The Kiss ('Kyss')

Edvard Munch created The Kiss in 1895 while living in Berlin, and early impressions such as the present one were printed there. Shortly thereafter, officials in Kristiana (now Oslo) decreed that the work was immoral and prohibited it from exhibition. For late 19th-century middle-class audiences, the image proved scandalous, and indeed, hardly anything this overtly erotic had been created in Western Art - outside a pornographic context - since the Renaissance. Yet for Munch and his bohemian circle, the print exemplified the artist's claim that '... there should be no more paintings of people reading and women knitting. In the future they should be of people who breathe, who feel emotions, who suffer and love.' In his depiction of a passionate embrace of two nude lovers, he went far beyond the formal genre of courtship pictures or even the brothel scenes of Edgar Degas or Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Yet there is nothing trite, vulgar or obscene about this image. Instead, Munch's etching projects a feeling of tenderness, as well as physical and emotional tension. As in many of his best prints, the artist had pared down the subject to its essential elements, while also imbuing it with great sense of atmosphere. The present, very early proof impression is printed with much plate tone, wiped clear in the illuminated windows of the building across, and it conveys the experience of witnessing an intimate, fleeting moment in time particularly well.