Disturbingly Beautiful.

Only few people know.
After some years in Berlin and other places in Germany, the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch resided in Rostock-Warnemuende from May 1907 to October 1908. This stage of Munch's life is often not mentioned in the written biographies and I'm very sorry for that. I'd like to show you with some examples how important for his art and personal growing the time in Warnemuende has been. After a very distressful time and the breakdown of his relationship with Tulla Larsen, he chose one of the pilot's and fishermen's houses, the house Am Strom 53, to write a new chapter in the book of his life. In the photograph below you can see what the house looks like today. Since 1996 it harbours the German Friends' Association 'Edvard-Munch-Haus Warnemünde e.V.' Inside the house I wasn't allowed to take pictures, but I will get back to that later.

Photography: Warnemuende, September 2018.

If you look for some famous masterpieces of the colourful painter in the house you won't be successful. Should you be disappointed because of that you haven't understood at all. If you look carefully and with your heart open for some touching surprises you will find a place that is a jewel of a special kind, I promise.

When Edvard Munch, a very shy and quiet man, arrived in Warnemuende he was in desperate search of his inner peace. It was high time for a change of air and, at the beginning at least, good for him to burn the bridges behind himself. Warnemuende, the beautiful seaside resort in the north of Germany, has always carried a very particular charm and attraction with it. It still does today. For now, it seemed to be the right place for Edvard. He was still in the process of coming to terms with the tragedy that happend with Tulla Larsen and, in cosequence, he needed to recover from bad mental and physical attacks. However, gaining back a positive and bright view on life does not happen overnight. Edvard Munch immediately started to work intensely, trying to improve his health issues and overcome stages of depression. There were some other quite distinctive details that made it hard for Munch to move on. He tells us about his struggle through the paintings he created during his stay at the Baltic Sea. For the time being, Edvard regarded Tulla as the love of his life and at this point he was still driven by the need for her; he was driven by jealousy and even hate. There is something groundbreaking Tulla could not see, let alone understand. The artist wasn't a man to marry. At all. He was not made for a relationship to a woman in the conventional sense of his time. It would never have worked. Edvard loved women but was meant to paint in the first place. He had to acknowledge to himself that a modern woman who could meet the magic of his mind and his personality, a confident woman who could inspire and encourage him, a woman who shone for herself and was also brave enough to strike the right chord and confront him with unpleasant matters, not yet existed. To complement and love a character like Edvard Munch's, its colourfulness and its darkness and its self-obsession, it needed a very special person. Tulla was not such a woman.  For Edvard Munch was always one to paint his private tumults right the instant he felt or recalled them, let me introduce some works that very strongly point to the spiritual abysses he experienced in Warnemuende. Let me start with this one.

Desire, by Edvard Munch 1907(1)
Currently exhibited: Munch Museum Oslo

I believe Edvard Munch's deliberately and bold choice of colours and  his brushwork work absolutely well to suggest the tense turmoil between the couple we look at in this painting. Desire does not always go hand in hand with love, right? On the side of the woman love is certainly amiss whereas with the man it is an entirely different matter. Munch's rather undefined rendering of the sofa, the table and the body of the man, deeply reinforce this impression. The artist uses the table as a powerful means, a space-creating  and belligerent component to tell us what is going on here and therefore in the mind of the painter. Can you see how the position and the size of the round table jams the two people together on the sofa? Is this a misplacement, an accidentally miscalculated array of protagonists and items on a canvas? Oh, of course it is not. Munch's striking arrangement echoes the impasse and the physiological disaster of a love story that once began so full of hope. The man's longing desire doesn't find reciprocation. The rigid eyes of the woman in his arms search for the lonely bottle of wine on the table which is, centerally placed and brutally brought to our attention, the metaphor for her indifference and coldness towards him. The man and the woman, despite we can see them with each other and in a very intimate pose, are lonelier than they have ever been before. It is not to deny that the woman has a remarkable resemblance with Tulla Larsen and I think we can see the painting as a key scene of a period in Munch's life that was characterised by revulsion and hate.

Tulla Larsen, Edvard Munch 1898-99 (2)
Currently exhibited: Munch Museum Oslo

This is Tulla. Like the woman in Desire, her face and the shape of it are strikingly beautiful. We also recognise the colour of Tulla's hair, the shape of her nose, her tall figure. Let's look at the next painting from the Warnemuende-cycle.

