Anxiety, 1894 - Canvas Print

"Anxiety", painted in 1894 by Edvard Munch is another of the dynamic surges of emotion that threatens to envelop, destroy, or swallow the protagonists of the artist's sullen universe. Simultaneously a heavy, melancholy, almost suffocating silence seems to resonate across and within the natural world. Munch most famous painting, The Scream was painted a year before and was triggered by an occasion when the artist was taking a walk across a bridge with friends and suddenly found himself trembling with "Anxiety". According to the artist he "felt a huge scream thunder through nature." "Anxiety" is thus a partner piece to his iconic The Scream in which his cohorts respond with a guttural shiver of angst and horror. The expressive resonance of the painting is such that the viewer cannot help but recoil at such an elemental articulation of horror. At the end of the nineteenth century the theme of angst became dominant in Norwegian cultural life. From Strindberg and Ibsen's plays to Munch's 'Frieze of Life' series, the aesthetic of depressive "Anxiety" came to personify both personal and political fears as the century ended. With the shimmering vortex of the jetty, Munch's protagonists seem victims at the mercy of an angry, sea, land, and sky - all meeting in this revelation of isolation and alienation. Connected to each other yet utterly separate, the loneliness of each individual in their unspeakable angst is only reinforced by the pleading stare that emanates towards the viewer. Munch's "Anxiety" is a sudden glimpse into an abyss that relentlessly stares back.