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The following articles appeared in June, July, and August issues of the Agudath Sholom Congregational Bulletin (with edits).
THEO OF GOLDEN
I read a lot of books. My wife Barb starts a lot of books,
but unlike me, who compulsively never fails to finish one I’ve cracked, no
matter how inane or impenetrably dense I find it, she needs to be ensnared
immediately by the plot or characters, or she will toss it aside and grab
another.
A month ago, I was amazed and delighted to see her so
engrossed every morning and evening in a thick paperback that within a week she
had devoured all four hundred pages. “What are you reading?” I asked her. “It’s
called Theo of Golden. It’s our neighborhood book club selection for
next month. I borrowed it from Rhonda, so if you want to read, don’t
procrastinate because I have to return it.”
A few days later a strange thing happened. For thirty years
I’ve been a member of a networking breakfast club at the bimonthly meetings of
which attendees are expected to share some business news or tidbit that might
be beneficial to one or more of his colleagues. Since most of us are now
retired, much of the conversation is devoted to gossip, restaurant reviews, and
local politics.
Only one book had ever been mentioned: Andrew Ross Sorkin’s
recent history of the 1929 stock market crash: 1929.
Imagine my surprise when restauranteur Dave spoke out in
praise of a novel he had just read: “How many of you have heard of the book Theo
of Golden?” About three of us meekly raised our hands. “Every one of you
should read this book,” he said. “It will change your life.”
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I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. It will certainly make you think about relationships and how you might improve those in your own life but acting upon and fulfilling those intentions – as the protagonist Theo did, even at an advanced age – are not so easily done.
After reading and returning Rhonda’s copy, I ordered two of
my own – to loan out. My assistant Liz is as avid a reader as I am. She emailed
me: “I’ll be the first to admit I’m a very emotional person, but this book
really has me in my feels! I’m almost finished but I don’t want it to end.”
I offered to a friend at the Bridge Club, but she had
preempted me: “What a wonderful book. I loved it.” When my partner overheard
her, he said he’d like to read it, as would his wife. He returned it seven days
later. “Did you read it simultaneously?” I asked.
The author’s biography is as intriguing as the tapestry he
weaves. Allen Levi practiced law in Columbus, Georgia, for thirteen years, then
studied Scottish fiction at the University of Edinburgh. In 1996, at the age of
forty, he went on the road as a traveling songwriter-singer for Young Life, a
Christian youth organization. In 2010 he returned home to raise honeybees on
his 1600-acre family farm, spend time with his aging father, and care for his
sick brother, about whom he wrote a memoir, The Last Sweet Mile, after
his death in 2014.
A visit to a local café sparked his imagination. When he shared the completed manuscript with five college friends at their annual reunion, they encouraged him “to do something with this.” With the help of his niece, Aron Ritchie, Levi self-published Theo in 2023. The two circulated the novel through a network of contacts from Levi’s past and by posting to Facebook groups and reaching out to book clubs across the country. They sold 3000 copies by the end of 2023, 25,000 in 2024, and in October 2025 the right to print thousands more to Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster.
With sales now exceeding 300,000, Theo of Golden
occupies #3 on the New York Times bestseller list for combined print and
e-book fiction. It previously held the #1 ranking.
To paraphrase the web sites libliva, readerswithwrinkles,
and slate.com (Rebecca Onion):
One spring morning an elderly man named Theo arrives in the
small southern town of Golden. That first day he twice visits “The Chalice,” a
local coffee shop where the barista serves him a “superb espresso.” Lining the
walls are nearly a hundred pencil portraits drawn by a local artist.
After studying them, “on a whim that feels more like a vow,”
Theo decides to buy the portraits, one by one, but not to keep them. Instead,
“with the help of a skeptical lawyer, a nosy secretary, and a sardonic
bookseller who becomes his best friend,” he tracks down the subjects depicted –
townspeople who have no idea they have been drawn – and gifts them their own
likenesses. During these encounters, “like a freelance therapist or a wandering
priest,” Theo quietly elicits from each recipient his or her personal story --
whether joyful, sad, or bittersweet; it’s a process that forges some surprising
friendships and ultimately deepens his and our understanding about how one can
“lead a meaningful life.”
