Edvard Munch, Anxiety

Edvard Munch, Anxiety

This painting departs from two previous separations: anxious humanity, as originally designed on Karl Johan Street one evening, proceeding as if directed by ominous fundamental forces, and a specific view of the Oslo Fjord, previously seen in The Scream. Both are repeated with considerable fidelity in Anxiety and other works from the same period.

Norwegian anxiety had become a key term not only for Munch's central pictorial content, but for a whole tradition extending to Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's philosophies, Strindberg's and Ibsen's plays, and generally Northern European modern aesthetic contribution.

Anxiety in Munch closely replicates many elements of The Scream. The same pier hosting a single alienated character, the distant lake, two boats, the church, and other structures stretching along the shore reappear, albeit a little less gloomy than before. All of these, like the melancholic tones and intense vortexes of the concentric lines defining and ultimately embracing the black, sea, and sky, are quoted from the previous work.

However, if The Scream deals with the horror of a single being living in total isolation, Anxiety focuses on collective despair. The feeling of anxiety in this work is less acute than in The Scream, but it is even more persistent, as the desperation here is met by a group rather than an isolated individual.

Two years later, Munch returned to Anxiety to reiterate the same motif through printed media. This time he added an engraving to the lithograph and allowed the white features made visible by the subtractive method to stand against the striking backdrop of a red-colored paper. As observed in The Scream, the limitations inherent in the nature of graphic technique - reducing linearity and eliminating the defining color in wood print - emphasize the abstract understanding and increase the emotional power of the pictorial content. The few significant changes and character substitutions the artist felt obliged to undertake in the conversions from painting to print, and the subtle differences between woodcuts and lithographs, provide valuable insights into Munch's artistic response.