All language subtitles for Great Art Series 3 3of5 Edvard Munch 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years,
we've been filming

in the biggest exhibitions, art
galleries and museums in the world,

exploring some of the greatest
artists and art in history.

Not only do we record
landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access
behind the scenes.

We then use this as a springboard
to take a broader look

at extraordinary artists.

This week, Great Art brings you
an exhibition from Oslo

that was staged simultaneously
in two galleries.

Its title was "Munch 150",

and it was to mark the centenary
and a half since the birth

of Norway's most famous artist,
the man who painted The Scream.

Two museums,
Norway's National Gallery

and the Munch Museum,
came together

to mount the most ambitious
and comprehensive exhibition

ever staged
of the art of Edvard Munch.

There's far more to Munch

than just his four versions
of The Scream.

His output was wide and varied,

and his life story
dramatic and moving.

The exhibition in Norway
was the ideal opportunity

for us at Great Art to look closer
at this wonderful artist.

'Munch 150 is the largest overview

'of Edvard Munch's work
ever displayed.'

'A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity
to see all of his major paintings

'gathered together
in one extraordinary exhibition.'

'Perhaps the most celebrated
Norwegian that ever lived,

'the name Edvard Munch is,
for many people, synonymous

'with his most famous work,
The Scream.'

'One of the most memorable images
in the entire history of art,

'The Scream is a rare example
of a work of art whose fame

'seems to transcend
the period from which it emerged.'

'In 2012,
one of the versions of The Scream

'sold for just under $120 million,

setting the all-time record
at public auction.'

'It was an event that furthered
the reputation of the image itself,

'and, of course,
of its creator, Edvard Munch.'

Now I'm joined by two
of the curators of the exhibition,

Mai Britt Guleng and Nils Ohlsen

here in the first room
at the National Gallery.

Mai Britt,
he's such a prolific artist, Munch.

I mean, there's over 1,000 paintings
in that career.

So how on Earth do you decide
what you want to show?

Are you going for
a comprehensive exhibition

or looking at different facets?

Both. We would like to show

a comprehensive presentation
of Munch.

We started with the main works
from the whole of his career,

and then we had
a lot of discussions,

"What is a major work?"
But we ended up with a selection,

and we also ended up
with certain themes

we wanted to investigate.

We couldn't just have major works
because then it might be...

Too obvious?
Too obvious perhaps,

but at the same time,
we must remember

that we are very spoilt
at the Munch Museum

and the National Museum
because we have the major works.

For us also,
besides the choice of works,

the structure was
very, very important.

If you have 270 main works,
you need a very strong structure,

you need a kind of choreography
for the exhibition.

The main idea for us
was a chronology,

so we start with 1882
and we finish with 1944,

but inside or under this structure,
this temporary line,

we have a lot of different themes,

a lot of different angles
and perspectives.

The exhibition begins
with Munch's self portraits,

the most interesting of which
are these two,

painted when
he was just 19 years old.

The first
is a precisely-rendered image

of a self-contained
and rather confident young man

with a sense of self-drama

because of
the strong, contrasting light.

Now, this one is more experimental,
with softer daubs of paint

and a gaze which perhaps captures
something of the vulnerability

of a young man.

'Just a year earlier, in 1881,

'Munch had begun at the Royal School
of Drawing in Oslo,

'an institution that had been,
in part, founded

'by his distant relative,
Jacob Munch,

'who was also an artist
back in 1818.'

Munch had first displayed
an artistic leaning

at the age of seven,
and encouraged by his Aunt Karen,

he continued to draw and paint
through the rest of his childhood.

Now this is one of Munch's
first publicly-exhibited works.

In its subject matter,
it shows Munch's engagement

with the idea of Realism,

the depiction of ordinary people
in ordinary situations or settings.

Whilst in his treatment
of light and colour,

we see a young artist's awareness
of impressionism.

Critics in Oslo, though,

unfamiliar with the latest
innovations in modern painting,

attacked the image,
calling it "slapdash and insipid".

