Woman in Blue (Frau Barth) 1921

Edvard Munch’s “Woman in Blue,” an oil on canvas painting, uses standard fine art materials in a way that is anything but conventional. Look closely at the surface. The paint is applied with a directness, and lack of blending, that leaves the canvas surprisingly exposed. This ‘unfinished’ quality contrasts with the bourgeois subject matter of a woman in an elegant dress. It’s as though the very means of production – the application of paint – is in conflict with the social status that the portrait is meant to convey. Consider the color. Munch hasn't mixed the hues on a palette to create the form of the dress but instead, applied strokes of pure color side by side. It’s a relatively quick, and un laboured process. The artist's brushwork is not about hiding or perfecting, but revealing a different, more immediate kind of truth. Munch's approach emphasizes materiality and making. It invites us to consider art as a form of skilled labor, rather than rarefied genius.