Friday, December 15, 2006

Vinterbillede

Hooray the blog is back! I now seem to be able to get access to Beta Blogger through a Mozilla browser... anyway here's a quick post to resume normal service.


Edvard Munch, The Yellow Log (1911)

I went to Oslo at the start of the month. I was really disappointed by the Munch museum, more notable now for the extraordinarily high level of security than the art: airlock doors, whirring cameras, silent security guards watching your every move. Two landscapes were on display, Winter in Kragero (1912) which looks a bit like a Cézanne hillside suddenly covered in snow, and The Yellow Log (1911) in which a woodland scene is given some ostranenie with the prominent log of the title, a shining Symbol like a felled sunbeam. These two post-date most of Munch's best, and best known, paintings. There is an earlier landscape in the Nasjonalgalleriet which I much preferred: Vinterbillede (1899), a simple image of winter that achieves an atmosphere of oppressive stillness through heavy paint and a cropped view of dark trees in the snow.

3 comments:

  1. welcome back; you have been missed

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for your support. More on Nordic art today, although as noted in the new description of this site, I'm going to be posting less frequently this year than last.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated because even with these filters spam is more common than non-spam. Your comment therefore won't appear immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience - genuine comments are really welcome.