Much has been written and said about this masterpiece. Critics discuss themes of societal alienation, emotional extremes, such as of loneliness and despair, and so on and so forth — I won’t recapitulate these ideas, but rather will try to examine the painting on a more technical and formal level, in an endeavor to trace what exactly enables the expression of these notions. The main artistic device in this sketchy, almost primitive composition is the line: Munch fully exploits the possibilities of this basic tool, and, which is even more interesting, discovers new possibilities, by inaugurating a genre where it would play such an important role. Color plays a no less important, but subordinate role (the black and white lithograph exemplifies how the painting retains its punch even after being discolored). Finally, the painter employed his trademark method of introducing emotional immediacy by confronting the beholder with the protagonist, challenging the discontinuity of the medium by allowing him to “walk off” the canvas towards the viewer.
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In this review I’ll try to figure out how the image of the sun may seem both very close and far, how remote and aloof yet deeply personal at the same time the painting and its impact can be. One thing is certain: the dominance of the star in (and over) this erratic landscape is overwhelming, and it will affect the viewer in one way or another, and most probably in both. This is a violent image, and there is something intimidating in it — the rays, like a spider’s web, try to catch anyone trying to study them. Though the colors of the light are mostly bright and warm, it is the short thick red and blue lines that grab all the attention, disorienting the viewer. Indeed, lines play an important part here; piercing and deep, they run through the entire canvas as if trying to break out and continue beyond it. Consequently, another notable effect becomes the sense of speed — the speed of light — that overpowers the observer and eliminates the calm instilled by the rocks and the beach.
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David Loshak, the author of my monograph, puts a lot of weight into psychoanalytical interpretation. For instance, he expounds the sun and its reflection in “The Dance of Life” as a phallic image, as well as the tree and its reflection in today’s piece. I would like to contend this trend. In my opinion, psychoanalysis is a deeply flawed, or, in other words, a fictional theory, which illustrious, and even less so art history professors inject into their essays in a way of a ready-made template for the purpose of deriving meaning from paintings. Psychoanalysis has been proven to contain massive inaccuracies but somehow still persists in the humanities — I think that the temptation of an easily accessible paradigm that only needs mechanic application is hard to resist. But eventually this is lazy and bad practice; instead of developing an original system of one’s own, scholars seek to adhere to a popular but obsolete (few “universal” truths have been corroborated as such during modern research) theory.
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This is an epic scene that ensues from memory: a mental imprint transferred onto canvas. There are several features that support this thesis. First, the green grassy surface lacks detail — such smudged representations usually echo from the dreamy, simplified and reduced to a few principal details reminiscences. Second, there is the focus on the orange dress and the central couple as one of those details that deserve the maximal attention; the rest dance in the background as a visual accompaniment, or a sort of a filler. Finally, the two women on the edges manifest possible emotional developments of the central female dancer. As it often occurs in dreams and memories, the mind clones the protagonist into several alter-actors; I believe that these two girls embody the orange dressed lady’s fears and hopes, one being of death or abandonment, expressed by mourning (the black dress), the other of matrimony and happiness (the white dress).
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At some point of my critiquing career I disliked Munch because I thought the man used too many symbols at the expense of mastering basic drawing skills. But at a later stage I realized that though his drawing often indeed isn’t perfect, it is not a sufficient reason to reject the artist and deprive his artwork of the feverishly sought for benefits of my analysis… On a more serious note, I recently reviewed a Munch monograph and fell in love with his strange, cold-fiery style. I think that his paintings resemble the kind of people we often encounter in books, described as cool-headed on the outside but violently intense and turbulent on the inside. I suppose that it is the visual power of symbolism, the generic category of most of Munch’s work, that can be ascribed the capacity to communicate the tumults boiling beneath the painterly surface. Eventually, it is difficult to remain untouched at the sight of almost scorching sadness that permeates much of the artist’s output.
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