This allows the reader to detect the air of anxiety...

This allows the reader to detect the air of anxiety, which is commonly present throughout the text. Anxiety can appear in many forms; it can be the result of frustrations, mental complexities, stress, insanity and/or depression; nevertheless, in every case, this pivotal mode of existence needs to be deeply examined and contemplated if the reader is to fully grasp the meaning of the text. In the case of painting, anxiety can be expressed through a variety of techniques.

Such techniques would include strong, rough, or short brushstrokes, variations in composition, the artist’s choice of color, and the positioning of figures in space. These techniques are sometimes possible to relate to autobiographical factors that give them special meaning. Norwegian artist, Edvard Munch, was “painfully aware of not belonging in this world” (Schwabsky, 144). He is often labeled the father of Expressionism, an art movement that marks a high-point of anxiety in the history of art.

Labeled “degenerate” by the Nazi regime and often scrutinized by critics during his own lifetime, Munch nevertheless revolutionized art in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. When looking at the historical timeline of art, we cannot ignore that Munch’s leap of faith, in terms of style, marks a pivotal moment; without him, Expressionism, which “designates a dominantly subjective art,” would not developed when it did (Longman, 13).

From the standpoint of art’s future, we might say that his paintings opened up (a) “world” (Heidegger, 41). The Norwegian genius was in fact the person who opened up this (new) world of art, making it visible and accessible. As a matter of fact, we might go as far as to say that he became “Munch” because he stepped beyond an age dedicated to realism, which dominated the art scene throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His work thus dramatizes an undeniable shift in style.

In The Private Journals of Edvard Munch, the artist says that his art “is a self-confession” but also expresses the view that it might “help others understand their search for sanity” (Holland, 20). Munch discovered himself in his art. Realism clearly could not express the feelings, moments, and issues that he wanted to present on his roughly-treated canvases, thus giving birth to the version of expressionism that came rather naturally to him.