Painting of the Week - The Dance of Life by Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, Livets Dans (The Dance of Life), 1900
Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway

A few years ago, there was a Munch exhibition here with some really good works coming over from the Munch Museum in Oslo. It was on during my Great European Adventure 2004 so I only had a period of about a week to see it before it closed. The brother and I went to do our look-see, it turned out on the day we rocked up that we had about 2 hours to look at the 100 or so paintings, prints and drawings. Being such an emotionally torrid man, we left the exhibition also feeling extremely emotionally drained. But hey, it was still a great exhibition.

The brother's favourite painting of the exhibition was The Dance of Life (don't ask me why). The composition which Munch (1863 - 1944) repeated several times and is semi-autobiographical in that he depicts his tortured relationships with women. At the centre, a young Munch dances with Milly Thaulow, a woman with whom he had an affaire while still a young man. She rejected him and he never really got over the heartbreak. To the sides stand Tulla Larsen, Munch's lover/fiancee with whom he also had *issues*, culminating in him getting a bullet lodged in his left hand in 1902. They broke up soon after.

Tulla in white hopefully darts forward to pluck a flower of romance while Tulla in black sadly watches the central couple. And then there's the dancing pair behind Tulla in black. That grotesque man represents Gunnar Heiberg who introduced Munch to Larsen, and whom Munch suspected of having an affaire with Larsen prior to their relationship. Torrid indeed.