Travail and Travel

The following articles appeared in the September, October, and November issues of the Agudath Sholom Congregational Bulletin (with edits).

FULL NAME DATE OF BIRTH

About two months ago, I was diagnosed with a hernia. The little rat reared its ugly head as Barb and I were wandering around Amsterdam waiting to board the Viking ocean liner Neptune for our six-day Norwegian cruise.

At first, I thought that twinge in my groin might be warning me that a kidney stone was stirring – I’ve had five of them, though nothing serious in ten years – but was quickly disabused of this notion by the sensation of an intrusive bulge.  As if there was any doubt, my condition was confirmed by the unanimous verdict of our two traveling companions, a husband-and-wife team comprised of a gastroenterologist and a nurse, both retired.

“Don’t worry,” said Katy. “Chal’s had four. They’re easily fixed.”

I've been gifted with remarkably good health for all my seventy-eight years, having evaded both the surgeon’s knife and, much to the amazement of the spate of providers who would interview me in the coming weeks, the pharmacist’s palliatives. When my primary care physician saw my total cholesterol number breach the sacred 200 level, he dutifully prescribed statins; after consulting Dr. Google and weighing the pros and cons, I politely declined.

While one should always strive to improve his odds – I try to work out on an aerobic machine daily – survival to a ripe old age is less a function of fitness than it is of sheer good luck. Who can say why my father and sister succumbed to cancer in their sixties while my mother just celebrated her 101^st birthday?

With a blemish-free chart, I’m naturally skeptical of wading into the health care morass that awaits every prospective patient. Inguinal hernias are fairly common, especially for males over the age of fifty. The likelihood of a life-threatening incarceration or strangulation appears to be two percent or less.

On the other hand, while I’m able to walk at a rapid pace with minimal discomfort, should the pain intensify, I must manually push the protruding bowel into its protective cavity and hold it there. I’ve been forced to eliminate a thirty-minute ride on an elliptical machine from my workout and replace it with thirty additional minutes on a recumbent bicycle (bringing the total to sixty).

I understand now that, unless I’m willing to alter my lifestyle, my only remedy is surgery. But there’s a process. You can’t just phone a friendly surgeon and schedule a consultation; you need a referral. I’m one hundred percent certain I have a hernia, yet two gatekeepers stand between me and the person who can really help me.

I’m on Medicare, so why should I care if all these providers want a share of the pot? But multiply my case by the thousands in a similar situation, and you can see why the United States spends $13,500 per capita annually for health care, more than twice the amount spent by its peer countries. Aside from my modest premium, I’m getting a free ride while millions of working Americans and taxpayers are bearing the burden of these outrageous costs.

On short notice, my primary care physician is not available, so I’m redirected to Tara, a capable enough PA who apologizes for having to examine my groin but does indeed confirm that I have a hernia. I’m assuming at that point she’s going to refer me to a surgeon, but no: there’s more juice to this squeeze. Just to reconfirm what she’s concluded, she informs me that an ultrasound is protocol.

Having been down the ultrasound detour several years ago, I should object, but once you’re swept into the health care funnel, it’s hard to extricate yourself. It should be a sign that all the local laboratories are booked, but I docilely acquiesce when the scheduling nurse secures an appointment at Bedford Memorial Hospital, only minutes from my home in Forest.

You can’t enter a health care facility without multiple full disclosures: Full Name, Date of Birth; Marc A. Schewel, 7/27/1948, which are duly rendered to registrar and technician. If only the other stops on my journey are as painless as this one. After performing the procedure, the technician says she can’t really evaluate the image – that’s for the radiologist to do – other than to say, guess what, “You have a hernia.”

A few days later I finally meet the second most important character in this drama: my surgeon, Dr. William K., or for simplification, Bill. Bill’s office is in the brand-new $100 million, 130,000 sq. ft. Centra Langhorne Medical Center. Dare I say, but this palace looks like it belongs on the Liberty University campus.