Munch considered himself
as much a writer as a painter,

and throughout his life,
he kept diaries and journals.

These give us a fascinating insight
into the artist's interior world,

and they're a hugely-revealing
complement to his artistic output.

But in the tension
between what his art depicts

and the reality of the life he led,
Munch did as much as anyone

to blur the distinction
between the two.

'Edvard Munch was born
on December 12th 1863

'in the village of Loten
'to Christian and Laura Munch.'

'An army doctor,
Christian Munch was prone

'to bouts of deep depression,

'and Edvard would later claim
his own mental problems

'stemmed from his father.'

'The family moved to the capital,
Kristiania, later renamed Oslo,

'when Edvard was one year old.'

'But his childhood was marked
by tragedy.'

'Laura Munch died of Tuberculosis
in 1868,

'and Edvard himself suffered
frequent attacks of the disease,

'often coming close to death.'

MAN AS MUNCH:
'Sickness, madness and death

'were like the black angels
that surrounded my crib.'

'My mother died prematurely.'

'From her, I inherited
the seeds of consumption.'

'Following his mother's death,
he and his siblings,

'Sophie, Andreas, Laura, and Inger,
were cared for

'by their maternal aunt,
Karen Bjolstad.'

'But another tragedy was to mark
Munch's early life.'

'He lost his elder sister, Sophie,
also to tuberculosis, in 1877.'

'Her eyes became red,

'and it was certain then
that death was coming...

'..unfathomable death.'

'Evening came, and
Sophie lay burning up on her bed.'

'"Dear, sweet Edvard,
take it from me."

'"It hurts so much."'

'But I could not take it away
from her.'

'The angels of
fear, sorrow, and death

'had stood by my side
since the day I was born.'

'They followed me when I played...
followed me everywhere.'

'Followed me in the spring sun
and the glory of summer.'

'They stood by my side at bedtime
when I shut my eyes.'

'They threatened me with death,
hell, and eternal damnation.'

'The Sick Child
shows a gravely ill young girl

'sitting up with
her head against a pillow,

'her face turned
towards the darkness

'on the far right of the scene,

'whilst her companion
already seems bowed in grief.'

'The theme of the dying child
was a common subject

'in late 19th century art.'

'But Munch also drew
on his own experience and memory.'

'He wrote later in life
that the traumatic experience

'of the death of his sister, Sophie,

'was the primary source
for the painting.'

'He describes in vivid detail how
he rekindled these painful memories

'as he struggled
to create the image.'

'But it was another
more fleeting episode in his life

'that seems to have provided
the more immediate impetus

'for The Sick Child.'

Munch painted The Sick Child
after he had seen this girl

called Betzy Nilsen,
who was a patient at his father's,

and he wanted to capture
the first vision of her head,

her pale face against
the white pillow and her red hair.

And he wrote about it
several years later,

that he wanted to recapture
this inner image,

this memory of the child.

It's quite an old-fashioned theme.
There were a lot of other artists

at this time that were painting
sick, young girls

with tuberculosis and so on.
It was quite "fashionable".

But the form
is absolutely revolutionary.

'It took Munch over a year
to complete the painting.'

'Through a process
of applying layers of paint

'and scratching them off again,

'he built up a complex tapestry
of colour and texture.'

You can see how he gets terribly
frustrated with the canvas,

and he scratches it
with the end of his paint brush.

You can see he leaves that,
he leaves the scratches in.

They're sort of like scars
adding to the imperfections

and the emotion of the painting.

He allows the paint
to drip and run down the canvas,

all to get a more expressive sense,
not of what he saw,

not of what the eye captured
at the time,

but of what the mind
and the emotions recall of that.

So he can revivify and bring
that thing back to life for us

in the way that he felt it.

'While Impressionists
were attempting to capture light

'or movement
with their radical technique,

'here, Munch seems to be trying
to realise in paint

'something deeper about
memory and experience.'

'And it's this fact
that sets The Sick Child apart.'