The author captures that theme in a quotation from William
Wordsworth: “The best potion of a good man’s life is the little, nameless,
unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
Among the town residents whose troubles are eased by Theo’s
gentle curiosity, compassionate listening, and mysterious largesse are an
overworked accountant who resents her father and feels guilty for the sacrifice
he forced upon her, a custodian whose daughter lies confined to a hospital bed
recovering from a car accident that killed her mother, and a non-communicative
homeless woman who’s lost almost everything except a hidden talent that needs
just a little nurturing to blossom.
“Theo’s goodness radiates throughout the community,
influencing everyone to speak to one another, to befriend, to reach out, to
offer support.” When Kendrick, the custodian, is confronted with the problem of
what punishment to recommend to the judge for the Guatemalan immigrant who
inadvertently caused his family’s tragic accident, he goes to his grandmother
for advice. “Baby, they’s justice and they’s mercy . . . If you gotta choose
one or the other, I say always go the mercy way. If you make a mistake, make it
for mercy. Bad mercy don’t hurt nearly like bad justice, and always remember,
the eye of God can see.”
Considering the author is a poet, musician, and aspiring
painter, it’s no wonder his novel is lyrical, descriptive, evocative of nature,
and chock-full of references to people like Edward Albee, Eudora Welty, Pablo
Casals, Aaron Copeland, and Antonin Dvorak.
Flashing back to a moment in Theo’s past, he writes: “A
cloud of birds – starlings and redwings, thousands upon thousands of them –
flew with synchronized precision, a dancing funnel, undulating in perfect
unison . . . His soul caught its breath at the sight, like a swimmer coming up
from the depths. For that moment he could separate beauty from his grief, and
celebrate, if only ambivalently, that there was still a world of goodness apart
from, or bigger than his aching loneliness.”
As Theo’s year in Golden approaches its end, he and his
friends attend the concert of another protégé, Simon, the cellist, who has
persisted in his studies despite warnings that his earnings will be a pittance.
He plays Tocccata capricciosa, Opus 36, by Miklos Rozsa; a Sonata by Eugene
Ysaye; a passage from Attila Bozay’s “Formazioni”; “Requiebros” by Gaspar
Cassado; Dvorak’s “Laast Mich Allein”; and finally, an original composition,
“Fado for Theo,” all executed flawlessly.
“Those in row E and F who had previously only known Simon as
a pleasant and reserved pedestrian walking to and from class each day were mesmerized
by the creature he became under the enchantment of the music . . . The cello
was his flesh and bone, heart and soul, language and voice. It did not merely
belong to him. It was part of him. The demure Simon, with cello cradled in his
arms, was a force of nature. Electrified. Ravished and ravishing. Arms, hands,
shoulders, neck, head, eyes, legs and feet: every part of him felt the song and
brought it to life for the audience. Or perhaps for the angels.”
In one last act of kindness, Theo comes to the stage, hugs
Simon, and invites his parents to join them; unbeknownst to Simon, they have
been flown from Seattle by Theo and have watched the concert from the balcony.
Barb asked me what I thought was Theo’s greatest gift to the
people of Golden. “He instilled in each one a sense of his or own self-worth,”
I said. “That’s good,” she said. “How about: he gave each one his full
attention, as if no one else existed in the world but the two of them.” We
agreed we both were right, for once.
At dinner a few nights ago, a friend suggested, "He asked a question, then another, then another. And after each one, he just listened. There's far too little of that in the world today. It's a lesson for all of us, including me."
There’s some gratuitous melodrama and a contrived revelation
at the end, but the theme of redemption stands on its own. It will make you
think, smile, and weep. Enjoy.
Those of you who attended last month’s installation of
officers will have noticed a glaring vacancy: my own. While some of you may
suspect me of wishfully thinking that my absence might abort my presidential inauguration,
let me assure you that it was completely unpremeditated. My wife Barb and I
were on a trip that had been scheduled many months ago.
