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May 2008, Another World Record Price for Munch
Munch’s 1902 version of Pikene på Broen (The Girls on the Bridge), attracted a lot of bidders at Sotheby’s sale in New York on May 7, 2008. It finally sold for $30.8 million, well above its estimate and a world record. It was sold by Graham Kirkham, the founder of DFS Furniture, and has risen substantially in price since selling at auction in 1980 for $2.8. Mr Kirkham bought it for $7.2 million in 1996.
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‘Scream and Madonna - Revisited’ exhibition at the Munch Museum, Oslo 22May – 26 September.
The two painting which were stolen and recovered two years later in 2006, have undergone an extensive programme of damage repair. They are now the subject of a special exhibition focussing on the context of the two paintings within Munch’s oeuvre as well as the conservation and restoration processes. The Museum is publishing a booklet in Norwegian, English and Japanese to accompany the exhibition.
‘Summer Exhibition’ Munch Museum, Oslo 23May – 26 September.
This year’s summer exhibition at the Munch Museum is an overview of his entire career. It covers the years between 1880 and 1944, when he died. Major works include Death in the Sick Room (1893), The Voice (1893), Separation (1896), The Death of Marat (1907), The Sick Child (1925) The Dance of Life (1925), and Self portrait Between Clock and Bed (1940-42).
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| Lecture in Glasgow Friday February 15 2008 Sue Prideaux is giving the 2008 Oddveig Rosegg Memorial Lecture, Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream on February 15 in Glasgow
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Excellent exhibition in Rome!
Il Simbolismo da Moreau a Gauguin a Klimt -Roma Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna 7 July -16 September 2007.
Now the Munch exhibition in Basle in finished, do not despair. This is an excellent and comprehensive exhibition in Rome that is well worth a special visit. There are about a hundred works in all. My only quarrel with the show is that among the many brilliant Böcklins that open the show, they have not managed to borrow the most influential of all: The Island of the Dead, the painting so important to Munch and Strindberg among others. The show explores the roots of Symbolism Europe-wide and so it includes the pre-Raphaelites: Rossetti and Burne-Jones’ femmes fatales give way to Moreau's. His Salomé theme is explored in some depth: studies and drawings culminate in the important oil of 1876 loaned by the Armand Hammer Foundation, Los Angeles. Pale figures by Puvis de Chavannes do their usual thing in twilight on the seashore. Max Klinger is represented by numerous graphics and sculpture. Fantin-Latour proves how uncomfortable he was as a Symbolist and what a good decision it was to move on to flower painting. An interesting section is devoted to Joséphin Péladan’s Rosicrucian Salons of the 1890s. Numerous lesser-known Italian and north Europeans demonstrate the wide influence of the movement. The many works by Odilon Redon, both oils and graphics, include the strangely-smiling Spider of 1888. Gauguin is represented by wood carvings and his paintings include the important Parau na te Varua ino (1892) from Washington, a painting in which the witch’s face is underlit in exactly the same way as Munch’s Self-portrait with Cigarette (1895) – but I don’t think he could have seen it. Mondrian’s Passion Flower (1901) demonstrates how widely the curators have cast their net along side the obvious choices. Rodin’s Succubus (1889) Prové’s Night (1894) and Minne’s Prodigal Son (1896) are highlights among the sculpture. Félician Rops La morte al ballo (1865-75) on loan from Hungary compares interestingly to Munch’s treatment of the same theme; Volpede’s Il sole (1904) compares with Munch’s Sun. There are several Klimts in the show, themost important of which is Three Stages of Woman (1905). This again is interesting to compare with Munch’s, and it would have been good to have one Munch's big paintings to compare it with but they only have a small drypoint Woman in Three Stages (1895). Other Munchs are three oil paintings: Melancholy, Yellow Boat (1892) Vision (1892) Jealousy II (1907) and another graphic, Harpy (1894). There is also a fascinating portrait by Emile Fabry Man Contemplating his Destiny (1897) that takes its composition directly from The Scream. Altogether a large and extremely interesting exhibition. The catalogue is good but be warned, the text is only in Italian.
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Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream wins the UK’s oldest literary prize for biography.
June 2006.
