1880 -1944 · identity, illness and old age

Munch uses portraiture as a laboratory of presence. Cigarettes, bottles, beds, clocks or illnesses are not accessories: they represent a life changing.

Munch's portraits alternate between commissions, close faces and incessant observation of himself. Self-portrait with cigarette, painted in 1895, places the face and hand in an emerging light while the body dissolves in shadow : the modern artist asserts himself there without academic attribute. Self-portrait with a bottle of wine then shows public isolation, the painter sitting in a café in front of an object which becomes distance. After the pandemic of 1918 -1919, Self-portrait after the Spanish flu, the thin body was confronted with a color that was still feverish. In Self-portrait between the clock and the bed, produced in 1940 -1943, an aging Munch stands between a clock without visible hands and a bed covered with a very present bedspread. Time, work and mortality now share the room. Each portrait thus constructs a situation rather than a simple resemblance. The "Portraits of Edvard Munch" selection notably highlights self-portrait look at cigarettes and Self-portrait with a bottle of wine. His reading favors composition.

Munch not only asks "what does this person look like?", but "in what time, what solitude and what ordeal does he stand?"