Munch exhibited the painting
with a designation, "Study",

so it seems he accepted the fact
that this was an experiment,

but the reception was very polarised
and the critics were very harsh.

One of the critics
said it looked like a dirty sheet

hung out to dry on a washing line.

Another critic said
it looked like an abortion.

Well, this was incredibly hurtful
for Munch, as you can imagine.

The genius of it
was also acknowledged by those

who knew more
than the conservative critics,

and newspapers,
and the broad public.

It becomes a pivotal work,
and he says himself that,

"A lot of what I did later
had its beginnings in this work."

'In the years
following The Sick Child,

'Munch continued to experiment

'with different styles
and techniques,

'and the next few rooms
of the exhibition show the results.'

'But before he could move forward,

'Munch, in a sense,
took a step back.'

'Stung by the criticism
of The Sick Child,

'Munch produced
this monumental work.'

'Here he took on
the very same subject

'but realised it
in a more acceptable academic style,

'as if to show that
he could do it if he wanted to.'

'The painting was a great success,

'and led to Munch receiving
a three-year state scholarship,

part of which included
a bursary to study in Paris.'

'And so in the autumn of 1889,

'the 25-year-old
made his first extended visit

'to the French capital.'

'The city was the undisputed centre
of the European art world.'

'Here, Munch began an engagement
both with Impressionism

'and also with the newer,
more radical forms of art

'that were emerging.'

'Night In Saint-Cloud owes a debt
to the art of the American painter,

'James McNeil Whistler,
who'd lived Paris before him.'

'It also borrows something
of the visual language

'of Impressionism,
particularly in its brushwork.'

'But the brooding figure
staring out of a window,

'set within a dark interior,

'comes entirely
from Munch's visionary imagination.'

'His father, Christian,
had died at the end of 1889,

'just after he'd arrived in Paris,

'and some scholars have suggested
that here,

'Munch is working out his grief
in paint.'

Love and its consequences
became the focus

for a monumental undertaking

that came to dominate
Munch's life and work,

and which takes over the next
few rooms of the exhibition.

A series of thematically-grouped
paintings exploring life and death

became Munch's central project,
which he called The Frieze Of Life.

The Frieze was exhibited
at different times

in various formations,

but there's
no unified style or format,

no definitive frieze
that Munch declared complete,

but rather a changing assembly
of works that emerged over time.

And so here, in this first room,

we're presented
with a reconstruction

of Munch's first version
of The Frieze,

exhibited in 1893 in Berlin,

under the title,
Study For A Series Called Love.

But the most complete
and unified version of The Frieze

was shown in 1902, again in Berlin,

and it's this that forms
the centrepiece of the exhibition.

A frieze is broken up
into four sections,

starting with The Seed Of Love,
which shows the coming together

of a man and a woman,

not least subsumed
in Munch's amazing image

of a passionate embrace.

Then comes the second section,
Love's Blossoming And Demise,

where guilt and remorse
start increasingly to play a role.

Third section is Angst,
with this extraordinary crescendo

building up to Munch's
most-celebrated work, The Scream.

And then finally and inevitably...
Death.

But with a rather neat
and surprising postscript,

which brings everything full circle
in this extraordinary painting,

Metabolism.

'This painting, Red And White,
shows two women

'standing at the tree-lined shore
of Asgardstrand.'

'On the left, a female figure
in white stares out at the water.'

'Her innocence contrasts
with the red figure,

'who turns to confront the viewer,

'the embodiment
of passion and sexuality.'

'This, for Munch,
is the moment of sexual awakening.'

'The attraction is then consummated
in this version of The Kiss.'

'And then, in the Madonna,

'Munch presents an extraordinary
image of a climatic female figure,

'her eyes half closed,
and body arched in pleasure.'

'Here is a sexually-powerful woman,
lost in her own world,

'making no appeal to the viewer.'

'But her sallow skin is akin
to that of a corpse.'

'Here too, perhaps,

'are the two extremes
of human existence, sex and death.'

