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Lot Essay
“…I would create just as I saw it in the blue haze. These two, in the exact moment that they are no longer themselves but merely one of the thousands of links of kinship that connect generation to generation. People must understand the sanctity and the might of it, and they should take off their hats to it, as they do in church. I would paint a whole series of such pictures. One should no longer paint interiors, with people reading or women knitting. One should paint people that were alive; that breathed and had emotions, that suffered and loved. I felt that I could do this—that it would be so easy. The flesh would take shape and the colors come alive.” Edvard Munch, 1889.
The tripartite composition of Tragedie is delineated by three figures: said-to-be the poet Stanislaw Przybyszewski at center, Przybyszewski’s second wife Dagny Juel Przybyszewski to the right, opposite an unidentified elderly man towards the left. Przybyszewski was a friend of Munch, involved in the Symbolist avant-garde of the time who had in fact provided titles for such seminal masterpieces by the artist as Vampire and The Scream. In 1893, he had married the writer Dagny Juel, a woman of great beauty who had formerly been a lover and muse of Munch. Within the same decade, the marriage would deteriorate, Przybyszewski abandoning her before her subsequent murder by their mutual friend Władysław Emeryk in Tbilisi in 1901. This, some believe to have been in conspiracy with her former husband.
Tragedie has been related to Sjalusi (fig. 1), a seminal masterwork employed within Munch’s famed Frieze of Life that was painted in 1895 after the union of the ill-fated couple, whom it also depicts in a different configuration with a more literal rendering of its title. The present work, a later reinterpretation this composition, has been the subject of numerous dramatic narratives, not least of which the above, but also inherent to its history as a precious object during the struggles of mid-20th century Europe.
The date of this work remains a subject of debate, some scholars positioning it before, some after, the tragic events of Munch’s former partner’s death. Two titles have been used interchangeably; Tragedie, often where it was considered to be painted after 1901 (or in keeping with earlier references) and Sjalusi in connection with the 1895 work to which it relates most closely. Created after the union of the ill-fated couple whom it depicts in a different configuration, Sjalusi portrays a more literal rendering of its title; a solemn, isolated man, cloaked in darkness, staring towards the viewer while two lovers interact within the landscape behind him. Conversely, Tragedie operates without the linear specificity of the 1895 work, including figures from the past and future within one composition, devoid of a clear physical setting. Consequently, the inherent core of introspection contained within this picture transcends traditional narrative, operating on a universal plane of human experience beyond a singular event, even if inspired in part by his and his friends’ personal history. Its true power as a painting relates to the passionate tension conveyed between the figures presented and their universal existential dialectic; we find herein a treatise to the eternal paradox of love, unabating desire beset by inevitable loss and disempowerment, meditating on the individual suffering and emotional survival inherent to humanity throughout the passage of time.
The heightened drama of Munch’s theatrical composition is achieved by intense chromatic contrasts. The indeterminate depths of the darkened background remove all context, creating a metaphysical space dominated by the central, illuminated face of a man. This face, although not the largest figure within the composition, is without doubt the most potent, depicted in a direct, frontal position, his direct, wide-eyed expression rendering him immediate and arresting. This full-frontal device recurs throughout Munch’s oeuvre, having been revealed earlier in seminal works such as The Scream and Anxiety, later appearing in The Red Virginia Creeper and Jealousy in a Bathtub, a sister work to the present painting. As Øivind Storm Bjerke has noted in speaking of Munch’s compositional devices, “The most obvious in this sense is the use of frontal perspective, which can be seen as a signal that conveys solemnity or a hallowed atmosphere. In Munch’s case, it has also been interpreted as an expression of the artist’s personality traits and his desire to face the world head on. The frontal perspective is thus an outcome of his penetrating view of reality and of a fundamental honesty when standing face to face with the world” (Edvard Munch, Harald Sohlberg, Landscapes of the Mind, New York, 1995, p. 27).
By contrast, the ostensibly nude female to his left operates as Munch’s classic archetype of Woman; her wild, flowing tresses and seductive pose recalling Munch’s Madonna and Vampire paintings which represent the essence of desire, love and procreation as explored in all their perilous and idealistic complexity. The enigmatic figure of the elderly man is purported to represent a father figure, perhaps a premonition whose presence appears wisdom or exhaustion from the ravages of time. As Øivind Storm Bjerke describes, “Munch’s work was illuminated by the conviction that there existed a higher order that appeared in different guises throughout the course of one’s life; threatening and oppressive in youth, good fortune and blessings in manhood, mediation between light and dark in old age.” (ibid., p. 21). As such, these two flanking figures act as cyphers, providing context to the protagonist’s state of mind, a human mise-en-scene in the absence landscape, an interior or other objects, conjuring memory, infusing his psychological state with complex emotive content upon meditating the nature of life and death.
Acquired by the Minneapolis Museum of Art in 1955, Tragedie had already endured its own feat of survival during the Second World War. It had likely been in the possession of the artist’s friend Jappe Nilssen; the work then passed through family hands before purportedly being rolled and concealed underneath a floor in an act of preservation that would ultimately deteriorate its surface. Much of the periphery of the work has been repainted by a later hand, as seen in an earlier photograph (fig. 2) and yet, these surrounding elements remain significant to the overall context of the work. Were one to extract and retain the central face as its own entity, which remains as the greatest original portion of the work, one would effectively erase the protagonist’s being, his contextual story and meaning. As such, the prophetic notion that he remains as the sole survivor within this composition relates poetically to the content of the work itself as his interior psychological investigation.
