Munch at the Royal Academy

Edvard Munch at the Royal Academy. Mixed exhibition of Munch's obsession with portraying his angst on canvas. A subject made cliched by a billion reproductions of The Scream. In fact the scream followed me around the exhibition in the form of a small child. Of particular interst were the early works, especially the woodcuts (Self portrait facing left) and lithographs. The later work, with a similar palette to Bloomsbury (Matisse filtered through the long northern European winters) is a relief if only because you leave the familiar Munch behind. The overiding impression of the later work is that he is painting portraits, not self-portraits: the dishevelled, bearded man on the canvas in front of you is more a stranger to Munch than the self confident early portraits of the ambitious young painter.
Illustration:
Anxiety, woodcut, 1896.