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Since I couldn’t be with you on the day in question, and because I needed a subject for this month’s article, I might as well tell you where I was: Oslo, Norway, the second port of call on our six-day cruise aboard the magnificent Viking ocean liner, the Neptune. Carrying one thousand passengers and five hundred crew, its spacious cabins, comfortable lounges, tasteful restaurants, and friendly staff coalesce in an atmosphere of casual elegance.
On one walking tour I learn some interesting facts about
Norway. Between 1825 and 1925, 700,000 Norwegians immigrated to the United
States, principally to the midwestern states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North
Dakota; that number well exceeded half of the country’s population at the
outset. Some observers have attributed the mass movement to the lack of
economic opportunity in the homeland while others have said that the emigrants
were familiar with the U.S. through seafaring contacts and were seeking
farmland and a climate similar to Norway’s.
Even more startling is the revelation that Norway’s coastline is the second longest of any country in the world, 36,000 miles, topped only by Canada’s. But upon reflection, after a quick glance at the map, why wouldn’t it be, sculpted as it is by the deep channels or fjords that protrude miles inland from the Norwegian Sea? On our last morning, we sail through the breathtaking Aurlandsfjord, from the depths of which rise towering peaks decorated with stark rock formations, scattered foliage, glacial lakes, stunning waterfalls descending thousands of feet, and picturesque villages accessible only by boat.
While Norway is renowned for its natural beauty, our day in
Oslo, its capital, is highlighted by the man-made variety.
Born in 1869 in southern Norway, Vigeland honed his
wood-carving skills in his father’s cabinetmaking workshop. Between 1888 and
1898 he traveled extensively throughout Europe, studying under masters in
Kristiana (later Oslo), Copenhagen, Paris, and Florence. Struggling
financially, he accepted a commission to build forty-four statues for the
restoration of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which despite his
reservations established his reputation. (Steorn, pp. 16-20)
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In 1921 the Oslo City Council decided to demolish the house where Vigeland lived (it was the studio of his earliest teacher). After a strident newspaper campaign, the Council agreed to build him a new home and studio in exchange for his promise to donate to the city his entire life’s work, existing and future. As Frogner Park was nearby, Vigeland chose it as the location for a monumental fountain and granite column he had been working on for fifteen years. Two hundred ten more pieces followed over the next two decades, as Vigeland honored his contract and in the process created his glorious Sculpture Arrangement. (Steorn, pp. 20-21)
Entering the Park innocently through the west gate, about a
hundred yards ahead we catch sight of a forty-six-foot-tall white column
piercing the sky. Erected in 1927, it took fourteen years for three masons to transfer
Vigeland’s design from a plaster model to this two-hundred-sixty-ton block of
granite. Wrapped around the Monolith are one-hundred-twenty-one human figures, scrambling,
floating, and intertwined, men and women of different ages spiraling upward toward
the heavens. You see faces, people climbing, a hand gripping a shoulder, a
child reaching for someone’s back.
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While Vigeland deferred judgment to his witnesses, some have interpreted the massive sculpture as a vision of resurrection and man’s striving for spirituality.
Surrounding the Monolith on its elevated platform are
thirty-six separate statues of humans captured in provocative and sometimes
perplexing poses. A cluster of children cling to a hidden sphere. A mother and
father cuddle their newborn baby. An elderly man holds three grandchildren in
his protective embrace. A woman wrestles with an unruly child. Lovers nestle
nose-to-nose or turn their backs to each other. They’re chunky, expressionless,
naked, and timeless – and taken altogether totally unique.
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From the Monolith, our path leads to the Vigeland Fountain. Its focal point is a central sculpture carved in bronze depicting six men holding aloft a large saucer, as if toiling with the burden of existence. From it a curtain of water – the source of life – spills over them and their pedestal into a large pool. Planted atop the pool’s enclosure are twenty-three more bronzes of men entangled in the roots of trees. Representing man’s unity with nature, the groups illustrate the stages of life from childhood and adolescence through adulthood to old age and death.
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We pass by the Wheel of Life, in which Vigeland conceptualizes man’s journey as continuous as well as linear; four adults and three children are bound together in an unbroken, eternal cycle from birth to death to rebirth.
