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Essay Subject: Analysis of Edward Munch's 1893 Expressionist painting.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Analysis of Edward Munch's 1893 Expressionist painting. Elements of modernist and postmodernist art. Its reproduction in contemporary society. Context of the image on canvas. The painting as representative of Munch's own melancholy and intensely emotional inner life. Perspective of the viewer. Theories of art. Paper Introduction: Modernism, Postmodernism and Munch’s “The Scream” Edward Munch’s painting “The Scream” (1893) appears to fit both within definitions of modernist and postmodernist art, particularly given its reproduction in contemporary society. However, an analysis of such definitions followed by a review of the way in which the contemporary viewer interacts with the image of “The Scream” actually suggests that Munch’s painting is, in fact, modern and our reproductions of it are merely postmodern renderings of an inherently unrepresentable image. Martin Jay points out in “Scopic Regimes of Modernity” that Western culture uniquely privileges the visual (Jay, 3). He argues that what he terms “Cartesian perspectivalism” has been the dominant visual model of the modern era. Jay traces the privileging of linear perspective, “as divine lux rather than perceived Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The painting, therefore, operates as both a self-portrait of theartist and a mirror of the viewer's self. Martin Jay points out in "Scopic Regimes of Modernity" that Westernculture uniquely privileges the visual (Jay, 3). The subject, too, swirls intothese wavering planes. However, in addition,while the work screams of the fragmentation that "descriptive art" soughtto represent, the visual image itself is not fragmented. And its reproduction in the Screammask could also demonstrates its modernity and postmodernity. A modernist would argue that thepainting seeks to distort and obfuscate that which it actually represents.Thus, the lack of perspective and the swirls of color and darkness were theimage's admission that it could not represent the emotions it sought toconvey. He argues that what heterms "Cartesian perspectivalism" has been the dominant visual model of themodern era. When a work of art isrepeatedly and mechanically reproduced, Benjamin suggests that it maybecome detached from its tradition and lose its unique existence. Benjamin lays the desire to reproduce a unique object at the feet of those"whose 'sense of the universal equality of things' has increased to such adegree that it extracts [such universality] even from a unique object bymeans of reproduction" (223). Jay notes that Cartesian perspectivalism" was thus in league with ascientific world view that no longer hermeneutically read the world as adivine text, but rather saw it as situated in a mathematically regularspatio-temporal order filled with natural objects that could only beobserved from without by the dispassionate eye of the neutral researcher"(Jay, 9). Who are we? But themask has also been lifted out of its context. The primary difference was the Dutch artists' suggestion of a worldbeyond the paintings' frames and a privileging of the visual experience:"it casts its attentive eye on the fragmentary, detailed, and richlyarticulated surface of a world it is content to describe rather thanexplain" (Jay, 13). . Edward Munch's "Scream," therefore,could seem to mean what each viewer understands it to mean. The baroque style rejects the "monoculargeometicalization" of Cartesianism in favor of a fascination with "opacity,unreadability, and the indecipherability of the reality it depicts" (Jay,17). This "descriptive art" sought not to explain the imageas perspectivalism did, but rather to describe it, with its meaning orexplanation left to the viewer. "The Work of Art in the Age of MechanicalReproduction." Foster, Hal. Thus, the viewer sees his ownpain and fright, and his own understanding of Munch's pain and fright, inthe image Munch has created. It would seem that a viewer would not need to be aware of EdwardMunch's background and intentions to appreciate a painting such as Munch's"The Scream." In addition, to take that statement as true, one couldeither be a modernist or a postmodernist. On the other hand, a postmodernist would argue that the distortionand improper perspective are precisely what the image seeks to convey.Yet, interestingly enough, both schools of thought would seem to agree thatthe true subject of the painting is "unrepresentable." Munch's "Scream" is reproduced today in a variety of media. But postmodernism rejects the ideaof a single objective image in favor of as many subjective images as thereare viewers: "A postmodern artist or writer is in the position of aphilosopher: the text he writes, the work he produces are not in principlegoverned by preestablished rules, and they cannot be judged according to adetermining judgment" (Lyotard, 81). This, his painting "The Scream" (1893)is representative of Munch's own melancholy and intensely emotional innerlife. . Benjamin is certainly correct that ourdesire to feel some sense of "universal equality" of terror at 'man'sinhumanity to man' during the twentieth century has led us to extract fromMunch's painting a generic sense of terror that may bear no relation to themelancholy that informed the original. Thus, Jay notes that a parallel has oftenbeen drawn between this seventeenth century Dutch art and photography (Jay,15). "The Scream" demonstrates preciselythe baroque style. Modernism, Postmodernism and Munch's "The Scream" Edward Munch's painting "The Scream" (1893) appears to fit both withindefinitions of modernist and postmodernist art, particularly given itsreproduction in contemporary society. "Answering the Question: What isPostmodernims?" Nevertheless, they can sense, too, their own terrified innerselves. On the other hand, Jay also notes theories offered in opposition toCartesian perspectivalism. His fear and internal fragmentation cannot be visualizednor experienced by any other person. Most notably, he discusses Svetlana Alpers'focus on seventeenth century Dutch artists who produced "narrative" and"descriptive" art, rather than the perspectival art of their Northernpeers. Munch's original painting, therefore, could fit within the definitionof both modern and postmodern painting. Nonetheless, most people haveexperienced some sense of these feelings in their own lives, caused bytheir own tragedies and personal anxieties. The maskboth hides what it represents while also representing to each viewer his orher own face of terror. The image