Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Bird's Art Tour
Today, Bird starts a world art tour. During the coming weeks Bird will visit some of the great paintings, starting with The Scream by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. As always, clicking on the image will produce a much larger one (or in this case a Munch larger one). Among the artists Bird will examine are Grant Wood, Leonardo DaVinci, Paul Gaugin, Thomas Gainsborough, Vincent Van Gogh, Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso. Bird has very eclectic tastes.
Edvard Munch's most famous work has gained enormously in popularity, especially since World War II. Perhaps the existential fear here rendered by the artist has become more widespread in recent decades?
The work depicts not so much an incident or a landscape as a state of mind. The drama is an inner one, and yet the Bird subject is firmly anchored in the topography of Oslo - the view is from Nordstrand towards the two bays at the head of the Oslofjord, with Holmenkollen in the background. The evening landscape has been distilled into an abstract rhythm of wavy lines. The road with its railing, leading diagonally inwards, creates a powerful pull of perspective in the composition, and intensifies the disquieting atmosphere in the picture.
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