Steffen Kverneland

Colour throughout, with photographs and some B&W panels. Fascinating well researched and well written biography., describing Munch as the original Graphic Novelist (before Robert Crumb) as he used art as his diary; drawing scenes from memory of his life (for example The Scream being two scenes put together, with the red sky being Munch's eyewitness account of the effect of the volcanic ash in the sky at the time (from Krakatoa), and the expression of his friend's face one evening in the pub...(The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 similarly affected Lord Byron's and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's work when they both stayed at Lake Geneva summer 1816, as fictionalised account in the play "Bloody Poetry" (1984) by Howard Brenton).… (plus d'informations)

There are flashes of brilliance here, and as Kverneland is a good graphic artist and Edvard Munch is fascinating, you could certainly do worse than this graphic novel. I liked how the book was based primarily on passages from notes, diaries, newspaper articles, and correspondences from the time period, and how Kverneland tried to unravel Munch’s life through extensive research. You’ll see selected paintings from Munch as they evolved, rendered handsomely by Kverneland, and get a good understanding of at least some of the forces in his life and his approach to art.

However, I have to say, it was a little disappointing. One of the issues is that at several points, the author inserts himself and his buddy into the narrative. Is it interesting to see pictures from the places where Munch lived and painted? Absolutely. But the way it’s done is not all that classy. There are also some pretty sizeable gaps in Munch’s biography. I’m not sure if this is because Kverneland ran out of time, because in an early panel he shows that the book took him seven years. Regardless, missing are his relationship with Tulla Larsen, and her accidentally shooting the top two joints of one of his fingers off when they separated, his nervous breakdown at the age of 45 after being involved in several brawls, leading to confinement and shock therapy, the controversy for the competition for the Oslo University murals (‘The Sun’ is shown at the very end almost as an afterthought), his deep sympathy with socialism and worker’s rights in the 1910’s, and his life at the very end when the Nazis occupied Norway.

No book can be 100% complete, and part of the skill of those writing about history or people’s lives is to know what to include and what to leave out – but I just found the omissions to be too large, particularly when many pages were filled with the author and his friend, an over-emphasis on Munch’s bohemian days, and the life and relationships of his friend, August Strindberg. It seems the book was not well planned out, and the unevenness in the storytelling shows. This is not a bad book, to be sure, but if you’re serious about Munch, I would recommend finding Ragna Stang’s book, which is much more complete on his life and his art.… (plus d'informations)