On June 29th 2006, Sue Prideaux was presented with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, the oldest literary prize in the UK and, indeed, the third oldest in the world. It is pre-dated only by the Nobel and the Prix Goncourt. The James Tait Black enjoys a peculiarly honourable place among literary prizes. It is second to none for academic integrity, being awarded by senior members of Edinburgh University after a rigorous selection process by graduate students in Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, the oldest Department of English Literature in the world.
Previous winners include such literary greats as D.H.Lawrence, E.M.Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene.
Two prizes are awarded annually, one for biography and one for fiction. The 2006 fiction prize was won by Ian McEwan for his novel Saturday.
The prizes were awarded by Ian Rankin, a former University of Edinburgh English Literature student.
“My colleague Roger Savage, who has judged the biography prize for several years, agrees with me that this year the submissions for both biography and novel have produced an impressive short list. By the same token, neither of us is in any doubt that for sheer excellence of organisation and delivery as well as sheer reading pleasure, Ian McEwan and Sue Prideaux fully justify their selection as winners,” said Professor Colin Nicholson, manager and novel judge of the awards.
The committee included Ian Rankin and the distinguished BBC journalist James Naughtie and Alexander McCall Smith, a Professor of Law at Edinburgh University.
The 2006 biography long list comprised some sixty books. The short list was:
Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography by Max Egremont.
Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale.
The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight.
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson
Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream by Sue Prideaux.
“Art requires patrons, and patrons deserve thanks,” Sue Prideaux said in her acceptance speech. She praised the spiritual generosity of long-ago patrons whose disinterested benefactions bestow recognition and encouragement on today’s struggling artists.
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Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival 23 March 2007, 10 am - Munch for Breakfast
Coffee, croissants and Munch. Sue Prideaux will be talking for about an hour at 10 am to celebrate the the paperback edition of Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream.
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Munch tops New York exhibitions in 2006.
Edvard Munch: the Modern Life of the Soul, the splendid show that ran at MoMA, New York, between 19 Feb - 8 May 2006, was the best attended show in New York that year, according to statistics published in The Art Newspaper (March 2007). A total of 419,563 visitors attended; 6,184 a day. Sue Prideaux gave a walk-through talk on the show in the gallery for CNN’s popular Sunday morning TV programme ‘Sunday.’
The same show came off well in terms of all art shows world-wide where, according to the same source, it attained 5th place overall. It came 3rd in the Impressionist and Modern top ten. With another world record price achieved in the auction rooms, it seems Munch’s time has come.
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February 2007
Munch Museum reports the recovered Scream is badly damaged.
The 1893 Scream stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004 and recovered August 2006, is irreparably damaged, the Munch Museum states in its report on the recovered picture. At first it was thought the damage to the lower left hand corner was merely slight impact damage that could be repaired. However, the Museum has now produced a two hundred page report which shows the damage to be worse than initially assumed. Severe water damage to the lower left hand corner has irreparably damaged The Scream which, the report states, "cannot be repaired."
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Today the Scream and Madonna have been recovered by Oslo police.
August 31st 2006
Two anxious years went by. We heard of the paintings being stuffed into bin bags and hidden in a bus – and so on. Time passed.
There wasn’t much hope they would be in good shape if they were recovered. However, recovered they were. The Scream (which is the more vulnerable because it is painted on board) seems in pretty good shape. No major damage, only one corner curled from what is probably an impact injury.
The lovely Madonna has suffered worse. No photographs have yet been released of either painting but Madonna was painted on canvas, and she has suffered two cuts and a hole said to be the size of a 20 krone piece (a medium sized coin). According to information released by the Munch Museum, the stretcher has also been broken or damaged.
The pictures were found in Norway, not far from the scene of the theft. Apparently they were in the district of Østvold, possibly near the coastal town of Moss where Munch once owned a property on Jeløya. Indeed, one of his most important late models was Ingeborg Kaurin who he nicknamed ‘Mosspiken’ ‘The Girl from Moss.’ She is the subject of many glorious and colourful nudes of his late period (see pp. 295-6 in Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream).
It will obviously take some time for the full story to be revealed, but meanwhile the recovery is an enormous relief in view of months of media speculation which roughly followed three lines of speculation. One: the standard James Bond fantasy that they had been sold to some fabulous modern-day Kubla Khan and squirreled away in his Xanadu for his private delectation. Two: that they were being used as collateral against colossal drug deals. Three: that they were such hot property that the thieves had no alternative but to destroy them.
