Edvard Munch: Perception of Anxiety

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Introduction
How did Edvard Munch perceive anxiety?
Edvard Munch, a famous world known painter from Norway, was able to express his suppressed feelings of fear and anxiety onto a canvas with an ability that both amazed and scared the people of the world. He used his anxiety of life, love and death, to inspire people, and let them see the troubles in his life. Edvard Munch is especially known for his works ‘The scream’ and ‘Madonna’.
Munch popularity is due to his extraordinary ability to convey a deep and raw emotion from the unconscious onto the canvas leaving it to the viewers to interpret, feel and reflect. He stood out from other artists of his time, as he varied away from the norms and focused on the feelings and state of the work, rather than details and perfection. Anxiety evolved as the main point of Munch art. This essay goes through Edvard Munch’s childhood focusing on the events that caused him anxiety, how the anxiety affected his relationship with women and love, and how his idea of anxiety was supported by the theories of Søren Kierkegaard. These elements act as a support of an analysis of three of his works ‘Evening on Karl Johan’, ‘Melancholy’ and ‘The woman in three stages’. This essay should be seen as a work within the subject Visual Arts as it analyses three works of Munch focusing on anxiety. The analysis will contain an analysis of the form, content and context of each of the works. Having experienced the Edvard Munch: Angst/Anxiety exhibition at AROS Museum of Art in Aarhus, Denmark, I found and developed curiosity and inspiration to this essay. I find it worthy of a study as Munch changed the view and concept of art, and provided the public with a concept of art that was not the norm around the 19th centu...

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Edvard Munch - angst / anxiety." ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum - Oplevelser i Aarhus. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.< http://www.aros.dk/besoeg-aros/udstillinger/2012/edvard-munch-angst-anxiety/

"eMunch.no | Lesevisning | MM N 664. Notat." Apache Tomcat. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.

Øhrstrøm , Daniel Øhrstrøm . " En vandring gennem Munchs følelsesliv | Kristeligt Dagblad." Kristeligt Dagblad. N.p., 18 Aug. 2012. Web. 19 Sept. 2013.< http://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikel/474626:Kultur--En-vandring-gennem-Munchs-foelelsesliv

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