Veranda 1902

Edvard Munch made this etching, "Veranda," in, well, we don't know exactly when! But what strikes me is his mark-making – how the image emerges from a sea of tiny, scratchy lines. It's almost like he's coaxing the scene into existence, one little mark at a time. Look at the figure on the plinth. It’s dark and solid, but made up of hundreds of little lines. I can feel the density of the ink in that figure, contrasted with the relative openness of the plinth beneath it. This tension brings the eye up to the figure and then on to the fronds of the palm tree, and the delicate lines of the flowers that surround it. Munch is playing with how much information to give us, and how much to leave to our imaginations. In some ways, it reminds me of Klimt, with that same sense of underlying melancholy and a kind of restless searching. Ultimately, it’s up to us to connect with the image.