Knausgaard’s affinity with the sensorial richness of Munch’s visual language is expressed through his assertion that these paintings “touch us in a way that words never can, they reach places in us where words have no access” (11).

It is entirely fitting that Knausgaard should write the preface to the catalogue, since the highly confessional nature of his own autobiographic writing propelled him to international fame with the publication of his controversially titled series Min kamp ( My Struggle) between 20. There is nothing between him and the world, and it is this unguarded encounter that we see, not just once in one picture, but again and again, in hundreds of paintings” (14). The integrity of Munch’s painting-from the physical setting to the emotion bared within it-is captured in the preface by the renowned Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard, who describes how “in these pictures he stands naked, with his guard down, even in his landscape paintings. In the early twentieth century Munch designed stage sets for the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in Berlin, and this interest in theatricality later found its way into the bedroom, which became a space for Munch to fashion his own image. Painting may have been an act of confession for Munch, but significantly, as this catalogue points out, it was also a staged self-narration. Each of the pioneering essays in the catalogue explores the intriguing and often surprising ways in which Munch’s later works take earlier motifs from his career and rework them into fresh representations of the themes that haunted his life and art: love, jealousy, pain, anxiety, social isolation, and mortality. It may come as no surprise that Munch’s titular self-portrait, Between the Clock and the Bed (1940–43), served as the departure point for the exhibition, which sought to revisit Munch’s old age as a time of insight, creativity, and self-scrutiny. Edvard Munch (1863–1944) made this comment toward the end of his life, which is significant since the paintings he produced in his later years formed the focus of the exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, the latter of which is the subject of this review. “My art has been an act of confession.” So opens the preface to Gary Garrels, Jon-Ove Steihaug, and Sheena Wagstaff’s exhibition catalogue for Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed, which took place in San Francisco, New York, and Oslo from June 2017 to September 2018. Performance Art/Performance Studies/Public Practice.Museum Practice/Museum Studies/Curatorial Studies/Arts Administration.Drawings/Prints/Work on Paper/Artistc Practice.

Digital Media/New Media/Web-Based Media.

Architectural History/Urbanism/Historic Preservation.

Subject, Genre, Media, Artistic Practice.

Munch knausgaard