contexploration

A few days ago I visited the Munch Museum in my lunch break to take a peek at Life Force, the current exhibition with early twentieth century artworks by Edvard Munch and other Scandinavian artists. The museum itself is a dreary white building in one of the most anonymous areas of Oslo. The outrage caused by the latest armed robbery has resulted in an airport-like security system at the front doors, complete with scanners, one-way doors, cameras everywhere and a security staff preoccupied with treating Japanese tourists like potential kleptomaniacs. Inside the museum itself, the roof is low, the halls are made up like labyrinths, all this creating a claustrophobic feel. There are not enough lights, you can hardly appreciate the rich colours of Munch’s expressionist style. In the permanent collection I noticed that one of the neon light rods above the painting The Voice was out of use. I contacted one of the museum’s guards and made him aware of this. He said: “Don’t you know that Munch often painted on cardboards and other light-sensitive materials?” I told him “yes”, but that The Voice certainly was not one of these. (It’s a seductive painting - on a regular canvas - of a woman in white in the woods by the sea.) I suggested that he changed the light rod. The guard called up the head of the museum on his intercom, and after a ten minute heated conversation, he reluctantly confided to me that he had to change the rod.

This episode says a lot about the state of affairs at the Munch Musem. The museum leadership is neither on good terms with local politicians, the Munch family nor the public itself. To visit the place is like stepping inside Hitler’s bunker. You feel like getting the hell out of there as soon as possible. But maybe this horrific presentation of Munch’s art is a symptomatic of how Norwegians feel about the artist in general? Like the other two Norwegian cultural icons - Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun - Munch explored the realms of melancholy and despair. To be Norwegian is to always be associated with these inhibiting emotions. (In contrast, the Swedes are charming, easy going and friendly. One suspects that the Swedes have somehow managed to institute the world’s smoothest puberty as part of their national culture.) Norwegians are constantly wrestling with trying to get oneself out of oneself – which includes getting out of ones Norwegianness. Nobody wants to flaunt their insecurity.

But every once in a while, maybe on a night out on the town, I meet foreigners that have moved to Oslo partly because of a fascination with Munch, Hamsun or Ibsen. Incredibly, these neurotic artists have been able to attract people from Argentine, Manhattan, Tokyo and Rome. These nomads have seen something magical and raw in a novel by Hamsun, or sensed a psychological honesty in Munch. Some have moved to Norway to study Norwegian so that they could read Hamsun in his original language - others are curious of the nature and atmosphere of Oslo, the city that inspired so many of Munch’s paintings. They fall in love, find a partner. A few of them settle for life. One Australian friend told me: “In part, the traumas of Hamsun and Munch are still present in the Norwegian psyche. I find that if you just scratch the surface of a Norwegian you will discover an insecure person on the brink of a nervous breakdown. This is an extraordinary national trait. For example, the drinking tradition manifested in ‘helgefylla’ throws half the population through the looking glass every weekend. People’s personalities are practically inverted and they ramble through the city streets like in some kind of surrealistic parallel universe. You guys are all borderline – I love it! Ha ha ha!”

My two favourite hangouts in Oslo are the cemetery Vår Frelsers Gravlund and the bar at Kunstakademiet. The cemetery is filled with huge trees, benches, and on a warm summer night the birds there go completely nuts - the noise from their courtship spectacle is amazing. One can sit there for hours. Incidentally, this is where a lot a prominent Norwegians are buried, such as Ibsen, Bjørnson, Wergeland, Welhaven, Hoel… and yes, Munch. One night about a year ago, the bust of Munch was stolen from the cemetery. Two weeks later it was mysteriously returned to its original place – wearing a tie. Last summer, I noticed a white plaster mask of Munch’s face hanging in a tree in the garden outside the bar at Kunstakademiet. It was clearly made from the stolen bust. In the weeks that followed, more masks appeared in and around the bar at the art academy, perfectly blending in with the superb, decadent atmosphere of the place.

In this setting, and in this bar (where the bouncer at the door on Saturdays has been wearing a kilt consistently throughout this winter with temperatures down to minus 10 degrees Celsius, and where the only source of concern is the steadily increasing number of chic Swedes with tight jeans and sharply pointed shoes) the masks of Munch fit in rather well. In what is generally perceived to be a publicity stunt, an art student at the academy has claimed that he made the plaster masks by mixing in the ashes of the stolen Madonna and The Scream. Regardless, this student clearly has an obsession with the artist, and he continues to mass produce Munch masks, giving megalomaniacal statements to the press about "conquering the world" with the spirit of Munch.

Edvard Munch always seems to come back to haunt us. Waking up one morning, late for work, getting dressed in a hurry, running down the stairs, turning the corner of the block half asleep, and suddenly there you have it, right in front of you: A red and orange sunrise completely illuminating the heavens over Oslo. For a second you just have to gasp and ask yourself: Is this the apocalypse? Then The Scream comes to mind, and what Munch himself wrote about it: “I was walking along a path with two friends. The sun was setting. I felt a breath of melancholy. Suddenly the sky turned blood red. I stopped and leaned against the railing deadly tired – looking out across flaming clouds that hung like blood and sword over the deep blue fjord and town. My friends walked on. I stood there trembling with anxiety and I felt a great, infinite scream through nature.”

It’s impossible to live here and not feel the same, occasionally. Even though one attempts to repress Munch and his art by trying to convince oneself that one has overcome the distressing emotions that he projected through his art, or by hiding his art in a bunker in the most godforsaken part of Oslo, the universality of his paintings continue to connect to the unconsciousness of humanity, making Munch a global superstar, which again makes it a matter of national importance to secure his works of art and to make him the poster child of Norwegian culture. The paintings left behind by the Master Communicator of Terror and Anxiety is protected by anti-terror measures. Young pilgrims of doom continue to flock to the land of the nervous Norwegians, populating our bars, pointing fingers at us, mocking us as we wander through the streets forlorn and paralyzed by perpetual puberty, clutching our notebooks.

LINKS: Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul is at MoMA, NY, February 19–May 8, 2006. Read a review from the New Yorker. See the Munch Museum for details on future exhibitions. Read the LA Times’ account of the heist trial in Oslo. Read about the bust theft from Vår Frelsers Gravlund. For a sense of Munch’s paranoia, check out Munch: By Himself. Some paintings: The Voice, The Yellow Log, Starry Night, Between the Clock and the Bed. Also, see a gallery from The Washington Post.