Interpretation
While Munch’s fame as the painter of the expressionist masterpiece The Scream is well known, the Norwegian Symbolist would also become one of the most influential printmakers of the twentieth century. Munch mastered a wide range of print techniques, and this haunting self-portrait, printed in Berlin in 1895, is one of his first lithographs. The bold graphic contrasts between the ghostly face of the artist, with his skeletal arm grounding the unbroken black background, lends a funereal, tomb-like effect to this image, as if the artist is appearing to us from the darkness of the grave.
“I inherited two of mankind’s most frightful enemies—the heritage of consumption and insanity—illness and madness and death were the black angels that stood at my cradle,” Munch wrote in an undated private journal. Although he lived to the age of eighty, Munch’s fragile health and family history gave him cause for concern: his mother and one of his sisters succumbed to tuberculosis (called “consumption” at the time), another sister was institutionalized for mental illness, and his brother died of pneumonia at age thirty. In this haunting and funereal
self-portrait, Munch graphically fused his deepest personal anxieties with the bare essentials—name, date, disembodied head, and skeletal right arm—of his mental and physical identity.
self-portrait, Munch graphically fused his deepest personal anxieties with the bare essentials—name, date, disembodied head, and skeletal right arm—of his mental and physical identity.
Information
- Title
- Self-portrait
- Object Number
- x1982-1
- Medium
- Lithograph
- Dates
- 1895
- Dimensions
- image: 45.1 × 31.5 cm (17 3/4 × 12 3/8 in.) sheet: 59.1 × 44.7 cm (23 1/4 × 17 5/8 in.)
- Catalog Raisonné
- Schiefler 31; Woll 37
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase, with funds given by James R. Epstein, Class of 1978
- Culture
- Norwegian
- Place made
- Europe, Germany, Berlin
- Inscriptions
- Signed and dated in stone, upper right: EDVARD MUNCH – / 1895 – • Inscribed in graphite below stone, lower right: Edv Munch No 42 / An Ludwig von Hafmann mit / fruendlichen Gruss. Berlin. 22//2//1902
- Materials
- Techniques
[R. M. Light & Co., Santa Barbara, CA]; purchased by the Princeton University Fund, 1982.
- Gustav Schiefler, Verzeichnis der graphischen Werks Edvard Munchs (Oslo: J. W. Cappelen, 1974)., no. 31, pp. 48–49 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1982", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 42, no. 1 (1983): p. 50-70., p. 58-59 (illus.)
- Gerd Woll, Edvard Munch: the Complete Graphic Works (New York: harry N. Abrams, in association with the Munch-Musset, Oslo, 2001)., no. 37
- States of Health: Visualizing Illness and Healing (November 2, 2019 –Sunday, February 2, 2020)
- Artist as Image (Saturday, February 20, 2010 - Sunday, May 16, 2010)
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The Museum regularly researches its objects and their collecting histories, updating its records to reflect new information. We also strive to catalogue works of art using language that is consistent with how people, subjects, artists, and cultures describe themselves. As this effort is ongoing, the Museum’s records may be incomplete or contain terms that are no longer acceptable. We welcome your feedback, questions, and additional information that you feel may be useful to us. Email us at collectionsinfo@princeton.edu.
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