comparison essay on edvard munch and kathe kollwitz
...the canvas of ‘The Scream’. The Scream displays the despair of life as he had experienced one day while walking with his friends. As he has written himself "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against the railing, dead tired, and I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature." How did Munch achieve such an enormously disturbing effect? Looking at it we see a deformed screaming figure in the foreground standing on a long straight bridge receding into the distance. Two tall erect men in the distance walk away from the figure. The background is a distorted view of a fjord. Long swirling, curved lines form the coast. The water is a murky yellow, while the land, a deep blue. The sky, with its streaks of red and orange speaks of a sun that has just set. It is indeed a curious piece of art. The sky is not really that of a sunset, but more of the blood red Munch described. The yellow, a horrid mustard colour, which counteracts the red causing the sky to look more like it is burning than setting. The land becomes this watery blue where we expect brown. Yet it seems to blend into the picture by changing colour as it swirls around to the sea green hills. A colour we almost expect. A particular shape in the right hand part of the background is painted an almost flesh colour with streaks of green and blue, the same colour as the boards of the bridge. This makes the figure in the foreground stay in the centre of the canvas while also bringing it forward. The water is an ugly yellow with the only feature making it recognisable as water being the ships sailing atop it. The dominate figure is dressed in a greenish black garment, its flesh being a sickly tan. The bridge and men walking in the background appear in normal colour, in contrast to the rest of the picture. Unlike Munch, Kathe doesn’t rely on colour to get her emotions across. There is no background, therefore all the focus is solely on the two figures. There is a woman seated cross-legged and this naked woman envelops the body of a child. The limp child, whose head is tipped far back, is clutched to the figure we assume is the mother. Her features are mostly hidden by the child's body however, we see one closed eye and her nose nestled into the child’s skin. Also visible are her expressive eyebrows, which silently communicate her explosive feelings. And with her strong arms and especially a strong, thick hand, she draws the child toward her even more tightly. Her embrace is all-consuming. The mother's muscular leg forms the base of the monolithic shape that confronts the viewer. Most of the lines the artist uses to shape and shade the forms are aggressive, taut, and meaningful, contributing energy to the surface. As a bit of relief from the overall grief, Kollwitz drew the lines of the woman's hair tenderly, and delicately rendered the boy's features. It is said that Beate Bonus-Jeep, Kollwitz close friend, described this etching memorably: "A mother, animal-like, naked, the light-coloured corpse of her dead child between her thigh bones and arms, seeks with her eyes, with her lips, with her breath, to swallow back into herself the disappearing life that once belonged to her womb." It is effortless to compare the two pieces are they are different in many ways. For instance Munch uses colour to help project his meanings and messages to the viewers. Whereas Kathe doesn’t use intense reds and cool blues, she uses distressed grey, broken-hearted black and ugly white to generate an effect of grief, sorrow, depression and misery. Another example to help compare the two a...