Naked and aflame or considering death, Munch rarely screamed

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Jason Farago

Edvard Munch’s “Self-Portrait in Hell” (1903). Credit Munch Museum/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York

NEW YORK---There are painters in full control of themselves, whose art radiates the tranquillity of lives well lived. And then — hold onto your Xanax — there is the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Out of that torment, though, came an oeuvre of raw focus that sometimes shrieked into the abyss — as in his most famous painting, “The Scream” — but, far more often, embraced melancholy, resignation and the inevitability of decline. Who better to guide us through our own fatalistic age? “Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed,” a calibrated and unostentatious exhibition now at the Met Breuer, reintroduces this nervous genius to New York and makes a point of highlighting his later paintings. [More]