THE REFLECTED GAZE: THE ART OF SELF-PORTRAITS EDVARD MUNCH

How important a place the self–portrait can take in a painter's work is emphasized by Edvard Munch. He created Self–Portraits; painting, drawing, using lithography, wood cutting and etching, ending up with an extensive autobiography of portraits.

Munch views himself as a "rambler at the brink of disaster". Actually, there is a lot of restlessness in his portraits. They reflect a person who can be nowhere at peace, a lonely wanderer, without stability always moving. He is the personification of modern man always on the lonely path to find his identity. His sole anchor in the unstable terrain is his art.

The film is asking why Edvard Munch is continually feeling the urge to set his own person into the centre of his work. We compare selected Self–Portraits with their sketches and pre–works and are able to demonstrate how in Munch's work pictures are created from pictures. Central to us is the question how Munch uses artistic measures, metaphors and pictorial elements to express the state of his soul.

Im Auftrag von ARTE, 2006
45 Min. Dokumentation

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