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One more marvel awaits us: the one-hundred-yard bridge which marked the entrance to the park when it opened in 1940, a gateway, if you will, to Vigeland’s artistic vision. The fifty-eight bronze figures that line both sides of the bridge were among the first to be erected in the park. Rather than on pedestals, they were placed at eye level so as to elicit an intimacy with the viewer.
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The sculptures capture humanity in many forms: at various ages, engaging in daily activities, expressing profound thoughts. You see couples embracing, individuals wrestling with inner turmoil, parents and children rejoicing. Vigeland’s polymorphous exploration of the human condition invites connection and encourages interpretation.
The most famous inhabitant of The Bridge is “The Angry Boy,”
a screaming child with fists clenched, cheeks pouting, and one foot ready to
stomp. Touching his left hand is supposed to bring good luck, which, carried to
excess over time, has prevented the bronze’s natural oxidation and left a
gleaming blemish. Naturally, Barb can’t resist.
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We depart in disbelief of what we have seen. For two hours we wandered among carved figures, which, in their portrayal of the full range of human evolution, behavior, and emotion, seem as real as our fellow tourists. Later that day we will encounter a more pessimistic Norwegian genius, one whose work plumbed the depths of man’s struggle with loneliness, despair, and madness. I will write about that next month – unless something better comes to mind.
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Munch is a name unfamiliar to many tourists and casual art
students. You can wander through a hundred galleries in Europe and the U.S. and
never see one of his paintings. In Munch’s eyes, his works were his children,
and he was reluctant to part with any of them, even when he needed money.
When he died in 1944, he left behind a huge collection stored
in outbuildings and studios and scattered outdoors at the 45-acre property,
Ekely, he had bought in 1916. Having no heirs, he bequeathed the entire
possession to the city of Oslo; it consisted of 1200 paintings, 7000 drawings
and sketches, 18,000 graphics, and fourteen sculptures. Except for eighteen paintings
on display at the National Museum, all reside at the Munch Museum.
Born in 1863, Munch grew up in the shadow of poverty,
illness, and the morbid piety of his father, a military doctor. When he was
five his mother died of tuberculosis; as her surrogate, he attached himself to
his sister Sophie, only to be heartbroken when she suffered the same fate nine
years later. Afflicted by the same disease all through his youth, Munch was haunted
by visons of his own death as well as by a fear of the insanity that befell his
other sister Laura.
After enduring one year (1879) at Norway’s Technical College
of Engineering, Munch abruptly dropped out, writing in his diary, “I have
decided to become an artist.” In 1881 he
was admitted to the Royal School of Art and Design where he was introduced to
Realism and Impressionism. Rebelling against the uniform look of controlled
images “washed in brown sauce,” he perfected a rendering of light and
reflections using rough brushstrokes in a framework of strong contours. (Prideaux, pp. 39,47)
Before long, Munch concluded that both schools were limited
by their failure to penetrate the external shell of nature. He yearned to
reveal the emotional content and expressive energy of life as he experienced
and understood it. The death of his father in 1889 while he was living in Paris
left him sick, depressed, and suicidal, but the sight one morning in a rural farmyard
of the renewal of seasons prompted him to reflect on the immortality of the
soul and man’s oneness with nature. This vision would inform the basis of his
art for the next sixty years. (Prideaux, p. 119)
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In 1892 Munch achieved a modicum of notoriety when he was invited by the Union of Berlin Artists to show his body of work at the newly built Architektenhaus, the first solo exhibition in the society’s fifty-year history. The unconventional, often sexual, imagery of his paintings and his innovative technique, which conveyed a sense of incompleteness, created a bitter controversy. The exhibit closed after one week. (Prideaux, pp. 136-137)
A major art dealer, Eduard Schulte arranged for nine
subsequent showings in Germany and Denmark aimed at an underground
intelligentsia familiar with art of the new age. Wrote one critic: “I saw
paintings that were so beautiful, so profound, so intense, so entirely written
with all his soul.” Another called Munch “the most famous man in the whole of
the German Empire.” (Prideaux, p. 138)
Between bouts of drunkenness and all-night conversations
with a group of fellow bohemians on subjects like mysticism, neurology,
satanism, alchemy, sexuality, and hypnotism, Munch found time to paint the
originals of ten of his enduring masterpieces. In these works, men and women
appear more symbolic than realistic and embody a broad array of human emotions.