 I don’t know how much my operation is going to cost – why bother to ask – but it’s going to take a lot to pay for this building, not to mention all the administrators and nurses running around. It may not take long, as I found out last month when Barb was having her hip replaced at the Surgery Center on Atherholt Road. “How many operations are you doing here today?” I asked a nurse. “Forty-six,” she said, “but we’re a little slow. Tomorrow, we have sixty scheduled.”

Bill is a no-nonsense, “just the facts” kind of guy: Jack Webb with a whole lot less hair. Surrounded by three nurses and barely pausing to take a breath, he reviews the physiology of a hernia and the laparoscopic (robotic) procedure he recommends to repair it. I try to ask all the right questions, but I’m vastly outnumbered and all the evidence weighs heavily in favor of being proactive. My condition will worsen over time and steadily constrict my lifestyle. No surgery is without risk, but this type is minimally invasive and complications are rare.

Or, as my friend Dr. Walter B. astutely observed, “All surgery is minor unless it’s on you.”

After three weeks of intense soul-searching and internet surfing – briefly interrupted by a visit to the Vassar Medical Building on Oak Lane for blood work – on Friday, July 31, promptly at 5:30 AM, accompanied by Barb, I report to Lynchburg General Hospital. Raising my right hand, I solemnly deliver my full name and date of birth and answer a rotisserie of questions regarding the past and current state of my health, a regimen I will undergo at least four more times before fading into oblivion.

Within minutes, Barb and I are escorted to a private pre-op room, where I disrobe, don a medical gown, connect its tricky Velcro tabs, lie down on a gurney, cover myself with a blanket, and try to relax. Any chance of that soon dissipates when Dara shows up, re-interviews me, takes my blood pressure (which is surprisingly normal), attaches a drip bag to my bed, applies a tourniquet, feels for my vein, pricks me with a needle, and inserts an intravenous tube. I compliment her on her gentle technique.

This is serious business, but at least someone here has a since of humor. “Tell me your name,” says Henry as he rolls me down the hall. When I answer, “Marc,” he breaks out into a broad grin. “You know better than that,” he says. “I need your full name and date of birth. And what are you here for? Beating your wife?” “Henry,” I say. “Look at me. Whom do you think is the injured party?”

My next stop is a curtained alcove in a large staging area full of commotion and chatter. Dr. Pete C., who replaced Barb’s hip, pokes his head in to commiserate. When I hear not too far from me a patient, apparently diabetic, describing his illnesses and medications, my trepidations shrink to inconsequence.

Suddenly, there’s a flurry of activity in my tiny tent. Lorraine rechecks my blood pressure and reinterrogates me. When she brandishes an electric shaver and commences depilation, I realize there’s no turning back. Bill stops by, says something like “How are you doing,” and leaves his first mark (erasable, unlike the ones that follow) on my lower right abdomen. I’m not sure what Zachary’s purpose is, but I suspect it’s related to anesthesiology. Speaking of which, up pops a familiar face: Igor, the Ukrainian fellow who helped spread mulch at the synagogue playground several months ago.

“Igor, my friend. It’s so strange meeting you here. I never knew . . .”

Maybe it’s Zachary who’s whisking me along to my penultimate destination, with Igor by my side. He wants to know when I last had anesthesia. “About ten years ago, during a colonoscopy,” I say, at which point he tries to convince me that it’s time for another, “as cancer can flare up at any time.” “Igor,” I say, “I’m seventy-eight and I’m not interested. We can discuss this later, after I regain consciousness.”   

I’m wheeled into the operating room, where all eyes are on me, like I’m the next victim. Two hefty fellows maneuver me onto the surgical table; one places a plastic cone over my mouth and says, “I’m just going to give you a little oxygen.” And that’s the last thing I remember.

Six days into my recovery, I’m not a happy camper. Either Bill neglected to inform me, or I forgot that this surgery involved three incisions – or bullet holes as a friend said – one to insert the camera, one to repair the hernia and emplace the mesh, and one to examine the other side of my abdomen. None of the three has healed completely, and the naval incision is bruised and slightly swollen. My stomach remains distended from the gas that was injected to facilitate the procedure. While most of my pain has moderated – I stopped taking medication after twenty-four hours – I still have spasms at the wound and mesh sites.

