Edvard Munch: Quotes about painting

“The only influences in [the painting 'The sick Child', Munch painted in his elderly home, remembering very accurate the last days of his dying little sister Sophie] 'The sick Child'.... were the ones that come from my home.... my childhood and my home. Only someone who knew the conditions at home could possibly understand why there can be no conceivable chance of any other place having played a part – my home is to my art as a midwife is to her children.... few painters have ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did in 'The sick child.”

Edvard Munch

It was not just I who was suffering; it was all my nearest and dearest as well.
Edvard Munch talks to Jens Tiis, c. 1933, Munch Museum; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 85-86
after 1930

Children , Art , Home , Understanding

“I thought I should make something – I felt it would be so easy – it would take form under my hands like magic.
Then people would see!
A strong naked arm – a tanned powerful neck a young woman rests her head on the arching chest.
She closes her eyes and listens with open and quivering lips to the words he whispers into her long flowing hair.
I should paint that image just as I saw it – but in the blue haze.
Those two at that moment, no longer merely themselves, but simply a link in the chain binding generation to generation.
People should understand the significance, the power of it. They should remove their hats like they do in church.
There should be no more pictures of interiors, of people reading and women knitting.
There would be pictures of real people who breathed, suffered, felt, loved.
I felt impelled – it would be easy. The flesh would have volume – the colours would be alive.
There was an interval. The music stopped. I was a little sad. I remembered how many times I had had similar thoughts – and that once I had finished the painting – they had simply shaken their heads and smiled.
Once again I found myself out on the Boulevard des Italiens.”

Edvard Munch

written in Saint Cloud, 1889
Quotes from his text: 'Saint Cloud Manifesto', Munch (1889): as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 120 -121
1880 - 1895

Love , Women , People , Sadness

“I am at work on a girl. It is quite simple a girl getting up on the edge of her bed and pulling on her stockings. The bed is whitish, and in addition there are white sheets, a white nightdress, a bedside table with a white cover, white curtains and a blue wall.”

Edvard Munch

as model for his painting 'Morning', 1884
Quote in Munch's letter to Olav Paulsen, September 1884; as cited in Edvard Much – behind the scream, w:Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 53
1880 - 1895

Girl , Painting

“No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.”

Edvard Munch

Quote from Munch's text (1889) 'Impressions from a ballroom, New Year's Eve in St. Cloud' - also known as 'The St. Cloud Manifesto'
1880 - 1895

Love , Women , Men , People

“The point is that one sees things at different moments with different eyes. Differently in the morning then in the evening. The way in which one sees also depends on one's mood…. coming in from a dark bedroom in the morning into the sitting room one will, for example, see everything in a bluish light. Even the deepest shadows are topped with bright light. After a while one will accustom oneself to the light and the shadows will be deeper and everything will be seen more sharply. If an atmosphere of this kind is being painted it won't do merely to sit and gaze at everything 'just as one sees'. One must paint precisely the fleeting moment of significance – one must capture the exact experience separating that significant moment from the next – the exact moment when the motif struck one… In some circumstances a chair may seem to be just as interesting as a human being. In some way or another it must have caught the interest in which case the onlooker's interest must somehow be engaged in the same way. It's not the chair that should be painted, but what the person has felt at the sight of it [written in Saint Cloud, 1890 - probably related to the chair of Vincent van Gogh”

Edvard Munch

Quote of Munch from: T 2770, (1890); as cited in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, pp. 83-84
1880 - 1895

Way , Mood , Light , Painting

“There must be no more pictures covered in brown sauce [c. 1880, when Munch started to paint series of landscapes in fresh colors]”

Edvard Munch

a written note; as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 41
after 1930

Color , Painting

“it was the period I think of as the age of the pillow... What I wanted to bring out - is that which cannot be measured - I wanted to bring out the tired movement in the eyelids - the lips must look as though they are whispering - she must look as though she is breathing - I want life - what is alive.”

Edvard Munch

on his painting 'The sick Child'
As quoted in 'From my rotting body, flowers shall grow, and I am in them, and that is eternity', Potter P. Emerg Infect Dis, 2011
after 1930

Life , Age , Thinking , Painting

“By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does.”

Edvard Munch

1896 - 1930
Source: Diary Saint Cloud, 1898; Munch, as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 105

Mood , Painting

“One sunny spring day I heard the music coming down Karl Johan [street] and it filled me with joy. The spring, the sun, the music, all blended together to make me shiver with pleasure. The music added colour to the colours. I painted the picture [his painting 'Music on Karl Johan'] allowing the colours to reverberate with the rhythm of the music. I painted the colours as I saw them at that moment.”

Edvard Munch

Quote in 'Livsfrisen tilblivelse', Blomqvist, Oslo 1929, p. 12
1896 - 1930

Pleasure , Music , Spring , Sun

“Could only have been painted by a madman.”

Edvard Munch

his inscription, written in pencil, between the red clouds on at least one of his paintings of The Scream (c. 1893 - 1910), as quoted in Edvard Munch: The Man and His Art (1977) by Ragna Thiis Stang, p. 106
after 1930

Painting

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892)”

Edvard Munch

OKK 1760 (Nice, January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 81
1880 - 1895

People , Truth , Quotes , Literature