In 1896 Munch went back to Paris, where he discovered printmaking;
with no instruction, he developed a proficiency in lithography, woodcutting,
and etching. Despite numerous exhibitions, he was able to sell only one
significant canvas before returning to Norway almost penniless. He managed to
borrow enough money from friends to buy a small cottage in the seaside village
of Aasgardstrand, a favorite vacation spot. His private shoreline and the
surrounding woods served as a refuge and constant source of inspiration: the
landscape against which he set “the secret life of the soul,” the place where
“life with all its complexities of grief and joy carried on.” (Prideaux, p. 185)
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Women were strongly attracted to Munch over his lifetime, but he never married; invariably, if they got too close, he would feel in danger “of being swallowed up” and would flee. In 1899 he became involved with a wealthy, upper class woman named Tulla Larsen. As a model, she helped him complete his famous Dance of Life painting but her eagerness for marriage repelled him. She pursued him for a year across Europe, “a journey of terrible quarrels,” cajoling him into a written proposal which he later revoked. The affair ended in a minor tragedy when Munch was lured to the house where Larsen was living by the threat of her suicide. In the ensuing struggle over a gun in her bedroom, a bullet was fired that shattered Munch’s middle finger. (Prideaux, pp. 196-198, 222)
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In 1902, Munch was invited by the Berlin Succession to exhibit the Frieze of Life. his sequence of twenty-two paintings unified by their treatment of Love and Death. It was well-received, garnered a few sales, and gained the attention of some influential patrons, particularly Albert Kollmann, whom Munch regarded as a kindred spirit for his insight into the creative process. Within weeks Munch was inundated with lucrative commissions from Kollman’s wealthy circle of friends. “After twenty years of struggle and misery, forces of good finally come to my aid in Germany,” he wrote in his diary. (Prideaux, pp. 213-215)
By 1907, this work, mainly portraits, had become stale and
repetitive. Munch developed a new technique – proto-cubism – characterized by
broad distinct horizontal and vertical lines and converging diagonal strokes,
realized in a new palette of bright colors. He pursued three new themes: the
murder of a man lying naked on a bed (himself) committed by a naked woman
(Tulla Larsen); masculine virility from boyhood to old age as represented by
naked lifeguards; and the sexual hostilities of degraded men confronting
prostitutes in a claustrophobic German brothel. (Prideaux, pp. 242-243)
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Munch often defined his art as the expression of his anxiety and the hallucinations induced by his alcoholism. In 1908, after experiencing symptoms of faintness and paralysis, he entered the private clinic of Dr. Daniel Jacobsen, who diagnosed him as suffering from dementia paralytica as a result of alcohol poisoning. Jacobsen’s treatments consisted of applications of weak electric current, carbolic acid baths, and strong sleeping drops, probably chloral. (Prideaux, pp. 248-249)
But Munch devised his own therapies to help him through the
crisis: The Mad Poet’s Diary, an objective account of his life story, in
which he accepts responsibility for his unstable behavior; Fatal Destiny,
a series of non-photo-realist self-portraits, in which he depicts himself as
ghostlike, more or less transparent against his surroundings; and Alpha and
Omega, a retelling of the creation myth in line drawings from man’s
genesis to his fall. (Prideaux, pp. 253-258)
Munch was allowed to leave the clinic after promising to
confine himself to “tobacco-free cigars, alcohol-free drinks, and poison-free
women.” (Prideaux, p. 251)
Two of his long-time supporters, Jens Thiis and Olaf Schou,
through exhibitions, purchases and donations, provided Munch financial
stability and arranged for his greatest works to form the core of the Norwegian
National Gallery’s art collection. Munch rented a twelve-room house, Skrubben,
in the rugged seafaring town of Kragero, where he had enough land to perfect
his “horse-cure”: he scattered his paintings throughout the yard, where, exposed
to the sun (and snow), their magnificent colors shone and they replicated the
natural decomposition of antiquity. (Prideaux, p. 272)
In January 1912 in Dusseldorf, Germany, Munch was given the
largest gallery to display thirty-two paintings (among a total of 557) at was
what later termed the first international exhibition of modern art. (Prideaux, p. 277)