The Murderess, Edvard Munch 1907 (3)
Currently exhibited: Munch Museum Oslo

The Murderess is a painting of the the same new technique, but here Edvard Munch's loneliness is getting more desperate, more aggressive and even more intense and directly constructed. It is the visualisation of hate if you will. Like in Desire, the tabletop is once again the element that Munch uses to charge the painting with nearly unbearable emotional content. This time, however, the table figuratively separates the woman from the man that is lying on the sofa. With that the paralysed woman is shoven further into the room for some purpose. Munch, fully aware of what he was doing, declares her guilty for a terrifying event that has just taken place. As we can assume, the woman is Tulla again with the eyes of a ghost. Like in hypnosis, she is staring at the bleeding hand of the man on the sofa. Munch even intensifies the women's horror of that moment and her culpability by only depicting the man's lower body, the prominence of his hand and masses of blood. The man's head is, intentionally and merciless by Munch, off the canvas. What had happened? Tulla, fuming with rage that Munch didn't want to marry her, made another try to change Munch's mind. The backgrounds of the incident that followed are still somewhere in the dark and partly unresolved to the present day. One version is that the situiation got out of hand and Tulla, in an overheated argument, fired a gun at Edvard who as a result got seriously injured at his hand. The dramatic episode, the climax of their constant fights, threats, insults and hurts, was of so much negative impact on Munch's mental condition that he freqently referred to it in his artwork. Even though the event happened years ago (1902), the painting itself still served as an offensive message of revenge towards Tulla. Have you noticed the woman's hat on the table? Since Tulla was famous for her extravagant fashion in headdressing, hats that would easily outshine any design of the ladies at Ascot's these days, Munch made sure that she perfectly understood its meaning in the painting. Her blame and failure in their relationship, and only hers, were made public by this. The fruits on the table arouse an assiciation to Adam and Eve in me and I think they are meant as an insult, too. Like Eve, Tulla tried to deceive and coax Munch into a marriage he never wanted and he is telling her just that. Once the train of hate was in motion Munch could not stop it. These are the dark sides of Edvard Munch and the brutality of how he showed them makes me quite quiet and thoughtful right now.

Finally, better times came for Edvard Munck. Maybe it was the sea? Being at the beach and listening to the sound of it, smelling the salt of the water, has always a soothing effect on me, for example. To give you an impression I captured this for you. It's been a moody day last Saturday, the weather couldn't decide between sunshine and rain. Nonetheless, even a stormy sea is very beautiful, right?

Edvard Munch's condition eventually improved for some time and he painted wonderful pieces. I'd like to show you two of my favourites.

Cupido, Edvard Munch 1907 (4)
Currently exhibited: Munch Museum Oslo

I'm so amazed by the harmony of this painting. Affecting, is it not? I love it. Here is another one that is very touching and immensely emotional.

Cupid and Psyche, Edvard Munch 1907 (5)
Currently exhibited: Munch Museum Oslo

Isn't it fascinating how differently artists all over the world approach the topic of the mystic tale and its forbidden love? So fantastic, don't you think?
Munch's painting is full of the Greek Mythology and also highly charged with personal implications and context. The theme we can see here is, without doubt, an abandoned woman after she has failed miserably in the relationship with her beloved man. In the tale Cupid and Psyche part at sunrise. If we look closely and analyse Munch's painting we see that the artist operates with the light just like that. He uses light to separate the lovers. Light flows round her beautiful figure and Psyche appears like a lovely sculpture with her downcast eyes. She is incredibly sad and aware of her fault and the chaos she evoked, the hurt she has caused him. Her lover, in sharp contrast, appears like a contre-jour shot in paint, aggressively painted with powerful linear brushstrokes, yet shadowy and starting to fade away at the same time. His posture however, surprisingly and unexpected, is not fierceness and anger. I'm quite amazed by this paradox and the intensity it creates. Cupid's body language is disbelief, disappointment and love in paint. How  is it possible to wield a brush like that, an artist still on the warpath as it was, and to convey such intimate and inner emotions that precisely and with such a softness? Psyche will lose him and we are witnesses of the moment when he is about to leave her. It is a moment of pure agony for both. A moment of painful realisation that they, for now, have reached the end of love. Both pieces, Cupido and Cupid and Psyche, depict true feelings of love par excellence.

The flair and lifestyle in the idyllic Warnemuende in 1907 and 1908 was of elevating effect on Edvard. Summer arrived and, thankfully, he lived through a very good and encouraging artistic period that lasted for months. Munch felt better than ever before. The Mediterranean and healthy food, the long walks along the beach finally paid off. As it happened, the brighter vision on life produced some strange (good strange I hasten to add!) and most provoking phenomenons of some brisance. Munch started to work on his piece Bathing Men. Please look at these pictures.

