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拍品專文
Munch's images of the Madonna are among the most haunting and evocative female icons in the history of European art. Originally conceived in Berlin between 1893 and 1894, the figure of Munch's Madonna stands at the crossroads between the symbolist art of the late nineteenth century and the modernism of the early twentieth century. The Madonna encapsulates all the ambivalence that exists between fear and desire in a single instantly memorable and resonant image. Munch's Madonna is an embodiment of the mystic nature of life and an evocation of the miracle of existence infused with love and expressive emotion.
Munch's intent was to represent "Woman" from the point of view of her lover at the moment she conceives a new life within; Munch described that precise moment as being when "life and death join hands", when "Woman" stands at the gateway between life and death reaches her apotheosis. She is then at her most desirable, her most majestic and her most fearful. In the artist's own words:
The pause as all the world stops in its path. Moonlight glides over your face filled with all the earth's beauty and pain. Your lips are like two ruby red serpents, and are filled with blood, like your crimson red fruit. They part from one another as if in pain. The smile of a corpse. Thus life reaches out its hand to death. The chain is forged that binds the thousands of generations that have died to the thousands of generations yet to come.
Madonna is depicted amidst a mystic aura of rippling waves of color that surround her and encourage a visionary interpretation. Womb-like and cavernous in their ambience, these billowing rings of color echo the blood red clouds that swirl around the terrified figure of Munch's other epic painting of this period, The Scream. With jet black hair falling in Medusa-like threads, Munch's woman is shown as if she were a holy apparition transfiguring in the center of a vortex with a look of mystic ecstasy. Her arms dissolve into the cosmic mist that surrounds her, while her ghost-like face radiates an impossible beauty. A rich blood-red halo adorns this sensuous embodiment of love, life and death, crowning her as Madonna.
The model for Madonna was Dagny Juel, a woman whom Munch met at Zum Schwarzen Ferkel, a pub that served as the headquarters for Berlin's avant-garde literary circle. Although it is unclear if Juel actually sat for the artist, her features are visible in much of Munch's art of the period, including its present work.
Munch painted five versions of Madonna, three of which are in public institutions: the Hamburg Kunsthalle; the National Gallery, Oslo; and the Munch Museum, Oslo.
Munch's intent was to represent "Woman" from the point of view of her lover at the moment she conceives a new life within; Munch described that precise moment as being when "life and death join hands", when "Woman" stands at the gateway between life and death reaches her apotheosis. She is then at her most desirable, her most majestic and her most fearful. In the artist's own words:
The pause as all the world stops in its path. Moonlight glides over your face filled with all the earth's beauty and pain. Your lips are like two ruby red serpents, and are filled with blood, like your crimson red fruit. They part from one another as if in pain. The smile of a corpse. Thus life reaches out its hand to death. The chain is forged that binds the thousands of generations that have died to the thousands of generations yet to come.
Madonna is depicted amidst a mystic aura of rippling waves of color that surround her and encourage a visionary interpretation. Womb-like and cavernous in their ambience, these billowing rings of color echo the blood red clouds that swirl around the terrified figure of Munch's other epic painting of this period, The Scream. With jet black hair falling in Medusa-like threads, Munch's woman is shown as if she were a holy apparition transfiguring in the center of a vortex with a look of mystic ecstasy. Her arms dissolve into the cosmic mist that surrounds her, while her ghost-like face radiates an impossible beauty. A rich blood-red halo adorns this sensuous embodiment of love, life and death, crowning her as Madonna.
The model for Madonna was Dagny Juel, a woman whom Munch met at Zum Schwarzen Ferkel, a pub that served as the headquarters for Berlin's avant-garde literary circle. Although it is unclear if Juel actually sat for the artist, her features are visible in much of Munch's art of the period, including its present work.
Munch painted five versions of Madonna, three of which are in public institutions: the Hamburg Kunsthalle; the National Gallery, Oslo; and the Munch Museum, Oslo.