There's More to Life Than Screaming - New York Times

There's More to Life Than Screaming - New York Times: "February 17, 2006
Art Review | Edvard Munch
There's More to Life Than Screaming
By GRACE GLUECK

EDVARD MUNCH'S vision of modern angst, 'The Scream,' has been much in the news lately. The trial of six suspects in the theft of one version from an Oslo museum began this week; the painting has not been recovered. The image of 'The Scream' has been so widely embraced and reproduced that if you hear the name Munch 'The Scream' comes instantly to mind, and vice versa. Yet Munch (1863-1944) regarded 'The Scream' as an aberration, one that cast the shadow of insanity on a body of art that he intended to address more universal aspects of human experience.

'Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul,' an affecting full-scale retrospective that opens Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art, presents this broader view. The first survey of the Norwegian painter in an American museum in almost 30 years, it was organized by Kynaston McShine, chief curator at large of the Modern. Its more than 130 oils and works on paper cover Munch's entire career, from 1880 to 1944. It also includes a large selection of the prints — many of them ingeniously adapted from his oils — that played an important role in his art."