Just the bare fact that
he was painting a woman making love,

it was scandalous.

She's not depicted in a way

that only makes her
an object of desire.

It's not...

She's not really desirable
in the way she's painted,

she's not painted
inviting or something.

It's more like, erm, she's secluded
in her own experience.

'In Ashes, Munch's pessimistic take
on male-female relations

'is laid bare.'

'The man seems lost and defeated,
the woman almost triumphant

'and yet, morally compromised.'

'In another lithographic version
of the work, Munch wrote,

'"I felt our love lying on the Earth
like a heap of ashes",

'thereby giving the painting
its title.'

'Female power over men
is further emphasised

'in this work, Vampire,

'in which
a woman is at once consoling

'and consuming the male figure
in her embrace,

'her tentacle-like red hair
enveloping his form.'

'And then, in this work,
The Dance Of Life,

'in which the figures dance under
the sun of the Nordic summer night,

'Munch seems to present
stages in a woman's life.'

Munch used many symbols
that are easily recognisable

and understandable.

Like the white dress for innocence,

the red dress for desire,
and perhaps also guilt,

and the black dress for sorrow,
et cetera.

'The central couple appear
lost in their own embrace.'

'But again, as with the Madonna,

'in this moment of love,
their skull-like faces remind us

'of demise
and the inevitability of death.'

He's really a master of reduction.

He doesn't want to tell a story,
he's focusing on THE women,

THE child, THE man, THE night,
and so on.

And, of course,
then he is coming to elements,

elements of strong tension
and very strong relations.

So man and woman, of course,
the suffering, jealousy,

so these very fundamental emotions.

At the same time that The Frieze
was beginning to take shape

in the early 1890s,

Munch was becoming
increasingly anguished.

He had been profoundly affected
by the death of his father in 1889,

and from 1892,
whilst living in Berlin,

his personal life
became more turbulent,

and his alcohol consumption
more excessive.

All of which exacerbated
a deepening sense of depression.

MAN AS MUNCH:
'I live with the dead...

'..my mother, my sister,

'..my grandfather...

'..my father.'

'Every day is the same.'

'My friends have stopped coming.'

'Their laughter disturbs me...

'..tortures me.'

'The fire in the fireplace
is my only friend.'

'The time I spend sitting
in front of the fireplace

'gets longer and longer.'

'At its worst, I lean my head
against the fireplace,

'overwhelmed by the sudden urge...

'.."Kill yourself,
and then it's all over."'

'My huge shadow
springs across half the wall,

'clear up to the ceiling
and the mirror over the fireplace.'

'I see the face of my own ghost.'

'Munch spent the early 1890s
shuttling between France,

'Norway, and Germany.'

'On a fleeting trip
back to Kristiania,

'he had an experience
that would inspire

'his most celebrated work of art.'

'It happened while on a walk
in Ekeberg overlooking the city.'

'It was a time during which
life had ripped open my soul.'

'The colours in nature
broke the lines in nature.'

'The lines and colours
quivered with movement.'

'I felt a huge scream
welling up inside me.'

'And I really did hear
a huge scream.'

A MALE GHOSTLY SCREAM

'I was left trembling in fear.'

To scream is something you do
when you're born,

maybe when you die,

when you hurt,

so it's something that
you can immediately relate to.

One reason why
The Scream is so well-known...

..is definitely the fact
that it is so easily recognisable.

It is such a simple image.

He's always stopping telling a story
at a certain point,

and leaves us alone
with a lot of questions.

And with The Scream,

it's probably much more questions
than answers.

'This is the first version
of The Scream that Munch made.'

'He created it initially
as the final image

'in the original version
of The Frieze Of Life.'

'He presents a figure
flat against the picture plane,

'mouth open, ears covered.'

We cannot say if it's a man
or a woman, or a child or an adult,

it's just like a formula,
like an iconographic sign

for a human being.

And then again,
it's the eye contact

between the viewer and this mask
in the painting coming on to us.