I’ve tried to make light of the situation with comments like “Oh, how I miss my hernia” and “I hurt everywhere except where the hernia was.” People who have been through this tell me that I need to be patient; healing takes time. And while I’m cursing my pain, maybe I should reflect on how I began this essay. I’m seventy-eight years old, still upright, still healthy, and a whole lot better off than many of my contemporaries.

  A BIRTHDAY AT GIVERNY

“I guess we’re not going to Paris for my birthday,” Barb says to me on June 28^th after I agree to an outing with some friends on July 23^rd, which is the eve of her 75^th birthday.

“We just got back from Norway,” is my response, “plus, you’re only six days into your recovery from hip replacement.”

“For which your caregiving leaves a lot to be desired,” she says, completing my sentence.

You can see where this conversation is going. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details, other than to quote what she told a friend: “I bullied him into it.” Within twenty-four hours, we booked our flights, our hotel, and her birthday excursion to Giverny, Claude Monet’s home in Normandy, about an hour-and-a-half bus ride from Paris. 

I knew Claude Monet as one of the founders of Impressionism, but frankly had never heard of Giverny, the small town beside the Seine where he purchased a house and its environs in 1883 at the age of forty. Barb says it is a place she has always wanted to see, and after a few minutes, I know why.

It’s no exaggeration to say that entering these grounds is like stepping into a Monet work of art. Immediately, you are immersed in a landscape of vibrant color and peaceful contemplation as you explore the gardens which for him were as much a labor of love as his painting.

From visits to his splendid estate at Montgeron, Monet was familiar with the large, beautiful garden of Ernest Hoschede, his friend and patron, and the husband of Alice, his second wife. He devoured gardening catalogues and visited plant exhibitions and botanical gardens whenever possible. He grew plants and tended plots at Argenteuil and Vetheuil where he was only renting properties.

After moving to Giverny, Monet immediately set about transforming the apple orchard and vegetable patch that blighted his view to the horizon. He removed the boxwood hedges and spruce trees that lined the sandy path to his house, retaining only two large yews at the entrance, and replaced them with metal archways that remain in place today. The area was laid out on a geometrical plan structured by single-color beds sitting side by side where flower clumps at different heights created volume.

Varying by month, the space is filled with an incredible mix of flowers, from lilacs and irises (seventeen varieties) to chrysanthemums and nasturtiums. Azaleas, hydrangeas, foxgloves, hollyhocks, forget-me-nots, violets, poppies, tulips, peonies, and daffodils mingle and bloom one after another. Roses scatter the ground, hide in bushes and hedges, and cling to pergolas, pillars, trellises, and the house façade.

The Clos Normand, the former orchard, was planted by Monet as a place in which to paint, an open-air studio. It also served as an image he could depict, as in The Artist’s Garden at Giverny, an almost abstract composition, saturated with color, marked by dark diagonals and verticals, and dabbed with mere suggestions of blooms. Monet liked to work in the surrounding countryside, painting haystacks and rows of poplars, and in his garden, he was as close as he could be to the colors and settings he loved.

In 1893 Monet bought a nearby piece of land which was crossed by a branch of the Epte River, a tributary of the Seine. He dug a small pond but only after obtaining permission from the prefecture of the department; his neighbors had objected, fearing their water would be poisoned by Monet’s exotic plants. In 1901 he purchased additional property and undertook an extensive project to divert the stream further and enlarge the pond.

Inspired by tranquil scenes from the Japanese prints he collected, Monet designed the Water Garden himself and built it with the help of a team of gardeners.

As you emerge from the underpass which enables visitors to avoid crossing a road, you are greeted by a second feast for the eyes. A green-painted wooden footbridge overgrown with wisteria arches over an irregularly shaped pond. The shore is lined with bamboo, willows, cherry blossoms, gladioli, rhododendrons, and Japanese tree peonies. Winding paths give fresh vistas at every bend. Hundreds of lilies float on the blue-green water in contrasting shades of yellow, white, pink, red, and lilac. Passing clouds, bursts of sunlight, and shadows of foliage are mirrored on the shimmering surface.