The implication in the press at present is that the information leading to the recovery of the paintings was exchanged for a lighter sentence for one of the men already imprisoned. This has not yet been confirmed by the police who are adamant that no ransom was paid.
Soon we’ll know more, meantime we give thanks.
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| There follow some of the back stories of the theft and events associated with the book since publication.
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2 May 2006 A day of mixed fortunes. Three Scream thieves convicted, three acquitted, and Sue Prideaux’s biography of Munch shortlisted for Britain’s oldest literary award, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
Three men involved in the theft of The Scream and Madonna from the Munch Museum received long jail sentences today and were ordered to pay the combined insurance value of the paintings NOK 750 million (about £67 million or $121 million) in compensation to the city of Oslo. If the paintings are recovered the demand for repayment will be withdrawn and any convict assisting in the recovery will have his sentence shortened.
Scream and Madonna were taken on August 22 2004 from the Munch Museum, Oslo in a violent robbery in which a .357 Magnum handgun was used. Closed circuit television showed the masked robbers leaving the Museum and stuffing the two paintings into the boot of a black Audi station wagon.
Petter Tharaldsen, described as a career criminal, was sentenced to eight years for driving the getaway car. Bjørn Hoen was sentenced to seven years; each was ordered to pay half the enormous fine. Prosecutors described Mr Hoen as the organiser of the operation who, police believe, provided the getaway car and the weapons. Tapes were played in court of Mr Hoen and another defendant, Petter Rosenvinge, discussing how to sell the paintings. Rosenvinge was jailed for four years for selling the Audi to Hoen.
Three others were acquitted for lack of evidence: Stian Skjold who admitted to having handled the paintings, Morten Hugo Johansen who previously had owned the car, and Thomas Nataas, a drag racer at whose farm they had been stored for a while in black bin bags in a bus. The long sentences and enormous fine have, sadly, not yet proved sufficient incentive to reveal the whereabouts of the paintings. However, two defendants facing charges for other serious crimes have been in touch with a Norwegian newspaper claiming to know the whereabouts of the paintings. The inference is that they might reveal the information in exchange for a reduction in their sentences. The city of Oslo has offered a substantial reward for assistance leading to the recovery of the stolen paintings.
Coincidentally on the same day the shortlist was announced for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the oldest and possibly the most distinguished literary prize in Britain awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh, the only awards of their kind to be presented by a university. Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream was one of the shortlist of six in the biography section. The author is very pleased indeed.
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Trial begins of thieves who stole ‘The Scream’ and Madonna’.
One and a half years after the theft of ‘The Scream’ and ‘Madonna’ from the Munch Museum, six men are coming to trial in Oslo. The pictures are still missing and feared damaged, if not destroyed. The video camera that filmed the getaway showed ‘Madonna’ being dropped twice and bits of the frames being roughly torn off before the paintings were bundled into the boot of a black Audi. The car was discovered later that day, its interior sprayed with a fire extinguisher to destroy any forensic evidence. The paintings were apparently first hidden on a bus parked on a piece of farmland north of Oslo. The owner said in an interview that when he had seen the pictures, ‘Madonna’ had a small rip, while ‘The Scream’ was undamaged. Since the robbery, rumours have been rife. Some have been remarkably creative, the best a tribute to the Norwegian sense of humour and sadly too libellous to be repeated here. However, the two most constantly reiterated concern a link between theft of the two paintings and the bullion robbery of Norway’s central bank, Nokas, some four months earlier, in which the thieves escaped with $8.5 million and a policeman was shot dead. There has also been speculation on a connection with Kosovar Albanian criminal gangs. No doubt, all will become less opaque as the trial proceeds.
For news of the trial as it progresses, see below
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Day One of the trial saw the defense attorneys applying for more time to exaine the evidence which includes about 10,000 telephone calls tracked by the prosecutors. The trail was postponed by two days. Lead prosecutor Terje Nyboe indicated that the State might consider shorter prison terms for any defendant prepared to reveal the wherabouts of the paintings.
Thursday 16 Feb saw the trial resume with defendant Stian Skold , 30, testifying that he delivered the two stolen paintings to a man in at Skrimstad farm in Kjeller, northeast of Oslo. They were wrapped up in garbage bags. Skold said he had received a call in September 2004, "...from a person who asked me to contact Thomas Nataas because Nataas had something in his bus...I opened the back door of the bus and took out the two pictures which were lying there, packed in a garbage bag." He met up with another man in a car and put the pictures in the boot of the other car. He claimed never to have seen the other man before. The apparently unknown man then disappeared with the paintings. They have not been seen again since. Prosecutors believe Skjold was one of the two men inside the Munch Museum who took the paintings. Skjold denies this, saying he has an alibi for that day.
