Munch's Ibsen: A Painter's Visions of a Playwright

About this book

Drawing on printed and archival sources including Munchs extensive unpublished writings Munchs Ibsen provides a comprehensive account of the connection between the two great Norwegian modernists. Situating the interlocking careers of Edvard Munch and Henrik Ibsen within Norways cultural history Joan Templeton establishes Ibsens primordial importance for Munch as a pioneering modernist voice. She examines the over 400 illustrations Munch made of Ibsens plays one of the greatest homages a painter ever made to a writer showing how Ibsens imaginative universe was an essential and integral part of Munchs life and work as a whole. Templeton studies the illustrations as readings of Ibsens plays and as examples of some of Munchs best work in various media: the witty tender drawings of Peer Gynt; the eloquent oil sketches of Ghosts; the powerful woodcuts of The Pretenders; the sumptuous oil paintings of John Gabriel Borkman. She shows how some of the strongest of the illustrations result from Munchs accommodation of his own symbolic structures to Ibsens text. She also demonstrates how Munch sometimes refigured Ibsens texts to fit his own experiences and convictions in a process of reification that is as interesting as his fidelity. She offers a detailed analysis of Munchs famous portraits of Ibsen and a historical and analytical account of Munchs work on the Ibsen stage productions through which he painted himself into theatrical history. Munchs Ibsen will appeal to students of modern literature and art art history the history of the modern theatre Scandinavian art and culture and interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities.