Dark enlightenment of Edvard Munch

Charles Desmarais | San Francisco Chronicle | 25th June 2017

Munch wrote “My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm”. And don’t his paintings show it. Seeing van Gogh’s work in Paris, he understood how colour might help express his grand theme – the self as a battleground. Self-analysis was a theme of the coming century and it brought him some commercial success. But his art retained its angst. Increasingly he kept his works, and himself, to himself.