Edvard Munch, Norwegian Symbolist painter, best known for The Scream, was born on this date in 1863.
- Munch's father Christian was a doctor and the son of a priest; his wife Laura was much younger than him. Edvard was the second of five children.
- Despite their father being a doctor, the family suffered a lot of ill health. Munch's mother died of TB when he was only five - the family were brought up thereafter by their Aunt Karen. His sister Sophie died of TB at the age of fifteen and another sister, Laura, had mental health problems. Edvard himself was often ill as a child, and during his illnesses, he would draw to keep himself amused. His early drawings were of the interior of various apartments where the family lived, medicine bottles and medical equipment.
- By his teens, Munch knew he wanted to be an artist, but enrolled in a technical college instead, possibly because his father strongly disapproved of art as a career. Munch was good at science and maths, too, and did reasonably well, but he was often ill, so didn't complete the course. He left the college to pursue a career in art. His father was horrified and even the neighbours pitched in to try and get him to change his mind by sending anonymous letters condemning his career choice.
- Munch's relationship with his father was mixed; on the one hand, he'd read to his children, but on the other, he was the son of a priest and that showed. He was extremely religious and, as Munch himself described him, "temperamentally nervous". He would tell his children that their mother was looking down from heaven at them, disapproving of their behaviour. Only one of Munch's early nude paintings survives. There were sketches suggesting there were several more, but it's thought his strictly religious father destroyed them. As a young man, Munch fell in with the Bohemian set, which caused still more tension between him and his father, especially as Edvard was still financially dependent on him.
- His early work wasn't well received - about his full-length portrait of Karl Jensen-Hjell, one of the first paintings he exhibited, a critic wrote: "It is impressionism carried to the extreme. It is a travesty of art."One of his Bohemian friends suggested that Edvard should "write his life", and explore his emotions and psyche through his painting and in a diary. Munch abandoned expressionism for a while and painted what he called his "soul paintings", including The Sick Child (1886), based on his sister's death. Critics weren't fond of this painting, nor were his family and neighbours.
- Munch dismissed photography as an art form. "It will never compete with the brush and the palette, until such time as photographs can be taken in Heaven or Hell," he said.
- He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1908, a culmination of his anxiety and his tendency to drink and brawl along with his Bohemian friends. He suffered hallucinations and paranoia and entered a clinic for eight months of treatment. The treatment worked - Munch's condition stabilised and he was discharged, though advised by his doctor to only socialise with close friends and not to drink in public. There was a shift in his style at this time - his work became more colourful, less dark and pessimistic, and as a result, critics and the public warmed to it. His paintings began to sell.
- He never married. In fact, only one of his siblings married, only to die a few months after the wedding. However, in his later years, he went back to painting nudes, and had no problems getting women to model for him. It is thought likely at least some of them were his lovers.
- He also painted studies of farm life in his later years and used his work horse "Rousseau" as a model in several paintings. He left home only occasionally when he had a commission to paint a mural.
- He died at the age of 80 in 1944, and the Nazis, then occupying Norway, organised his funeral. This was despite the fact Munch was not a Nazi sympathiser, and Hitler actually hated his paintings, dismissing them as "degenerative art," and had removed all 82 of Munch's pictures from German museums before the war. Munch had lived in constant fear that the Nazis would burst into his home and destroy all his work. So why did he get a Nazi funeral? It was seen as propaganda, an attempt to rebrand the artist as a Nazi sympathiser, when Munch could no longer renounce them.
New!
Jack Ward, President of Innovia, owes his life twice over to the enigmatic superhero, dubbed Power Blaster by the press. No-one knows who Power Blaster is or where he comes from - and he wants it to stay that way.
Scientist Desi Troyes has developed a nuclear bomb to counter the ever present threat of an asteroid hitting the planet. When Ward signs the order giving the go ahead for a nuclear test on the remote Bird Island, he has no inkling of Troyes' real agenda, and that he has signed the death warrants of millions of people.
Although the island should have been evacuated, there are people still there: some from the distant continent of Classica; protesters opposed to the bomb test; and Innovians who will not, or cannot, use their communication devices.
Power Blaster knows he must stop the bomb from hitting the island. He also knows it may be the last thing he ever does.
Meanwhile in Innovia, Ward and his staff gather to watch the broadcast of the test. Nobody, not even Troyes himself, has any idea what is about to happen.
Part One of The Raiders Trilogy.
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