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The next year, facing outlandish taxes from the local authorities for unsold paintings, Munch abandoned Kragero, and purchased a large estate, Ekely, on the western outskirts of Oslo. Witnessing the near famine conditions caused by Allied-Axis blockades during World War I, he transformed it into a self-sufficient working farm. Resented by his countrymen for this, his wealth, and his high profile, he lived the next twenty years isolated, reclusive, and suspicious. (Prideaux, p. 290)
In subject and style, Munch’s later work demonstrated more
optimism and serenity. He produced honest portraits devoid of flattery, traditional
seascapes and landscapes, scenes of people at work and play, celebrations of
farm life including his work horse “Rousseau,” and a series of female nudes
using numerous models – all rendered in broad. loose brushstrokes of vibrant
color with white space now predominant over black. (Prideaux, pp. 291-292, 296-297)
In 1937, the Nazis designated more than sixteen thousand
un-German paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings as “Degenerate Art” and
removed them from public collections, among them eighty-two of Munch’s most
important works. While many were burned, others were sold or stolen by Nazi
leaders, and all of Munch’s apparently survived destruction. (Prideaux, pp. 311, 315-316)
When the Nazis occupied Norway in 1940, Munch’s precious
collection was rescued by a neighbor and stored in his hay barn. The Quisling
government tried to rehabilitate his work and portray his life as exemplifying
Nordic traits, but he refused to participate. (Prideaux, p. 318)
The Nazis would get their revenge. One month after walking
out to his garden to watch Oslo burn after the explosion of a munitions dump,
on January 23, 1944, Munch died from aggravated bronchitis. Two days later the
government newspaper dedicated pages one and two to the artist, lauding him as
“a shooting star of the Norse race.” Over the objections of his friends and
surviving sister, he was awarded a state funeral. After a procession of guns,
eagles, and banners along Oslo’s central boulevard, the service was conducted
in a chapel where his coffin lay surrounded by two enormous wreaths decorated
with swastikas signed by government officials. (Prideaux, p. 327)
Munch’s ashes were interred in Oslo’s Grove of Honor in the
Savior’s Graveyard and not in his family’s modest plot in Krist cemetery,
where, as his dying mother had promised him, they would have been reunited
“never more to be parted.” (Prideaux, p. 328)
Among the paintings on display at the Munch Museum are:
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The Sick Child, 1925 (5th version). The first version, completed in1886, is now considered the first Expressionist masterpiece. The subject is the moment of Munch’s sister’s death, when she utters her last words: “I should like to sit up.” She lies in her bed, propped up by a large white pillow, clutching hands with older woman (certainly, her aunt) whose head is bowed in grief and who is so distraught that the dying child seems to be comforting her. Munch’s intent is to isolate exactly what occurred at the moment he looked at his subject and paint what he felt rather than what he saw, in this case, his reaction to his dying sister’s “transparent pale skin against her linen sheets, her shaking hands, her trembling mouth, her tired eyes.” Munch constructed the picture in an entirely new way. The subject that the eye focuses on is sharp, but the rest is out of focus, which, in the words of one critic, presents the scene “at close range but hazily, as if viewed through tears or the veil of memory.” (Prideaux, pp. 84-89)
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The Kiss, 1892. This painting was among the first three of a series that would ultimately consist of twenty-two, the Frieze of Life. While it encompasses a spectrum of motifs, its unifying theme is the nature of love over one’s life span, which is characterized by infatuation, hopelessness, anxiety, infidelity, jealousy, humiliation, and separation in death. An undercurrent of gloom pervades the passionate embrace of two lovers: a whirling blackness encircles them; a lone cypress tree, normally found in graveyards, mars the background; cross-patterned window grilles suggest a crucifixion. (Prideaux, p. 133)