All photos on the beach Warnemuende, taken by E. Munch, 1907/08
References: http://www.edvard-munch-haus.de/de/haus-und-kuenstler/munch-in-warnemuende

When Munch was forty years old he bought himself a camera in Berlin, a Kodak Bull's Eye No. 2. It was one of the first devices with a self-timer. All the time since the purchase he toyed and messed around with it. And had fun! He declared to use it for studies of the human body for his paintings, but it was also a great device to feed his self-obsession. He was good looking, a tall person of 186 cm, he had lost about 15 kilos and we see an attractive man in his prime. With him in the photos is the baths attendant, later he chose the poses of two of them for his future masterpiece. Like the director of a film he gave them instructions how to carry their bodies and how to pose for him.

Bathing Men, first draft by Edvard Munch 1904
References: http://www.edvard-munch-haus.de/de/haus-und-kuenstler/munch-in-warnemuende

Bathing Men, Edward Munch 1908
Currently exhibited: Anteneum Helsinki
References: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Edvard_Munch_-_Bathing_Men,_Ateneum_(1907).jpg

The piece is created in a for Munch entirely different technique of painting. It  is not only so overwhelming for its life-sized measurements of 206 x 227 cm. Far from it! It is the brand-new structure with a system of strong slanted lines.  The extremely strict executed contrast between the horizontal lines of the beach and the sea, the somewhat statuesque, vertical and onwardly figures of the men, convey a monumentality which is simply breathtaking and unbelievably forceful in my eyes. The male vitality we can literally feel here is furthermore underlined by the choice of colours.  The colours- comparable to the style of Paul Cézanne I'd say- work as a kind of building material and structurally add more texture to the surface of the image. In comparison to Munch's earlier work is the painting very different in another way. Whilst the other works I have shown you in my post tell from a rather negative and depressing aura, from rootlessness and restlessness, this one is absolutely bold and life-affirming. Healthiness, virility, determination, optimism, desire and so much more radiate from every pore of the painting. The work marks a thrilling painterly discontinuity, first of all in techniques and also in Munch's choice of the motive. This is truly a masterpiece.

Is this where my art is? Yes, I'm sure it is. It doesn't matter that Munch was not a German artist.

Further references:
(1,2,3,4,5) https://www.pubhist.com/w31196

The House Am Strom 53

All I have written about Edvard Munch today, all the impressions of the man I saw, are a result of my visit at the Munch-Haus in Warnemünde. There are no painted works of Edward Munch, except those few in the conservatory. However, there are lots of private photographs. In the backyard you can still admire the pear tree where Edvard Munch loved to rest for hours. The collection of the photos and the lovely house inspired me to do this research on  Edvard Munch's personality and his stay in Warnemuende on my own. Despite the prohibition of photos in the main part of the house ("No photos, please!"), I was able to take some.

This is the entrance, the house has a lovely small conservatory.
Photograph: 22 Sept 2018, by me.

Another one of the conservatory. Would have loved to have a tea with Edvard Munch here!
Photograph: 22 Sept 2018, Edvard-Munch-Haus Warnemuende

Photograph: 22 Sept 2018, Edvard-Munch-Haus Warnemuende

Edvard Munch on the beach.
Photo: taken by E. Munch 1907/1908
References: http://www.edvard-munch-haus.de/de/haus-und-kuenstler/munch-in-warnemuende

Munch is standing inside the conservatory, looking out to the Alte Strom.
Photo: taken by E. Munch 1907/1908
References: http://www.edvard-munch-haus.de/de/haus-und-kuenstler/munch-in-warnemuende

When the  German Friends' Association bought the house it was nearly destroyed. This wonderful fireplace had collapsed. The Association found an oven manufacturer in Rostock and it was reconstructed quite true to the original. Maybe, when I visit in about thirty years it'll have back the old patina that is missing now. Nonetheless, it is charming!
Photograph: 22 Sept 2018, Edvard-Munch-Haus Warnemuende

View of the Alte Strom in Warnemuende today.
Photograph: 22 September 2018

A frequent view of these days. Ships like the four-masted steel barque 'Sedov' leaves the harbour after a visit.
Photograph: 14 September 2018

This is what Warnemuende lives from today. The cruise liners with thousands of tourists aboard. First thing many of them ask, I heard, is 'Where is the pear tree?' when they enter the Munch House.
Photograph: September 2018

Photograph: September 2018

Photograph: September 2018

Beautiful small alleys like this one wind their ways through Warnemuende. How often might Edvard Munch have walked them?
Photograph: 22 September 2018

Quite a bit secluded but very lovely you can find this little fountain. Nineteen bronze sculptures tell from a tradition that goes back to the past. Some centuries ago a procession of respectable people set out every year to meet the town magistrate in Rostock in order to announce the newly elected spokesman of Warnemunede. This tradition ist still celebrated today.
Photograph: 22 September 2018