Police Inspector Johnny Brenna said the police believe they have discovered a new link betweent the theft of the paintings and the raid on NOKAS, the Norwegian bullion store in Stavanger. A policeman was shot dead in the bullion robbery. The technical evidence to support this claim has not yet been offered.
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World record prices achieved for Munch paintings at Sotheby's, London February 7th 2006.
Sue Prideaux had the privilege of writing the introduction to Sotheby's catalogue of the Olsen collection, eight paintings by Munch sold by Fred Olsen at Sotheby's in London at their Impressionist and Modern Art sale on February 7th 2006. Selling for a total of 16.9 millions pounds, they greatly exceeded their high estimate. A world record price of 6.2 million pounds was fetched by 'Summer Day', originally part of the Linde frieze. (See description of the paintings in the item below. ) The haunting 'Self-portrait against two coloured ground' wildly exceeded its estimate, selling for £3,600,000 with strong competition from six bidders. International interest in the sale was intense. It seems that among the younger generation of collectors, Munch's work is at last achieving its proper value within the context of the art of his time.
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February 2006
Sale of important paintings at Sotheby's in London, February 2006. The paintings are to be auctioned on February 7th and Sue Prideaux has written the introduction to Sotheby’s catalogue.
Eight important paintings and four graphic works from the private collection of Fred Olsen are being sold at Sotheby's in London on February 7, 2006. The pictures can be seen on Sotheby's website www.sothebys.com. It’s worth a look; they are not pictures you often see except in catalogues of past exhibitions to which they have been lent. The earliest is a sensitive ‘Head of an Old Woman’ 1883, executed in charcoal and watercolour in 1883 when Munch was only twenty. It supports his remark that Rembrandt was an early influence. It also demonstrates the young Munch’s own precocious insight into the human condition.
'Self-portrait on two-coloured background' c.1904 is probably the most glamorous of Munch's many self-portraits. The figure is introspective and melancholy: the existential hero whose mystery is increased by using his deeply-shadowed eye sockets like a pair of dark glasses to hide his eyes and his thoughts. Portraits from this time are often loaded with tension by the simple means of placing the subject in relation to the point in space where two corners meet; this portrait simplifies the corner treatment, reducing it two colour fields of yellow and green.
A couple of gloriously colourful and optimistic canvases from Nedre Ramme, circa 1915, are painted in high summer and show that Munch’s interest in depicting blinding sunlight continued after he had painted the monumental ‘Sun’ for the Aula. In one of the canvases his young model Ingeborg sunbathes by the seashore, and the other, ‘Bathing Men’ is interesting to contrast with his earlier treatment of the subject painted in Warnemunde 1907-09. This later treatment is more lyrical, more painterly, and less Body Beautiful than the Warnemunde paintings; the bathing men no longer advance along the beach as naked conquerors, they are now very much in harmony with the elements of sun and sea. ‘The Waves’ and ‘Horses’ are two monumental canvases belonging to the period when he had moved to Ekely and was celebrating nature’s harmonies on large canvases. ‘Self-portrait with Spanish flu’ provides an interesting and seldom seen conclusion to the Spanish ‘flu series. The bright, light treatment speaks of his exhilaration at escaping death, while the sketchiness and minimal covering of the canvas hint at the physical weakness of the convalescent artist as he created the picture.
Finally, the enormous ‘Summer Day’ 1904-08 is a painting with a great deal of history. Originally part of the frieze commissioned for the room of the Linde children, Dr Linde’s commission specified “…no kissing or loving couples; the children as yet have no knowledge of such things.” Munch of course was unable to refrain and Linde had ample grounds for his subsequent rejection of the frieze. Curt Glaser bought ‘Summer Day’ which then found its way to the National Gallery of Berlin. The picture was de-accessioned as ‘Degenerate Art’ and Hermann Göring promptly appropriated it for his own collection until pressure from Hitler, who detested Munch’s art, forced him to give it up in 1939. A fuller article by Sue Prideaux can be found in Sotheby's catalogue 'Important Works by Edvard Munch from the Olsen Collection'.