And I think this is one
of the strongest rhetoric elements

in his art.

It's an image
which has this visceral contact

directly with human experience.

The Scream
is this blank piece of paper,

which all of us will project onto,
and Munch understands that.

For him, it may be
something exceedingly personal,

but for the rest of us,
I think that its iconic status,

its universal status,

is that it touches
something very raw, very basic,

very, almost primeval in all of us,

and in that sense, we will project
onto that what our "scream" is.

If you look at the surface
of the canvas,

it's full of diagonal and converging
and moving and twisting lines.

He's got a whole series
of these very close-knit lines

that whirl
and connect with other things.

It's agitated, it's febrile.

The surface of the work
would seem to have its own life,

its own scintillation.

And then, of course, the colour
scheme is deliberately chosen

in relation to
what he says he experienced,

the red and the connotations
with blood and death,

and this notion of a scream that
passes right the way through nature,

right the way through
the core of all of us.

At that time, he was interested in
the new tempera paint

that you could have in tubes.

It gave a very different lustre,
a very different surface

from the more fat oil paint.

This is a meagre lean paint,
which dries up very matte.

He probably wanted to see
what he could get out of it,

experiment with the paint.

And then he enhances the whole thing

by drawing out the outlines
with crayons.

It's a very good example
of where Munch had to find

a different way of painting.

He doesn't abandon figurative,

but he had to abandon
naturalistic painting

in order to somehow communicate
the things of the mind

rather than things of the eye.

What has made the image famous
is not only the image itself,

but all the variations
that you find in magazines

and caricatures, et cetera,
in films, and all over the place.

It has become an ubiquitous image.

The Scream is sort of
Munch's calling card,

it's his business card, if you like.
It's introduced him to the world.

It's made him an exceedingly famous,
almost household name.

'And finally,
we come to the last image

'in The Frieze cycle.'

'Munch presents a fecund couple,
a kind of secular Adam and Eve.'

'They stand naked,
avoiding each others' gaze.'

'Between them,
stands the Tree of Life,

'its roots growing out
from the skeleton buried below.'

'Here then is the Frieze cycle
brought to its completion

'as new life springs from death.'

I don't think when you look at
The Frieze, it's about a narrative,

I think it's more about a structure

of the things which,
between birth and death,

we will all,
in one way or another, experience

and have to come to terms with.

The ambition here is massive,
it's total.

It's to somehow pin down the essence

of what it means
to be a human being.

In the rooms following
The Frieze Of Life,

'the exhibition explores several
other facets of Munch's art

'through end of the 19th century
and into the 20th.'

'We see portraits of friends,
patrons, and acquaintances

'from his time
in Berlin and elsewhere.'

'But perhaps the most striking image
is this self-portrait from 1895.'

'The painting is presented
in a special packing case

'that was used to transport it
around Norway

'as part
of the Munch 150 celebrations.'

'The 1890s had seen
Munch pursue an exhaustive cycle

'of exhibitions and tours
around Europe,

'and by the end of the century,

'he was beginning to enjoy
a degree of success.'

We've now travelled across Oslo
to the Munch Museum,

where the exhibition continues.

And just as the exhibition
at the National Gallery

begins with self-portraiture,
so it does here at the Munch Museum.

With the earliest, from 1886,

showing Munch using
that scratchy layered style

he'd first used in The Sick Child,

which he painted
just before this work,

and here showing himself
as a young emerging artist,

very much trying to make his mark.

And then, in a later self portrait
from 1926,

Munch appears as an assured
but scowling presence

in an otherwise
intensely colouristic experiment.

And then, finally,
in a self portrait from 1906,

which is very much the entry point

to the second half
of the exhibition,

we see a melancholic Munch,
sitting alone in a cafe,

a bottle of wine for company,

with this strange double-sided
apparition in the background,

seemingly evoking
the idea of inner turmoil.

'In the summer of 1907,

'Munch opted to forego
his annual visit to Asgardstrand,

'and travelled instead to the German
coastal town of Warnemunde.'