Two observers articulated the dual nature of this spot. Conceived initially as a picturesque subject, in the words of Georges Clemenceau, “Monet’s garden was one of his works, a realization of the charms of adapting nature to the work of the painter of light.” Marcel Proust, who never saw it, echoed that sentiment when he wrote, “The garden itself is a real transposition of art, rather than a model for painting.”

Beginning in 1899, Water Lilies became the theme that occupied Monet for the next twenty years and would undergird his legacy. Experimenting with variations in format, tone, and color, he developed a new, fluid, and audacious style that narrowed the distinction between Impressionism and modern abstraction. Ultimately, he would produce 250 of these paintings.

While hardly comparable to the gardens, Monet’s house offers its own attractions, beginning with its pink walls, green shutters, and the climbing vines and flowers that cloak the façade.

The first room you enter is Monet’s original studio, which he later converted into a salon to entertain guests. The walls are covered with reproductions of sixty paintings he personally selected and arranged in a manner that represented his life and career. They include works from his difficult early years; two of his wife Camille, one on a beach, one on her deathbed; samples from his Haystacks and Cathedral series; several from his London and Venice travels; and one of the circular Water Lilies murals.

The kitchen is a favorite among many visitors, with its historic stovetop, gleaming copper pans and pitchers, and blue-and-white ceramic tiles. Our guide informs us that Monet kept his distance from food preparation and entrusted it all to his three cooks, Caroline, Melanie, and Marguerite.

The dining room is spacious enough to accommodate the entire household when it sat down for lunch promptly at 12:30 PM: Monet, his two sons, Alice (his second wife), and her four daughters and two sons. The intense color scheme chosen by Monet could only have sprung from a painter’s palette: “light chrome yellow with moldings picked out in pure chrome yellow.” The table is set with one of the two dinner services used alternately in Monet’s time.

Entering Monet’s bedroom, instead of his own paintings, you encounter “a veritable gallery of Impressionist art,” as described by a reporter in 1927. Arranged according to size on walls draped with white cloth are thirty-seven reproductions of famous works by Renoir, Cezanne, Boudin, Delacroix, and several others.

We leave the house with our appetite whetted for more Monet. Later that day, back in Paris, we will visit the Musee d’Orsay, which houses the finest Impressionist collection in the world, and the Musee de l’Orangerie where Monet’s eight Water Lilies murals are hung. At the gift shop, I purchase a biography, Monet: The Restless Vision by Jackie Wullschlager, to learn more about this amazing man. Unless something better comes to mind, you’ll be able to read about that next month.

A MOMENT OF BREAKING LIGHT

Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840, into comfortable middle-class surroundings. Business concerns led his family’s relocation to coastal France, where as early as age fifteen, the distracted student was filling sketchbooks with drawings of the houses and flora of the town of Ingouville, scenes of the harbor at Le Havre, and caricatures of local notables.

Monet attributed the launch of his career as a landscape painter to the naturalist Eugene Boudin, whom he met in Le Havre in 1857. Positioning his easel next to Boudin en plein air, Monet later wrote that his “eyes, finally, were opened” to nature. Boudin’s conviction that “anything painted directly from nature and on the spot has always a force, power, and vivacity that one cannot be found in the studio” would inform his protégé’s work. (Wullschlager, pp. 29-30)

In 1865, Monet debuted at the Salon in Paris with two seascapes he had painted at Honfleur on the estuary of the Seine near Le Havre. The sight of them alongside Edouard Manet’s depiction of Olympia, a reclining nude prostitute, inspired Monet to undertake a grandiose project in the mode of Manet’s even more scandalous Le Bain, which featured a nude female seated at a picnic beside two fully clothed men.