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Lectures:
2007; Friday March 23rd 10 am. Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival. 'Munch for Breakfast' Coffee, croissants and an hour's talk on Munch. The newly-published paperback will be on sale.
Edvard Munch was twenty-eight when he embarked on his lifelong effort to paint his 'soul's diary'. His ambition was to create an image of enduring psychological truth constructed from the laboratory of his own eventful and tormented existece: 'I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is universal in the soul'. In these pictures Munch explored anarchism, symbolism, the Occult, decadence and the irrational depths of the psyche through the nascent discipline of psychologuy. Author of the first comprehensive biography of Edvard Munch in English, Sue Prideaux tells the story of Munch's extraordinary life: the rejection of his art as the scribbles of a madman, his movement in the fin de siecle bohemian circles of Paris and Berlin, and the courage with which he stood up to the Nazis as a 'degenerate' artist in occupied Norway at the end of his life.
Friday 18th November at 6.30 pm. 'Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream' Slide lecture. Royal Academy of Arts, Picadilly, London. 6.30 pm. Tickets from the Royal Academy.
Wednesday 30th November at 7 pm. 'Edvard Munch: 'Behind The Scream' The World Monuments Fund, The Royal Geographical Society, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2AR - Tickets 0207 730 5344
The Royal Geographical Society is close to the Albert Hall.
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Book of the Week
The BBC have chosen 'Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream' to be their 'Book of the Week' on BBC Radio 4 throughout the week beginning November 7th. Five episodes will be broadcast, each lasting quarter of an hour between 9.45 and 10 am and repeated again at half past midnight. Louis Hilyer will be reading Munch. Hilyer is a member of The Royal Shakespeare Company; he played Banquo in their Macbeth. He should make a fascinating Munch.
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| The Royal Academy of Arts Magazine No 88, Autumn 2005, carries the article 'Beneath the Skin' which takes an extract from 'Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream' . It tells the story of how Munch's instense relationship with Tulla Larsen came to a bloody climax when a violent struggle left Munch's hand shattered with a bullet. The incident inspired some of Munch's most iconic works.
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BBC History Magazine September 2005 (vol 6, no.9) carries the story entitled, 'How The Scream was saved from Hitler' based on the passage in the biography which reveals how some 30 of Munch's major paintings including The Scream were hidden from the Occupying German forces in Norway throughout World War II , after Hitler had declared them 'Degenerate Art' which must be destroyed. www.bbchistorymagazine.com
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Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream wins the UK’s oldest literary prize for biography.
June 29th 2006.
This evening Sue Prideaux was presented with the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, the oldest literary prize in the UK and, indeed, the third oldest in the world. It is pre-dated only by the Nobel and the Prix Goncourt. The James Tait Black enjoys a peculiarly honourable place among literary prizes. It is second to none for academic integrity, being awarded by senior members of Edinburgh University after a rigorous selection process by graduate students in Edinburgh’s School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, the oldest Department of English Literature in the world.
Previous winners include such literary greats as D.H.Lawrence, E.M.Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene.
Two prizes are awarded annually, one for biography and one for fiction. The 2006 fiction prize was won by Ian McEwan for his novel Saturday.
The prizes were awarded by Ian Rankin, a former University of Edinburgh English Literature student.
“My colleague Roger Savage, who has judged the biography prize for several years, agrees with me that this year the submissions for both biography and novel have produced an impressive short list. By the same token, neither of us is in any doubt that for sheer excellence of organisation and delivery as well as sheer reading pleasure, Ian McEwan and Sue Prideaux fully justify their selection as winners,” said Professor Colin Nicholson, manager and novel judge of the awards.
The committee included Ian Rankin and the distinguished BBC journalist James Naughtie and Alexander McCall Smith, a Professor of Law at Edinburgh University.
The 2006 biography long list comprised some sixty books. The short list was:
Siegfried Sassoon: A Biography by Max Egremont.
Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale.
The Pursuit of Victory: The Life and Achievement of Horatio Nelson by Roger Knight.
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom by Roger Pearson
Edvard Munch: Behind The Scream by Sue Prideaux.
In her acceptance speech, Sue Prideaux praised the spiritual generosity of the disinterested patrons of the arts whose long-ago benefactions bestowed recognition and encouragement on struggling artists.
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