The tripartite composition of Tragedie is delineated by three figures: said-to-be the poet Stanislaw Przybyszewski at center, Przybyszewski’s second wife Dagny Juel Przybyszewski to the right, opposite an unidentified elderly man towards the left. Przybyszewski was a friend of Munch, involved in the Symbolist avant-garde of the time who had in fact provided titles for such seminal masterpieces by the artist as Vampire and The Scream. In 1893, he had married the writer Dagny Juel, a woman of great beauty who had formerly been a lover and muse of Munch. Within the same decade, the marriage would deteriorate, Przybyszewski abandoning her before her subsequent murder by their mutual friend Władysław Emeryk in Tbilisi in 1901. This, some believe to have been in conspiracy with her former husband.
Tragedie has been related to Sjalusi (fig. 1), a seminal masterwork employed within Munch’s famed Frieze of Life that was painted in 1895 after the union of the ill-fated couple, whom it also depicts in a different configuration with a more literal rendering of its title. The present work, a later reinterpretation this composition, has been the subject of numerous dramatic narratives, not least of which the above, but also inherent to its history as a precious object during the struggles of mid-20th century Europe.
The date of this work remains a subject of debate, some scholars positioning it before, some after, the tragic events of Munch’s former partner’s death. Two titles have been used interchangeably; Tragedie, often where it was considered to be painted after 1901 (or in keeping with earlier references) and Sjalusi in connection with the 1895 work to which it relates most closely. Created after the union of the ill-fated couple whom it depicts in a different configuration, Sjalusi portrays a more literal rendering of its title; a solemn, isolated man, cloaked in darkness, staring towards the viewer while two lovers interact within the landscape behind him. Conversely, Tragedie operates without the linear specificity of the 1895 work, including figures from the past and future within one composition, devoid of a clear physical setting. Consequently, the inherent core of introspection contained within this picture transcends traditional narrative, operating on a universal plane of human experience beyond a singular event, even if inspired in part by his and his friends’ personal history. Its true power as a painting relates to the passionate tension conveyed between the figures presented and their universal existential dialectic; we find herein a treatise to the eternal paradox of love, unabating desire beset by inevitable loss and disempowerment, meditating on the individual suffering and emotional survival inherent to humanity throughout the passage of time.
The heightened drama of Munch’s theatrical composition is achieved by intense chromatic contrasts. The indeterminate depths of the darkened background remove all context, creating a metaphysical space dominated by the central, illuminated face of a man. This face, although not the largest figure within the composition, is without doubt the most potent, depicted in a direct, frontal position, his direct, wide-eyed expression rendering him immediate and arresting. This full-frontal device recurs throughout Munch’s oeuvre, having been revealed earlier in seminal works such as The Scream and Anxiety, later appearing in The Red Virginia Creeper and Jealousy in a Bathtub, a sister work to the present painting. As Øivind Storm Bjerke has noted in speaking of Munch’s compositional devices, “The most obvious in this sense is the use of frontal perspective, which can be seen as a signal that conveys solemnity or a hallowed atmosphere. In Munch’s case, it has also been interpreted as an expression of the artist’s personality traits and his desire to face the world head on. The frontal perspective is thus an outcome of his penetrating view of reality and of a fundamental honesty when standing face to face with the world” (Edvard Munch, Harald Sohlberg, Landscapes of the Mind, New York, 1995, p. 27).
By contrast, the ostensibly nude female to his left operates as Munch’s classic archetype of Woman; her wild, flowing tresses and seductive pose recalling Munch’s Madonna and Vampire paintings which represent the essence of desire, love and procreation as explored in all their perilous and idealistic complexity. The enigmatic figure of the elderly man is purported to represent a father figure, perhaps a premonition whose presence appears wisdom or exhaustion from the ravages of time. As Øivind Storm Bjerke describes, “Munch’s work was illuminated by the conviction that there existed a higher order that appeared in different guises throughout the course of one’s life; threatening and oppressive in youth, good fortune and blessings in manhood, mediation between light and dark in old age.” (ibid., p. 21). As such, these two flanking figures act as cyphers, providing context to the protagonist’s state of mind, a human mise-en-scene in the absence landscape, an interior or other objects, conjuring memory, infusing his psychological state with complex emotive content upon meditating the nature of life and death.
Acquired by the Minneapolis Museum of Art in 1955, Tragedie had already endured its own feat of survival during the Second World War. It had likely been in the possession of the artist’s friend Jappe Nilssen; the work then passed through family hands before purportedly being rolled and concealed underneath a floor in an act of preservation that would ultimately deteriorate its surface. Much of the periphery of the work has been repainted by a later hand, as seen in an earlier photograph (fig. 2) and yet, these surrounding elements remain significant to the overall context of the work. Were one to extract and retain the central face as its own entity, which remains as the greatest original portion of the work, one would effectively erase the protagonist’s being, his contextual story and meaning. As such, the prophetic notion that he remains as the sole survivor within this composition relates poetically to the content of the work itself as his interior psychological investigation.