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Death in the Sickroom, 1893. Also inspired by Sophie’s death, this painting focuses on the family’s shared grief, although each member is engrossed in his or her own sorrow and no one looks or talks with another. Painted in real time despite the death having occurred years earlier, each is identifiable by his or her behavior. Munch’s brother Andreas is leaving the room; his father is praying; his sister Laura is autistically disconnected. Munch himself, never seen full face, remains inscrutable. Double lines outlining figures and hands convey the trembling emotion of the mourners. (Prideaux, p. 155)
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The Scream, 1910 (2nd version). The first version, painted in 1893) is Munch’s most famous painting and its agonized face set against a blue-green coastline and a flaming orange and yellow sky one of the most recognizable in Western art. “I went along the road with two friends,” wrote Munch. “I stopped, leaned against the fence, deathly tired. Clouds over the fjord dripped reeking blood. My friends went on but I just stood trembling with an open wound. I heard an extraordinary scream pass through nature.” According to his biographer, Sue Prideaux, he painted “the soul stripped as far from the visible as possible . . . modern man confronted by the Nietzschean alarm that ‘God is dead and we have nothing to replace him . . . or the panic-chaos, the fundamental starting point for the creative artist,” to name three of its “manifold, almost infinite interpretations.” (Prideaux, pp. 150-152)
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Anxiety, 1894. The painting features the same blood-red sky and unsettling landscape as The Scream, but the anguish of a human in absolute solitude is replaced by a crowd of ghostly, well-dressed figures marching toward the viewer with blank, despairing faces. The misery and panic are communal and universal. Bold, swirling lines and non-naturalistic colors – red, yellow, purple – create a sense of unease and movement, of an unstoppable, grim parade of lost souls. (Farmer)
Madonna, 1894. The model for this bare-breasted female shown from the waist up was Munch’s friend (and probable lover) during his Berlin years, Dagny Juel, whose sensuality, intelligence, and aura of familiarity made her irresistible to men. The critical consensus is that Munch intended to represent the woman in the life-making, ecstatic, and painful act of intercourse, seen through the eyes of her lover, which starkly contradicts the sacredness implied by the painting’s title. Such a woman might also be seen as the archetypical femme fatale, who ensnares men and leads them to their doom. Dagny, however, according to Prideaux, was the one woman in whom Munch forgave everything, the only one who made the transition from sensual goddess to mother and saint. These dichotomies underscore Madonna’s mystery and allure. (Prideaux, pp. 144, 147)
Metabolism, 1898. This large painting was one of the later additions to the Frieze. Munch and his lover Tulla Larsen stand, like Adam and Eve, naked either side of the Tree of Life, which is rooted in buried bones. Illustrative of Munch’s pessimism about love and his preoccupation with the fall of man, they are a most uncompanionable couple; both have their eyes cast down. “Should we sick people establish a new home with the poison of consumption eating into the tree of life – a new home with doomed children?” he wrote at the time. (Prideaux, pp. 191-192)
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Galloping Horse, 1910. One of Munch’s last great paintings, it was inspired by a runaway horse rushing through the streets of Kragero. He recaptures his capacity to observe, feel, and convey, and creates an icon of speed and terror. The horse’s legs drive the picture. They are delineated in just a few brushstrokes of burnt sienna and Prussian blue, each one exact, spare, thinly painted, never altered. So moving is the image that it has been interpreted as a psychological self-portrait of Munch charging through Norway leaving a swath of creative destruction in his wake and an indelible mark on the art world. (Prideaux, pp. 270-271)
REFERENCES
Farmer, Olly. Prominentpainting.com/top-10-famous-edvard-munch-paintings.
Prideaux, Sue. Edvard Munch: Beyond the Scream. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017.
Steom, Patrick, et al. Gustav Vigeland: The Power and Feeling of Sculpture. Stockholm: Arvinius + Orfeus, 2019.
before the gates of the 110-acre Frogner Park, formerly a
private estate bought by the municipality in 1896. Open free to the public
every day, it attracts as many as two million visitors a year. Once we enter
the grounds, it’s easy to see why. Spread out before us is a vast sculpture
garden: 212 bronze, granite, and cast-iron figures all fabricated by one man,
Gustav Vigeland, who not only designed the landscape but also specified where
each piece was to be placed.
