Edvard Munch: Scandi novelists on the master of misery and menace
(The Guardian Culture News)

How is the great Norwegian artist seen back home? Ahead of a new British Museum show, Karl Ove Knausgaard and other Scandinavian novelists explain what Munch means to themEdvard Munch´s most famous creation is a bit of a scream: the funny little figure with its squishy bald head, hands to face as if edified by some particularly scandalous bit of gossip, and all against that glorious flame-red sky. Can Munch be entirely serious? The Scream is cherished across the world and only marginally less famous than the Mona Lisa herself. Yet the anguish compressed in that lightbulb-shaped face is very slightly comic, destined for the frat-house horror movie and the Halloween mask.People feel affection for this poor little creature, so alone, whose howl is empathetically echoed by nature but ignored by the callous passersby on the bridge. We are meant to identify with this solitary soul. The fact that he - or she, or they - is so appealing goes to Munch´s radical imagination. With The Scream, he invented one of the greatest archetypes in the history of art. Continue reading...