‘I walked one evening along a road – on one side lay the town, and the fjord lay below me…’ In this way begins Edvard Munch’s account of how he came to paint The Scream. Besides the Mona Lisa, it is probably the most recognisable image ever created. Munch painted in order to ‘explain my life to myself’. And for the same reason, he wrote constantly in notebooks about his anxieties, his unhappy love life, his disappointments and his creative ideas. His writings are often witty and – from the man who gave modern anxiety its visual language – full of searing insights into the challenges of life and society. For today’s podcast, I have rummaged around in these sources to let Norway’s great artist speak for himself. ‘I know I have to return to the road by the edge of the cliff – that is my road.’

EPISODE PHOTO

Edvard Munch: Self-Portrait (1905) 

Public Domain 

Owner: Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design

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