This museum goer feels fortunate that my home in Albany in upstate New York is only a 40 mile bucolic drive to the Clark Art Institute (the “Clark”) in Williamstown (Berkshire County), Massachusetts. Over the past few years, the Clark has mounted extraordinary art exhibitions that have made this scenic college town a destination.
In the past few years, we’ve posted reviews of three exhibitions at the Clark:
(1) “Turner and Constable: The Inhabited Landscape,” 50 paintings, drawing and watercolors of the British landscape artists, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) and John Constable (1776-1837) in An Artful Escape From 21st Century Industrial Agriculture; (2) “Nikolai Astrup: Visions of Norway,” paintings, prints and woodblocks of Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928) in Nature’s Mystical Undertones Take Root In Summer Art Exhibition At The Clark In The Berkshires and (3) “Lin May Saeed: Arrival of the Animals,” sculptures in Styrofoam, steel, and bronze as well as drawings on and with paper by Lin May Saeed (b. 1973, Germany) in Visionary Artist, Lin May Saeed, Focuses on The Human-Animal Relationship.
This summer, the Clark has mounted a phenomenal exhibition that is simply stated, momentous. As we humans endure the beginnings of the Anthropocene geologic epoch and the “shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth system that threaten environmental, social, and economic crises on global to local scales” (in the words of the Anthropocene Working Group at the University of South Florida), the Clark’s current exhibition, Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth (Open through October 15, 2023) is stunningly of the moment. According to the museum, it is “the first exhibition in the United States to reveal how Edvard Munch [1863-1944] animated nature to convey meaning” and to question “humankind’s place in a cosmic cycle of life.”
Trembling Earth shows how Munch’s art resonates with the current climate crises related to the expanding world-wide industrialization, urbanization and growing human population.
As we spotlighted in our review of David R. Montgomery’s Dirt, The Erosion of Civilization, in the year 20,000 BC, when the glaciers melted in the most recent glaciation, the earth’s population has been estimated by scientists at 4 million humans. Scientists have further estimated that the earth’s population grew 1 million over the next 5,000 years to reach 5 million in 15,000 BC. Fifteen thousand years later, by the time of Christ, the earth’s population is estimated by scientists at 200 million. Two thousand years later, in our time, the earth’s population is over 8 billion humans. What small fraction of our fellow humans can be assured clean air and water and healthy food untainted by pesticides?
Included in the exhibition are some of Munch’s most famous paintings as well as lesser-known works. A collaboration between the Clark Art Institute, the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany and the Munch Museum (“Munchmuseet”) in Oslo, Norway, Trembling Earth features more than 75 artworks, many from the Munchmuseet in Oslo and over 40 paintings and prints from rarely seen private collections. At his death, Munch (who lived to 80 years old) bequeathed his artwork to Oslo and the Munchmuseet’s collection of his artwork consists of 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings, and 18,000 prints.
Between 1893 and 1910, Munch created two pastels and two paintings of The Scream. At the Clark, a lithograph (1895) of The Scream (44.5 x 25.4 cm) from a private collection is on display. One of the two pastels of The Scream sold for a staggering $120 million in 2012 to the notorious private equity billionaire investor Leon Black, who recently agreed, according to an article in the New York Times, “to pay $62.5 million to the U.S. Virgin Islands in January to be released from any potential claims arising out of the territory’s three-year investigation into the sex trafficking operation of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein .”
The Clark’s website includes a microsite providing details about the exhibition and notes the thematic organization of the show in six categories: (1) In the Forest, (2) Cultivated Landscapes, (3) Snow and Storm, (4) On The Shore, (5) Cycles of Nature, and (6) Chosen Places. Also included is a link to a You Tube video of the Opening Lecture for Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth (64 munutes) by Jay A. Clarke, the Art Institute of Chicago’s Rothman Family Curator, who spotlights “how Munch used nature to express human psychology, celebrate farming practice and garden cultivation, and question the mysteries of the forest as Norway faced industrialization.”
In addition are links to 10 audio highlights, each approximately two minutes, that describe 10 of the artworks on display including “The Scream” and “The Sun.” Kudos to the Clark for providing so much easily assessed information about this stunning show. Nonetheless, if you are fortunate to be within visiting distance of Williamstown in the Berkshires, make plans to see the exhibition in person.
It should be no surprise to users of this website that of particular interest to this visitor was the section of the exhibition, Cultivated Landscapes. The introductory statement for this part of the exhibition notes that “Munch’s paintings of cultivated landscapes- land cleared of vegetation then planted with crops, orchards, or gardens- reflect his keen interest in human interaction with nature.” At his various homes, Munch created kitchen and flower gardens, planted fruit trees,maintained orchards, and kept animals such as hens, ducks and horses and viewed his gardens and fields as “places of refuge overflowing with life.”
Included in the beautiful book published by Munchmuseet accompanying the exhibition, Edward Munch: Trembling Earth (MUNCH, Oslo, Norway 2023), is an essay, “Munch’s Alternative Modernity: Cultivated Landscape and Climate Anxiety” by Jill Lloyd, a writer and curator specializing in modern European art, whose book German Expressionism: Primitivism and Modernity (Yale University Press, 1991) was awarded the UK National Art Book Prize. Curator Lloyd writes that Munch in his long life never stopped looking for an escape from the ongoing drama of man and nature welded together. She spotlights Munch’s “paintings of gardens and farms, together with his nude bathers and homages to the sun” as an “attempt to forge a new relationship with nature as a restorative source of vitality and creation.”
[Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth at the Clark Art Institute, 225 South Street, Williamstown, MA 01267, (413.458.2303) from June 10-October 15, 2023; at the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany from November 18, 2023–April 1, 2024; and at Munchmuseet (MUNCH) in Oslo, Norwary from April 27–August 24, 2024]
(Frank W. Barrie, 7/23/23)
