Painters [*/ ) Journals & Photos | Edvard Munch, 1863-1944
Edvard Munch and Rosa Meissner in Warnemünde, 1907
“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. The colors in nature – broke the lines of nature – the lines and colors vibrated with motion – these oscillations of life brought not only my eye into oscillations, it brought also my ears into oscillations – so I actually heard a scream – I painted the picture Scream then.”
“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye… it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.”
Edvard Munch Despair. 1891-92
“Human fates are like planets. Like a star that emerges from the dark – and meets another star – shines for a second before disappearing again into the dark – [it is] in this way – in this way a man and a woman meet – glide towards one another are illuminated in love’s flames – to then disappear in their separate directions – Only a few meet in a single large blaze – where they both can be fully united”
Edvard Munch, Journals, 1863–1944
“I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us – I felt the invisible strands of her hair still
winding around me – and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea – I still felt it, felt
the pain where my heart was bleeding – because the threads could not be severed.”
“The camera will never compete with the brush and palette until such time as photography
can be taken to Heaven or Hell.”
Edvard Munch, Journals, 1863–1944
“My fear of life is necessary to me, as is my illness. Without anxiety and illness, I am a ship without a rudder. My art is grounded in reflections over being different from others. My sufferings are part of my self and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and their destruction would destroy my art. I want to keep those sufferings”
“My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Sometimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm’s edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss.”
Edvard Munch, Journals, 1863-1944
