Untitled 8 

Curator: Edvard Munch’s "Untitled 8" drawing, crafted with coloured pencil, immediately strikes one as being about gesture more than subject. Editor: Absolutely. There's an urgency and vulnerability here. The textured strokes are immediately captivating, that crimson background creates an unsettling feeling that pervades the whole drawing, quite raw, really. Curator: I see a masterful study of form. Observe the almost geometric precision with which the artist articulates space. Notice how the forms play with volume by using coloured pencils: the flat red background and its strokes bring to the foreground the green and blue shape resting atop. Editor: And what a simple choice of materials: just coloured pencils, suggesting a sketch. We might think about this material’s connection to childhood. What do you suppose the role of material and labour was here? Was he just passing time? Was he experimenting with different pencil techniques? Was he perhaps sketching in his studio? Curator: These lines appear to follow a very deliberate structural system, almost as if Munch is attempting to reveal the very architecture of the visible world—to reduce visual data into its fundamental components. Think, perhaps, about the artist trying to distill an intense emotion to the essence of colour and strokes. Editor: Yet, there is nothing systematic here. Look at how the layering of colour builds form! Think about how Munch's hands created those textured shapes. The red spreads loosely; a deliberate gesture and movement in his arm and wrist that built a space into this drawing. And isn’t interesting to reflect on the use of “common” materials, such as a pencil, which were, nonetheless, extremely refined. This artwork reflects, more than a gesture of precision and order, the action of thinking. Curator: An interesting idea. Perhaps in the tensions between those two views the truth about Munch’s work resides. Editor: Indeed. The beauty is perhaps the convergence of concept and physical expression.