'While by day,
he enjoyed the rejuvenating effects

'of swimming, good food,
and sea air,

'at night,
Munch was a regular visitor

'to one of the town's brothels.'

'His experiences there
became the subject

'for a series of paintings that show
Munch's continued preoccupation

'with the troubled relationship
between the sexes.'

'He presents a disturbing vision
of life inside the brothel.'

'The green, patterned-walled rooms
form a claustrophobic backdrop

'for the sordid interactions
between client and prostitute.'

'This was a time Munch called
his "inferno period",

'during which, his mental health
reached crisis point.'

'Five years before,
he'd been trapped

'in a disastrous love affair
with Tulla Larsen.'

'Wealthy and obsessive,
she was intent on marrying Munch.'

'After many attempts
to escape the relationship,

'it finally ended
in dramatic fashion.'

'Munch's tumultuous relationship
with Tulla reached a climax

'during an encounter at
his Asgardstrand cottage in 1902.'

'Shots were fired,

'and the artist's left hand
was badly wounded.'

'It's not known who fired the gun,

'but it left Munch
permanently maimed and embittered

'for years to come.'

MAN AS MUNCH: 'He had offered
his hand to a female thief

'and she had bitten it off.'

'"Help, help," she had cried,
"I am drowning."'

'Yet she had run away,
and it was HE who had drowned.'

'Munch spent the next few years

'struggling with
severe anxiety and depression,

'before he finally admitted himself

'to the Copenhagen clinic
of Dr Jacobson in 1909.'

'He spent eight months there,
and started a journal regularly

'as a form of therapy.'

'It was a practice he would continue
for the rest of his life.'

'Munch's journal entries
are difficult to date,

'but there was one person
who would appear repeatedly,

'even years after
their relationship ended...

Tulla Larsen.'

MAN AS MUNCH:
'The smile of a mistress.'

'A grimacing smile.'

'The actress in the theatre of life
has become the terrifying image

'of the head of the Medusa.'

'I was afraid of her face
the first time I saw it.'

'But she knew how to use
pity, tears, and reproach

'to keep me at heel.'

'It almost felt like a duty,
allowing her to torture me.'

'The breakdown in 1909 was,
in many ways,

'a turning point for Munch.'

'On leaving the clinic
in Copenhagen,

'he returned to Norway,

'where he settled
in the small town of Kragero,

'down the coast from Asgardstrand
on the Oslofjord.'

'Here, he re-engaged
with the Norwegian landscape,

'producing
a series of dynamic images.'

Having been largely shunned
through the 1890s,

Munch was now slowly gaining
acceptance within Norway.

Some of his works had been bought
by the National Gallery,

and he was increasingly recognised
as a key figure

in Norwegian cultural life.

As if to underline
Munch's new-found confidence,

he began work on
a series of large-scale paintings

in response to
a competition to decorate the Aula,

the festival hall
of Kristiania University,

of which these are part of
Munch's elaborate process of study.

It was a commission
of the highest national prestige,

and although his designs
weren't universally popular,

his paintings
were eventually accepted.

'The first stages
in the Aula mural series

'were produced in Kragero.'

'But a year later in 1910,
Munch purchased a property

'across the fjord in Hvitsten,
called Nedre Ramme.'

'Inspired by the idyllic setting,

Munch continued to work
on the Aula commission there,

'a series of works
he said celebrated

'the "perpetual forces of life".'

'But it would prove to be a project

'full of
challenges and frustrations.'

MAN AS MUNCH: 'I had to work
in a more objective way

'with the Aula paintings
and with a particular motif.'

'It would have to be executed
on a different level

'than The Frieze Of Life,
which would for me

'always be
my most important business.'

'But it took time.'

'At Nedre Ramme, I could set up
the models for Alma Mater

'and the children bathing
on the beach,

'with the fjord against the blue
hazy hills in the background.'

'To paint Alma Mater,
I occupied 100m

'of Norway's long coastline.'

'This caused great envy.'

'It should only be used
for bathing.'

'As long as I have painted
in this country,

'I have had to fight every inch
of the way with clenched fists

'for my art.'

This is Munch's final
major self portrait,

and for me,
amongst the most powerful

and moving works he ever produced.

In 1940, Norway had been invaded
by Germany,

and found itself under occupation.

And although he'd been previously
condemned as a degenerate artist

by the Nazis, Munch was,
by and large, left alone.

Although, he continually feared
for the fate of his works

at the National Gallery.

Instead, he retreated even further
into isolation at Ekely,

and it was during that time
that he painted

this intensely powerful image
of himself.

The self portrait,
Between The Clock And The Bed,

has, in my mind,
a ceremonial character

where Munch,

the old wretched... er... body,

stands there erect,
as if departing,

taking a final farewell
with the public,

with the beholder
confronting him again.

You see him positioned
between the clock and the bed,

and the bed has inferences
of both birth and death.

It's the bed where
eventually he knows he will die.

The clock measuring time.

Although the clock has no hands
in this instance.

And you see him between the temporal
and what will become the infinite.

And there he stands. Erm...

So old, so sunken, so... so brave

with his chin still up,

even though there's not
much strength in his body.

It was very important to Munch
that he should be conscious

when he died.

He didn't want to die in his sleep,
and I'm pleased to say,

he DID die on that bed,
fully conscious. He experienced it.

'The end finally came for Munch
on 23rd January 1944.'

'A month before,
a German ammunition dump

'had exploded in Oslo harbour,

'the force of the blast
shattering windows as far as Ekely.'

'The trauma of the experience
brought on a bout of pneumonia,

'from which he never recovered.'

'He died in his bed
in the presence of his housekeeper.'

'He was 80 years old.'

Now I'm joined for the final time
by Mai Britt Guleng

and also by the curator,
Jon-Ove Steihaug.

Mai Britt, is it possible
for people like you

to have
your opinion of Munch changed

as a consequence of this exhibition?

Or does it reinforce what
you already knew and felt about him?

To me, it's, er, really interesting

to see Munch's whole life's work

shown in two places, in two houses,

because the National Gallery has
this 19th century museum quality,

and here, at the Munch Museum,
it's more kind of modernist,

so it emphasises also
the wide span in his career.

So it reinforces then

what you were saying
at the beginning,

of this looking backwards,
looking forwards.

Is that the strongest feeling you're
getting at the end of this survey?

Yes, I think that is
one very important aspect of it,

but, at the same time,
it's always very different

to see the works in real life.

And we hope that this exhibition
will generate new research on Munch

because there are so many questions
to be asked.

Jon-Ove,
he's a very interesting figure.

We've said about
this straddling of two centuries,

but by the time he died,

Impressionism, Post-Impressionism
were long gone,

Abstract Expressionism
was developing

or about to develop in New York,

and yet, he's still seen
as a singular figure.

Is that his position in art history?

He is an artist attached
to various movements,

but he's always
a singular isolated figure?

I definitely think
that in terms of new research

that what should maybe be done more
is to discuss Munch

in relation to Modernism
and the Modernist canon,

and also in relation
to post-war, erm, er, tendencies

in the art world,
like Abstract Expressionism.

Because, like, in this room,
where we are standing now,

you see that his way of painting,
er, is really, really very close

to what you found
after the Second World War

in Abstract Expressionism.

But he's also an artist,
whose concerns,

the body, the human condition,
seemed to strike a chord

and have struck a chord
among artists

for the last two decades
in the mainstream of art,

so there's still this ongoing
relevance or resonance too.

Definitely, I think many artists
and the general public

feel that
his work is still very relevant.

It's not historic, it's not dated,

it's not like
something that is close,

but it's still very vital.
There we must leave it.

Thank you both and congratulations.

And we've come to
the end of our time here in Oslo.

So from the Munch Museum,
thank you and goodbye.

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