Woman Seated on a Couch 1919

Edvard Munch made this painting of a woman on a couch in 1919, and you can almost see the painting coming into being, shifting and emerging through trial, error, and intuition. I really sympathize with him here. I can imagine Munch in his studio, maybe thinking about how to capture the interiority of his subject. The texture looks almost chalky, and the color palette is unexpectedly vibrant. I see the red of her neck juxtaposed with the cool purples and blues of her dress. The patterned rug is a whole other story, a cacophony of colors and shapes. The way Munch has rendered the woman's posture – her head bowed – communicates a feeling of melancholy or introspection. I'm sure Munch was looking at other paintings and thinking about what they were doing too. Artists are always in conversation, you know? It’s an exchange of ideas across time. We're all inspiring one another’s creativity. Painting is a form of embodied expression that embraces ambiguity, allowing for multiple readings.