on thecanvas was not representative of the artist, and its reception did notdepend on the viewer. Nevertheless, perhaps oneof its most notorious reproductions is as the stark white face mask worn bythe psychotic murderers in the "Scream" film trilogy. Rather, it is surrounded by a black shroud. On the murderer's face, itis not surrounded by an entire world gone mad, as it is in Munch'spainting. It possessedsomething that only it could possess. Jean-Francois Lyotard describes the postmodern as that which denies aconsensus and a collective understanding (Lyotard, 81). Works Cited Benjamin, Walter. Each of the"modern" scopic regimes described by Jay assumed the existence of a fixed,knowable object in the created image. Read according toa "modern" baroque sensibility, the mask obfuscates the true face ofterror, which is the supposed "normal" face behind the mask. The melancholy and terror that led to Munch's paintings are undeniablyunrepresentable. In this way, Munch's painting may,in fact, be highly modern after all, insofar as the emotion it representsis unrepresentable and unreproducible. It is surrounded bynothing. Munch's"Scream," though painted in 1893, could certainly reflect, to the twentiethcentury subject, a retroactive fantasy of all those things. Rather, permitting thereproduction to meet the viewer in the viewer's own particular situation"reactivates the object reproduced" (Benjamin, 221). Martin Jay noted in "Scopic Regimes" that artists were undoubtedlyaware of the baroque scopic regime during the seventeenth century, andMunch seems clear evidence of that. Where are we going?" (2 8). It isemblazoned on men's ties and ladies' handbags. Jay traces the privileging of linear perspective, "as divinelux rather than perceived lumen," the idea of the canvas as a transparentwindow or a flat mirror. Hal Foster states in "Whatever Happened to Modernity" that thequintessential question of modernity concerned identity: "Where do we comefrom? Reproductions, however, striporiginals of their aura by "prying them from their shells" (Benjamin, 223). Everything isconnected, though it is clearly no representation of any naturallyoccurring connection. Viewers of "The Scream" can clearly sense Munch's own horror in thispainting. The reproductions we have generatedare nothing more than our own postmodern interpretations of the original. But thisloss is not the death of the reproduced object. It has become the fragmented retroactive fantasy of Lacan's"mirror stage." In "The Word of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," WalterBenjamin notes that the "authenticity of a thing is the essence of all thatis transmissible from its beginning" (221). "Whatever Happened to Postmodernism." Jay, Martin. Furthermore, Benjaminmaintains that the reproduction out of context and the reactivation ofman's interaction with the reproduction "lead to a tremendous shattering oftradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal ofmankind" (Benjamin, 221). The painter's gaze captured "an eternal moment," while theviewing subject "unites his gaze with the Founding Perception in a momentof perfect recreation of that first epiphany" (Jay, 7). The look of terror, too, on the subject's facecould not be explained by either Cartesian perspectivalism or Alpers'"descriptive art." Geometry is awry in this work. However, an analysis of suchdefinitions followed by a review of the way in which the contemporaryviewer interacts with the image of "The Scream" actually suggests thatMunch's painting is, in fact, modern and our reproductions of it are merelypostmodern renderings of an inherently unrepresentable image. Arguably, this is what has occurred with Munch's "Scream" from thefirst time it was reproduced. He argues that highmodernity answered these questions through psychoanalysis and anthropology. Lacan's subject, which forms this ego, does so against "a history ofworld war and military mutilation, of industrial discipline and mechanisticfragmentation, of mercenary murder and political terror" (21 ). But the ubiquity of Munch's "Scream" on handbagsand ties and paperweights and a variety of other everyday media alsodemonstrates the cultural currency of terror today. "Scopic Regimes of Modernity." Lyotard, Jean-Francois. Benjamin noted thatoriginal works of art possessed an aura, or unique phenomenon, that was afunction of its distance or, actually, its uniqueness. Painted images, therefore, could be detached from theirpreviously divine context and were understood to be separate commercialcommodities (Jay, 9). Thebaroque style understands very clearly that it is a refracted reflection ofits viewer: "Baroque vision . The baroque seeks to depict the multiplicity of visual planes andspaces and offers up a distorting rather than reflexive mirror. Essentially, the viewed image was a reflection,an epiphany. Jay's third scopic regime is the baroque, which he classifies as "themost significant alternative to the hegemonic visual style" of Cartesianperspectivalism (Jay, 16). In particular, he points to Jacques Lacan's "The Mirror Stage," in whichLacan argues that our ego is formed in that first glance of ourselves in amirror, which creates a life-long retroactive fantasy of our previouslyfragmented bodies that around which we form a strong protective ego (Foster2 8). Rather, the image on the canvas represented whatwas. That mask, and thecontext in which it appears, reduces Munch's art to its most basic, andperhaps most universally interpreted form: sheer terror. Perspective is evident in the painting by the bridge onwhich the subject stands, but all perspective is lost in the swirl ofvisual spaces and colors that surround him. The painting is, therefore,appears both modern and post-modern, simultaneously. Art in Cartesianperspectivalism, therefore, was not borne from the artist's imagination.Rather, it was divinely channeled through the artist. Edward Munch was a seventeenth century expressionist painter much ofwhose artwork was autobiographical. In addition, the feelings he wasexperiencing when he began and finished the painting were not the same.Therefore, it is likely that not even the painting represents theparticular feelings Munch conceived. sought to represent the unrepresentableand, necessarily failing, produced the melancholy that Walter Benjamin inparticular saw as characteristic of baroque sensibility" (Jay, 17-18). But humanbeings have long chosen to refer to the murderers and other terroristsamong us as "other" and "monsters." Thus, the true face of terror, whichis our own face, is unrepresentable and is hidden behind the mask. If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.