Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul
Category: Books,Arts & Photography,Individual Artists
Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul Details
In an exploration of modern existential experience unparalleled in the history of art, Edvard Munch, the internationally renowned Norwegian painter, printmaker and draftsman, sought to translate personal trauma into universal terms and in the process to comprehend the fundamental components of human existence: birth, love and death. Inspired by personal experience, as well as by the literary and philosophical culture of his time, Munch radically reconceived the given world as the product of his imagination. This book explores Munch's unique artistic achievement in all its richness and diversity, surveying his career in its entire developmental range from 1880 to 1944. The comprehensive volume features a lavish selection of color plates, an introduction by Kynaston McShine, Chief Curator at Large at The Museum of Modern Art, and essays by Patricia Berman, Reinhold Heller, Elizabeth Prelinger, and Tina Yarborough, as well as in-depth documentation of Munch's art and career. It will accompany the most extensive exhibition of Munch's art in America in three decades.
Reviews
I have several other books on Munch and I collect art books primarily for the color art plates (photos). From the reviews on this book, I expected more. The book pages are large but the plates are medium size, leaving tons of empty space around many painting images. The color is not very good. My other books have much better reproductions, including the excellent biography by Sue Prideaux (Edvard Munch: Behiund the Scream). Note that this biography has a limited number of color photographs but the ones that are included are very well reproduced.