Composed of three rhythmically linked life-size couples, Monet’s Le Dejeuner sur l’herbe achieved his aim of merging figures with setting and of presenting light as the action of the painting. He could not finish it in time for the 1866 Salon, and instead submitted The Woman in the Green Dress, or Camille, a stunning portrait of his eighteen-year-old girl friend, described as “a figure of verve and enigma . . .a fleeting presence . . . a moment of perfection.” (Wullschlager, pp. 87-88)

Camille posed for all four of the Women in the Garden (1866) in which, painting entirely from nature, Monet used heightened contrasts between light and shadow to anticipate his movement towards Impressionism. Brutal contrasts of light and color are evident in his renowned work of 1867, Terrace at Sainte-Andresse, which coincided with the birth of Monet and Camille’s first child, Jean. The couple would marry three years later. (Wullschlager, pp. 99-100, 113)

Monet’s next great painting, La Grenouillere (1869), the frog pond, a bathing establishment on the banks of Croissy Island in the Seine, contained the elements that would determine the future of his art: the fusion of light, reflections, and movement on the river; water vividly revealed and abstracted; images decomposed in abrupt, accented brushstrokes. (Wullschlager, pp. 128-129)

He brought these elements to an apogee during his sojourn in Argenteuil (1872-1876), a small town twelve miles from Paris overlooking the Seine. Moving further “from defining forms in favor of lively marks, dots, [and] bursts of color,” he created such notable works as The Basin at Argenteuil, The Poppy Field (his most abstract so far), and Woman with a Parasol. In the latter, Camille and Jean are captured standing atop a grassy hill yet also given a sense of motion by floating wisps of clouds and swaying sunflowers. (Wullschlager, pp. 150,151, 166)

On April 15, 1874, a group of thirty anti-traditionalist artists labeling themselves the “Societe anonyme” and including such future luminaries as Cezanne, Degas, Pissaro, Renoir, and Sisley opened their first exhibition. Among Monet’s contributions were Boulevard des Capucines, saluted as a masterpiece by one critic for its “streaming life and shimmering of great shadows and lights,” and Impression, Sunrise, his own name for “a moment of breaking light and its reflections” through the mist at the boatyard at Le Havre. Another critic seized the term as uniting and defining these new stylists: “They are impressionists in that they render not the landscape, but the sensation evoked by the landscape.” (Wullschlager, pp. 158-159)

The “Societe anonyme” exhibitions failed to produce any remunerative sales. Monet enjoyed periods of refuge at the estate of his loyal patron, Ernest Hoschede, just outside Paris, until, desperate for money, he abandoned Argenteuil and Camille, who was suffering from a debilitating illness (probably uterine cancer), and moved to the city. There, from January to April 1877, he competed a dozen paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazare, “his first exploration of a single subject across multiple perspectives, times of day and season, and levels of sharpness and blur.” (Wullschlager, pp. 183-184)

Camille joined her husband in Paris for the birth of their second son Michel in March 1878 and for the success of Rue Montorgueil, an exuberant flag painting “of tricolors: fat staccato red, white, and blue strokes fluttering, flapping, and twirling above narrow thronging streets.” It sold instantly. (Wullschlager, p. 193)

The family moved to the rural village of Vetheuil, thirty-five miles northwest of Paris. Monet loved the view across the river, and, during 1878-1879, painted sixty-eight canvases, including eight versions of The Seine at Lavacourt. Only eight overall were sold, a financial disaster for Monet which was compounded by Camille’s death on September 5, 1879.  (Wullschlager, pp. 195-96, 204, 208)

Having neglected his clothing business, Ernest Hoschede himself was close to bankruptcy. To save money, he and Monet combined households, although the former spent most of his time in Paris. Ernest’s wife Alice had nursed Camille during her illness, and after her death entered an intimate relationship with Monet. While hard-edged and independent, Alice delighted in nature; her eyes and spirit became vital for Monet in the sense that he saw his work as a way of sharing his own vision and bringing her joy. (Wullschlager, pp. 187, 195, 206, 228-229)

The appearance of Alice Hoschede in the Garden at the seventh Impressionist exhibit in 1882 made the relationship public. In the painting, as “the Seine glides past, the color contrasts of river, lawn, and flowers are a foil for Alice who, resplendent in white, lights up the landscape.” (Wullschlager, Plate 26)

