Oslo-D1; 5 of 5 MUNCH MUSEUM

The Munch Museum has been open since 2020, and dedicated to the life and works of the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. The museum had in its permanent collection well over half of the artist's entire production of paintings and at least one copy of all his prints. This amounted to over 1,200 paintings, 18,000 prints, six sculptures, as well as 500 plates, 2,240 books, and various other items.

This 13 floor museum of primarily Munch’s work is broken up by time periods as his styles and interests changed. There were two other artists displayed there on the day we were there (Kiyoshi Yamamoto & Kerstin Bratsch). It is quite a depressing museum of his works but clearly most people come to see one of the 3 ORIGINAL SCREAMS stored here. They are so fragile (originals were done on cardboard) that even though they are temperature and light controlled and the slightest light will over time ruin them (they predict) they close off one painting every half hour and open up another one to be seen and that’s how they cycle through you seeing all 3 but never at the same time (giving two them a rest each half hour). Crazy, but true-see out video.

Munch was often affected by depression, which is definitely visible in his work. His art deal with themes of anguish, melancholy, fear, death and pain. In his own words, he wanted to express “the most subtle states of mind” through painting.

The Scream was created in 1893 followed by several subsequent versions in pastel and tempera and has been used in many setting, ads, books and merchandise to symbolize angst, fear, isolation, and inner turmoil. He was inspired by a hallucinatory experience in which the artist felt and heard a “scream throughout nature,” it depicts a panic-stricken creature, simultaneously corpselike and reminiscent of a sperm or fetus, whose contours are echoed in the swirling lines of the blood-red sky. WILD!
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