Born in 1869 in southern Norway, Vigeland honed his
wood-carving skills in his father’s cabinetmaking workshop. Between 1888 and
1898 he traveled extensively throughout Europe, studying under masters in
Kristiana (later Oslo), Copenhagen, Paris, and Florence. Struggling
financially, he accepted a commission to build forty-four statues for the
restoration of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which despite his
reservations established his reputation.
In 1921 the Oslo City Council decided to demolish the house
where Vigeland lived (it was the studio of his earliest teacher). After a
strident newspaper campaign, the Council agreed to build him a new home and
studio in exchange for his promise to donate to the city his entire life’s
work, existing and future. As Frogner Park was nearby, Vigeland chose it as the
location for a monumental fountain and granite column he had been working on
for fifteen years. Two hundred ten more pieces followed over the next two
decades, as Vigeland honored his contract and in the process created his glorious
Sculpture Arrangement.
Entering the Park innocently through the west gate, about a
hundred yards ahead we catch sight of a forty-six-foot-tall white column
piercing the sky. Erected in 1927, it took fourteen years for three masons to transfer
Vigeland’s design from a plaster model to this two-hundred-sixty-ton block of
granite. Wrapped around the Monolith are one-hundred-twenty-one human figures, scrambling,
floating, and intertwined, men and women of different ages spiraling upward toward
the heavens. You see faces, people climbing, a hand gripping a shoulder, a
child reaching for someone’s back.
While Vigeland deferred judgment to his witnesses, some have
interpreted the massive sculpture as a vision of resurrection and man’s
striving for spirituality.
Surrounding the Monolith on its elevated platform are
thirty-six separate statues of humans captured in provocative and sometimes
perplexing poses. A cluster of children cling to a hidden sphere. A mother and
father cuddle their newborn baby. An elderly man holds three grandchildren in
his protective embrace. A woman wrestles with an unruly child. Lovers nestle
nose-to-nose or turn their backs to each other. They’re chunky, expressionless,
naked, and timeless – and taken altogether totally unique.
From the Monolith, our path leads to the Vigeland Fountain. Its
focal point is a central sculpture carved in bronze depicting six men holding aloft
a large saucer, as if toiling with the burden of existence. From it a curtain
of water – the source of life – spills over them and their pedestal into a
large pool. Planted atop the pool’s enclosure are twenty-three more bronzes of
men entangled in the roots of trees. Representing man’s unity with nature, the
groups illustrate the stages of life from childhood and adolescence through
adulthood to old age and death.
We pass by the Wheel of Life, in which Vigeland
conceptualizes man’s journey as continuous as well as linear; four adults and
three children are bound together in an unbroken, eternal cycle from birth to
death to rebirth.
One more marvel awaits us: the one-hundred-yard bridge which
marked the entrance to the park when it opened in 1940, a gateway, if you will,
to Vigeland’s artistic vision. The fifty-eight bronze figures that line both
sides of the bridge were among the first to be erected in the park. Rather than
on pedestals, they were placed at eye level so as to elicit an intimacy with
the viewer.
The sculptures capture humanity in many forms: at various
ages, engaging in daily activities, expressing profound thoughts. You see
couples embracing, individuals wrestling with inner turmoil, parents and
children rejoicing. Vigeland’s polymorphous exploration of the human condition
invites connection and encourages interpretation.
The most famous inhabitant of The Bridge is “The Angry Boy,”
a screaming child with fists clenched, cheeks pouting, and one foot ready to
stomp. Touching his left hand is supposed to bring good luck, which, carried to
excess over time, has prevented the bronze’s natural oxidation and left a
gleaming blemish. Naturally, Barb can’t resist.
We depart in disbelief of what we have seen. For two hours
we wandered among carved figures, which, in their portrayal of the full range
of human evolution, behavior, and emotion, seem as real as our fellow tourists.
Later that day we will encounter a more pessimistic Norwegian genius, one whose
work plumbed the depths of man’s struggle with loneliness, despair, and madness.
I will write about that next month – unless something better comes to mind.
