Edvard Munch and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner both hit their stride as visual artists during the rise of the Expressionist art movement during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were both working in Germany in the early 1900s, and they both did woodcuts and heavily inked prints.
There is no end of similarities one could draw between their lives, their work and their natural affinity for Expressionism. The connection that the Yale University Art Gallery wants to push in its extraordinary exhibit “Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression,” on display through June 23, is the artists’ mental health. They both struggled with depression, had substance abuse issues and were concerned with the nationalist movements in Europe that led to the two World Wars. They were emblematic of an age when psychoanalysis was just developing as a practice and art was expanding in previously unimagined new directions.
The brief description of the show states both Munch and Kirchner “experienced existential crises,” a term that certainly applies but was not in common use until several decades after they died.
The works in this show are gloriously gloomy, brilliant expressions of deep disenchantment and distrust in modern society. There is a beauty to many of them, but it’s a warped, stark raving beauty. Many of the artworks depict women, but they’re angular or prostrate or expressionless or diseased.
Munch’s “The Scream,” one of the best-known images in the history of art, is fitted into the exhibit. Not in its most familiar paint or pastel version, but as one of the lithographs Munch produced of the image in 1895. That style, especially its stark black-and-white presentation, smoothly blends in with the other works in the exhibit, which is dominated by lithographs and woodcuts.
Another iconic Munch image, “Madonna,” is shown in both a painted and a lithographed version, beautifully hung so the different media contrasts in the sharpest and most illuminating manner. They resonate almost like one of those walls of closely aligned Warhol images.
Kirchner doesn’t have the same level of “greatest hits” to deal with, and that means the gallery can demonstrate his range. His “Five Coquettes” and “Promenade in Front of the Cafe” come off as crass street smart parodies of the bright boulevard art of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. His style is less rounded and generally harsher than Munch’s. Kirchner was born 17 years after Munch but died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound six years before him. The artists complement each other well.
One tremendous bit of good fortune for the curators is that Munch crafted a “Self-Portrait with a Cigar” and Kirchner has one called “Self-Portrait with Cigarette.” Both are on display. Munch depicts himself as serious and self-satisfied. Kirchner’s self-portrait is more comical, with the artist smiling wrily like a teen movie delinquent. You don’t quite buy into either portrait and suspect that they’re either being self-parodic or self-delusion.
“Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression” is both exhilarating and exhausting. The artists’ ideas are bold, focused and jarring. Their works are also relentlessly dark, disturbing and sometimes nasty. The exhibit is set up in a way that it winds neatly around several small areas. Otherwise, it would be seriously overwhelming. As it is, it is just stunning.
“Munch and Kirchner: Anxiety and Expression” is on display through June 23 at the Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St., New Haven. Visiting hours are Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. artgallery.yale.edu.
