Munch and his World: Graphic Arts and the Avant-garde in Paris and Berlin: 237 (British Museum Research Publications)

The art of Edvard Munch is striking for the originality and universality of its themes, which cross moments in place and time. Yet he was very much an artist of the nineteenth century, and the focus of this publication is to show how especially in his prints and photographs Munch was enabled by technical advances developed by his contemporaries to create an entirely new visual language. Munch is probably best known for his desire to express emotions surrounding love, illness, and death. However, the authors in this volume show that this preoccupation was not only based on biographical events but reflects wider contemporary debates on developments in medicine and science, including treatment of mental illness, as well as a proliferation of technical expertise in the production of prints.

The arguments presented expand on subjects touched upon in the critically acclaimed British Museum exhibition 'Edvard Munch: love and angst' (2019). Munch’s remarkable prints were fundamental to establishing his international career, but there remains much to investigate in connection with the background to his innovatory techniques, his relationship with contemporary printmakers and his experiments with photography. The authors in this volume go some way to address these themes and outline future avenues of research.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Giulia Bartrum

Chapter 1: Edvard Munch and the artists of La Revue Blanche: promoting prints in late 19th-century French avant-garde journals, by Jennifer Ramkalawon
Chapter 2: L’Ymagier, Munch and the woodcut technique, by Ute Kuhlemann-Falck
Chapter 3: Eugène Carrière and Max Klinger: two Symbolist printmakers within the orbit of Munch, by Anna Schultz
Chapter 4: Sick prints, by Allison Morehead
Chapter 5: There and not-there: Edvard Munch’s interruptions, by Patricia G. Berman

Bibliography
Index

Giulia Bartrum is a freelance art historian who recently retired as curator of German prints and drawings at the British Museum. She has published on various aspects of north European prints, including German Renaissance Prints (1995), Albrecht Dürer and his Legacy (2002), German Romantic Prints and Drawings from an English Private Collection (2011) and Edvard Munch: Love and Angst (2019).