Leaving Alice and their eight children (his two and her six) in Poissy (a new residence a few miles upstream from Vetheuil), Monet spent most of the first half of 1882 in the deserted fishing village of Pourville, close to Dieppe. Working through storms, he produced one hundred canvases, which earned him 31,000 francs. A typical one in vibrant color is The Cliff Walk at Pourville, in which Alice and her daughter Suzanne look out over the rugged coastline to the bay. (Wullschlager, pp. 235-236)

On April 5, 1883, seeking to separate himself entirely from Ernest Hoschede, Claude Monet stepped from a branch train off the Paris-Rouen rail line about an hour from the capital into the tiny village of Giverny, home to 279 people. A twelve-room (including cellar and attic) slate-roofed farmhouse, painted pink with grey shutters, and its adjacent barns, orchards, garden, and meadows were available for rent. Within a month he had transplanted his extended family. (Wullschlager, pp, 246-248)

Monet spent the winter and spring of 1884 in the medieval town of Bordighera in northern Italy. He found a landscape which demanded compositions denser, more jumbled, and brighter than he had done before. In The Garden in Bordighera paintings, “fragments of the old town shimmer in morning views of mixed colors cast by the rising sun.” (Wullschlager, pp. 254, 253)

Back at Giverny, Monet undertook a new endeavor: “figures in the open air as I understand them, done as landscapes.” The subjects were his family. In In the Norvegienne (1887), his three stepdaughters – Germaine, Suzanne, and Blanche – more sculptural than real, cast deep reflections from their fishing boat, and “evoke the transience, the elusiveness, of the moment.” In Landscape with Figures (1888), five of the children – three in the foreground, two in the back – stand still and straight, “echoing the trees behind them . . . absorbed into the landscape by the dazzling light.” (Wullschlager, pp. 284, 293)

The first months of 1891 were a watershed for Monet. He was now a homeowner, having purchased the Giverny property in November 1890. His relationship with Alice would stabilize with the death of her husband Ernest in March. And with the completion of twenty-five paintings in his Haystacks series, he realized the concept that would shape his future work, bring him fame and prosperity, and transform art history. (Wullschlager, pp. 303-306)

“Monet had built landscapes on nuances of effect through the 1880’s,” but the Haystacks were a deliberate “moment-by-moment construction . . . paintings that were more about time rather than space.” As a series they “insist on the contemplation of each moment passing, of the transience of all moments . . . Painted in short staccato strokes that produced waves of color in multiple layers . . . burnished by golden rays or sprinkled with snow . . .  [the Haystacks] embodied shelter, bounty, and nurture.” They were also a financial master stroke; Monet’s earnings for 1891 surpassed 100,000 francs. (Wullschlager, pp. 305-306, 308)

Two vertical series followed, the Poplars, which were ubiquitous in Normandy and whose sturdy uprightness represented order, well-being, and liberty, and the more difficult Rouen Cathedrals. (Wullschlager, p. 313)

He worked on several canvases at once, switching as the sun moved; the stone shifts from cold blue-gray at dawn to blazing gold at midday to dusty rose at sunset. He captures how lighting could impart different characters to the building depending on the time of day and the type of weather.

An interlude in London produced over one hundred versions of the Houses of Parliament and the two bridges, Waterloo and Charing Cross; they “change in appearance from hour to hour as winter mist mingles with smoke from factories and furnaces” across the river. “Monet imagines the modern city as a fleeting vista, its expansive skies, stretches of water, and ceaseless traffic transformed into near abstractions, alternately opaque and translucent.” (Wullschlager, pp. 350, 355)

With the Water Garden expansion completed by 1904, Monet would devote his energy to his revolutionary Water Lillies series for the rest of his life. “Nothing like this had existed in painting before: nature rendered in the cropped, smallest fragment of a landscape, so that, wrote one critic, ‘the lilies ‘appear to be floating in the moist air, fading away and promoting the play of imagination.’ ’’(Wullschlager, p. 370)

