Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking Review: Classic Themes, Vibrant Variations, The Wall Street Journal

Edvard Munch, “Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones),” 1906–08. Oil on canvas. Harvard Art Museums

Cambridge Mass

At his death, in 1944, Edvard Munch left hundreds of art-works to the city of Oslo-enough to fill a dedicated museum and then some. Because Munch had sold well during his long career, plenty more was in circulation, much of it in the form of prints. New York collectors Philip A. and Lynn G. Straus took notice, and began acquiring works by Munch in 1969. Gradually, they donated pieces to the Harvard Art Museums. Now, a large, final bequest of 64 works has inspired a vibrant exhibition, "Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking," on view through July 27. Museum officials are hailing the Strauses' gift as transformational, making Harvard's collection of 142 Munchs one of the largest in the U.S., and an important resource for scholars.

Munch was born in Norway in 1863, the second child of a doctor. Biographers point to the death of the artist's mother, when he was 5 years old, and later of a teenage sister, as crucial to his development. Munch never married or formed a family of his own.

After briefly trying engineering, he took up painting, and was quickly recognized for his talent. His best-known works emerged in a creative gusher in the 1890s. These included "The Scream," which exists & in several iterations. Though Harvard does not own one, its holdings are rich in other familiar works. "Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking” showcases several.

Refreshingly, the exhibit’s co-curators, Lynette Roth and Elizabeth M. Rudy, have steered away from worn assumptions about Munch’s emotional life. Some 70 works have been selected to highlight how they were made, and grouped in a way that enhances their expressive power. Loans from Oslo's Munch Museum, including two paintings and print-making materials, are enlightening additions.

Munch was introduced to etching and lithography in Germany, where an early

display of his work, already stylistically daring, elicited an outcry alongside admiration. Beginning in 1894, he would experiment  with numerous image-making methods, often combining two or more in a search for new effects. The show nimbly lays out Munch's processes, in wall notes and a handy take-home guide explaining classic painting and print-making techniques.

A large, lushly painted version of "Two Human Beings (The Lonely Ones)," dated 1906-08, serves as the exhibition's centerpiece. In it, a man and a woman stand on a pink shore in tender light, their backs to the viewer. The distance between the two is the story-if you leave out Munch's color choices, curvaceous lines and compositional assurance.

How lonely can two people be in such an edenic setting? For answers, viewers may consult a series of five prints o f the same subject hanging nearby. Produced from the same woodblock-helpfully on loan from Oslo-they could scarcely be more unalike. In one, the woman glows in angelic white against an ominous teal background. The male figure, black from head to toe, seems rooted in the staticky black foreground. It's the Rapture vs. doom. In another, gentler version, the same two figures appear cupped by a soft green foreground under a lilac sky. The mood shifts to summer daydream.

From its opening case study of "Two Human Beings," the show unfolds into variations on other works. While these offer opportunities to delve even more deeply into Munch's techniques, viewers are encouraged to ponder additional questions, among them the artist's attitude toward women.

In two provocative lithographs, Munch’s "Madonna"asserts herself as a dark-maned seductress; a fetus hunches in the lower left, seemingly

fearing the slightest contact. Viewers may differ on whether, in one piece, the use of watercolor softens or heightens the dread.

Various prints of "Melancholy," in which a man sits near the shore, chin in hand, evoke an inner state that appears inseparable from nature. Yet whether in black and white, color, or somewhere in between, he is fundamentally closed off.

Solitariness is not the show’s only theme, however. In multiple examples of "The Kiss," a man and a woman embrace so tightly they constitute a single shape. In "Towards the Forest," a couple with their arms around each other’s waists confront a line of trees.

Munch once remarked that most of his ideas for images arose quite early in his career. A visit to Paris in the 1880s convinced him to reject the Romanticism then favored in Norway. Instead, he aspired to depict elemental human feelings. Printmaking offered multiple chances of realizing or at least getting closer to his vision.

Like the prints, Munch's paintings often have an unfinished look, suggesting that his artistic enterprise may have been more about process, and less about his psyche, than is generally appreciated. Harvard's amplified collection offers a new opportunity t o weigh this and other questions. In the meantime, in this handsomely mounted show, the best of Munch's mysteriously charged compositions reach out with fresh urgency.

Edvard Munch: Technically Speaking

Harvard Art Museums, through July 27, 2025