Erich Heckel’s “Girl With Doll (Franzi)” is now on display at Neue Galerie.2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, BonnIt was “The Scream” heard ’round the world. Especially in Germany, where the Expressionists were just getting started.
“The Scream” (1895) is one of 46 works by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/VG Bild-Kunst, BonnAs the Neue Galerie’s electrifying new exhibit, “Munch and Expressionism,” shows us, Edvard Munch’s 1895 masterpiece fired up the imaginations of younger artists such as Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka. Like the moody Norwegian himself — whose 1892 solo show in Berlin caused a ruckus and paintings like his sperm-and-skull “Madonna” so freaked out the conservative art establishment — they weren’t afraid of the dark. Like Munch, they drew a thin line between sex and death.
It’s a line Munch trod all his life (1863-1944). The early loss of his mother and sister to tuberculosis left him with what “Munch and Expressionism” curator Jill Lloyd calls “a tragic experience of life and death that was central to everything he did.” Like Gustav Klimt, the Neue’s resident genius, Munch never married, but he slept around; one affair ended with him shooting himself in the hand. (He also fell for his cousin’s wife, but that’s another story.)
Heavy drinking paved the way to a nervous breakdown in 1908, followed by a sanitarium stay; the exhibit’s illustrated timeline shows the artist just before he cracked, standing nearly naked on the beach, waving his paintbrush.
Throughout his life, Munch painted and — a full half-century before Warhol — obsessively made prints and multiple variations of his paintings. For this show, Lloyd corralled 46 Munch works, some — like his virile “Bathing Man” — never before seen outside of Norway. These are surrounded by over 30 German Expressionist works taken both from the Neue’s own collection and private holdings. Displayed together, they show how Munch and the Germans pingponged off each other’s sexually charged styles.
Take “Puberty,” in which Munch’s shy young nude has a shadow looming over her shoulder. Hanging beside it is Erich Heckel’s “Girl With Doll (Fränzi),” in which the long, dark legs of an interloper are visible in the background. That Heckel painted his nude in 1910 and Munch his, four years later, suggests that the Munch-Expressionist connection was reciprocal.
“Munch supposedly said, ‘This is crazy! Where is this going?’” Lloyd recalls of his reaction to several Expressionist paintings. A day later, she says, the Norwegian confessed, “I couldn’t get them out of my mind.”
You may have a hard time dislodging such intense images as Schiele’s “Self-Portrait With Raised Bare Shoulder” and “The Scream” itself, whose hemorrhaging red sky — 121 years after Munch captured it in pastels — is still the stuff of nightmares.
“Munch and Expressionism” runs through June 13 at the Neue Galerie, Fifth Avenue at 86th Street; neuegalerie.org.