“The basic element of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance changes at every instant because of the way bits of the sky are reflected in it, giving it life and movement,” explained Monet. (Wullschlager, p. 370)

Monet was severing his last ties with the descriptive painting. “Sky and earth mostly disappear, the banks and edges are eliminated, no single point fixes the eye, in these decentralized, water-flooded compositions.” (Wullschlager, pp. 370-371)

The series of 250 paintings culminated in the Grandes Decorations, eight massive panels each two meters tall and between six and seventeen meters in length; Monet worked on them from 1914 until his death in 1926 at the age of eighty-six. Conceived as a tribute to the French soldiers who had perished during the First World War, at the behest of Georges Clemenceau, Monet agreed to donate them to the Musee de L’Orangerie. But he never completed them to his satisfaction.

In 1927, the Water Lilies panels were delivered to the museum, where they languished in obscurity for decades, hardly visited or mentioned, relegated to a basement in a gloomy dark space. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s, American Abstract Expressionists took a renewed interest in Monet’s work. As Monet’s reputation revived, the French minister of culture decided that his works now deserved a more prominent placement and sponsored a major renovation of L’Orangerie from 2000 to 2006. When it reopened, visitors would find Monet’s Grande Decorations displayed just as he had designed: in oval-shaped rooms, illuminated by natural light, and surrounded by water.

Today, thousands of visitors pass through its portals every day to admire the master works of the man who, by fearlessly defying conventional thinking and relentlessly pursuing his vision, can credibly be deemed the father of modern art.

REFERENCES

Goetz, Adrian, trans. Barbara Mellor. Monet at Giverny. Paris: Editions Gourcuff Gradenigo, 2015.

Wullschlager, Jackie. Monet: The Restless Vision. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                   

 

 

 

 

 

The President Speaks Again

The following articles appeared in the 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 never fails to finish one I’ve cracked open, no matter how inane or dense its interior, 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 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 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History.

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.”

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.

Some of the comments below are borrowed from 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.

 A WALK IN THE PARK

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.

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.

As our bus wends its way through the streets of the city and our guide spews forth information like water from a fire hydrant, nothing really grabs my attention until we stop 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 designed by one man, Gustav Vigeland; he oversaw their composition, planned the landscaping, and specified the placement of each piece.

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)

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.

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 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.  

A TORMENTED GENIUS                                                                                   

Last month I shared my impressions of the glorious Frogner Park in Oslo, Norway, and the amazing Vigeland sculptures which populate its grounds.

For the remainder of our time in Oslo, we decide to visit the Edvard Munch Museum, which is about a thirty-minute walk from our ship. We’ve made our acquaintance with Norway’s greatest artist by attending a lecture the previous evening by the ship’s resident historian, Dr. William Whobrey.

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 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)

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)

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)

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 nude woman (Tulla Larsen); masculine virility from boyhood to old age; and the sexual hostilities of degraded men confronting prostitutes in a German brothel. (Prideaux, pp. 242-243)

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)

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 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:

The Sick Child, 1925 (5^th version). The first version, completed in 1886, 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)

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, the Frieze's 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. In The Kiss, 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)                                                                 

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 character is identifiable by his or her behavior and embodies a single psychological dimension, thus appearing more symbolic than realistic. 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)

The Scream, 1910 (2^nd 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 images 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' . . . [and] the panic-chaos, the fundamental starting point for the creative artist,” to name three of its “manifold, almost infinite interpretations.” (Prideaux, pp. 150-152)

In 2003, comparing The Scream to Whistler's Mother, American Gothic, and Mona Lisa, art historian Martha Tedeschi wrote that all four have "achieved something that most paintings -- regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value -- have not: they communicate a specific meaning immediately to almost every viewer. These few works have successfully made the transition from the elite realm of the museum visitor to the enormous venue of popular culture."

Anxiety, 1894. The painting features the same blood-red sky and unsettling landscape as The Scream, but the anguish of a human in 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)

Galloping Horse, 1910. Inspired by a runaway horse rushing through the streets of Kragero, it was one of Munch's last great paintings. Recapturing his capacity to convey what he sees and then feels, he 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.