tried with some of the following pictures to subordinate himself to contemporary artistic conventions. Reinhold Heller, for example, sees spring in the large-format, but stylistically more conventional spring, above all “an academic piece of renown in naturalistic manner and color”, and for Uwe M. Schneede, too, Munch wanted the picture to demonstrate the “academic skills” that he had with the patient Child had been agreed.

Munch presented Frühling for the first time at a retrospective of 110 works, which he exhibited in April and May 1889 in the rooms of the Kristiana student association. The criticism was not taken with the self-confident appearance. One critic wrote: "A young, immature artist must be very impudent and lack any modesty in order to appear in public in this form [...] especially if he has obviously not yet completed his training." Reinhold Heller affirmed this Judgment given the inconsistent style of the works shown and the young painter's obvious search for his own style. Nevertheless, the exhibition was a success: Munch received a two-year state scholarship for artists and recommended himself - also with his “Salon” picture spring - for participation in the Paris World Exhibition in 1889 .

literature

  • Ulrich Bischoff : Edvard Munch. Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 16-17.
  • Arne Eggum : The young Munch in the light of French naturalism and impressionism. In: Sabine Schulze (Ed.): Munch in France. Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay, Paris and the Munch Museet, Oslo. Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7757-0381-0 , pp. 49-52.
  • JP Hodin : Edvard Munch . Thames and Hudson, London 1984, ISBN 0-500-20122-6 , pp. 22-25.

Web links

  • Vår in the Norwegian National Gallery.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JP Hodin: Edvard Munch . Thames and Hudson, London 1984, ISBN 0-500-20122-6 , p. 23.
  2. ↑ a b c d Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch. Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , p. 16.
  3. ↑ a b c Arne Eggum: The young Munch in the light of French naturalism and impressionism. In: Sabine Schulze (Ed.): Munch in France. Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay, Paris and the Munch Museet, Oslo. Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7757-0381-0 , p. 49.
  4. ^ Uwe M. Schneede : Edvard Munch. The sick child. Work on memory. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-23915-X , pp. 30-32.
  5. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Edvard Munch. The sick child. Work on memory. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-23915-X , pp. 38, 60-62.
  6. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Edvard Munch. The sick child. Work on memory. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-23915-X , pp. 25-26.
  7. ^ "The sails of hope and dreams of life and beauty". Quoted from: JP Hodin: Edvard Munch . Thames and Hudson, London 1984, ISBN 0-500-20122-6 , pp. 23, 25.
  8. ^ Ulrich Bischoff: Edvard Munch. Taschen, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-8228-0240-9 , pp. 16-17.
  9. ↑ a b c Arne Eggum: The young Munch in the light of French naturalism and impressionism. In: Sabine Schulze (Ed.): Munch in France. Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay, Paris and the Munch Museet, Oslo. Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7757-0381-0 , p. 50.
  10. ^ JP Hodin: Edvard Munch . Thames and Hudson, London 1984, ISBN 0-500-20122-6 , pp. 23, 25.
  11. ↑ Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , pp. 36-37.
  12. ↑ Arne Eggum: The young Munch in the light of French naturalism and impressionism. In: Sabine Schulze (Ed.): Munch in France. Schirn-Kunsthalle Frankfurt in collaboration with the Musée d'Orsay, Paris and the Munch Museet, Oslo. Hatje, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-7757-0381-0 , pp. 50-52.
  13. ↑ Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , p. 37.
  14. ^ Uwe M. Schneede: Edvard Munch. The sick child. Work on memory. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-596-23915-X , p. 26.
  15. ↑ Reinhold Heller: Edvard Munch. Life and work. Prestel, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7913-1301-0 , pp. 36-38.