The sublime is not to be found in nature...

The sublime is not to be found in nature, as such, but in the subjective apprehension of nature as grasped by the human mind. Surely Munch’s view of the sublime, as reflected in his paintings, can be related to the increasingly subjective attitude towards life and experience that entered mainstream European culture as a consequence of Romanticism.

Romanticism of a strongly Symbolist cast is clearly evident, for instance, in Munch’s The Wave (1921), a painting that has gone largely unmentioned in the available criticism. This painting is concerned with violent, strong waves and is dominated by indigo and marine blue hues - “colors Munch associated with worlds outside the everyday . the otherworlds of death and of art” (Steinberg, 13).

The waves are formed of occasional splashes of turquoise, brown and white apparently to attack the shore, or better yet, devour it. Minus the brown intervals, the waves reflect the sky, which would appear calm, if viewed as isolated from the rest of the work.

The paint daubs are smoother than the artist’s rough handling, and the results, which Munch referred to as hestekur, or “kill or cure” treatment, sum up his manner of treating canvases, which sometimes caused them to tear (Aslaksby, 1) The background in The Wave presents a clear yet deformed landscape, dominated by shades of green on the right side, and gradually morphing into neutral and blue hues.

Five tall trees bend in accordance with the blowing wind, supporting the wave’s force and “pushing away” the remaining parts of the emerald scenery, forcing the elements to blend together, forming amorphous shapes. Behind the trees, deep indigo mountains produce a haunting effect and assert their presence in a minimalist manner.

A curved brown line, created by mixing red ochre and red lake (Singer, et al, 283), almost splits the painting into two parts, and yet its function is not strongly evident. What starts as a coastline ends in a boardwalk, where, before the canvas ends, a distant, lonesome figure appears, suggesting a person “dwarfed” by the immensity and force of nature in a way that recalls Kant’s definition of the dynamical sublime.

Nevertheless, what is it about The Wave that compels the spectator to perceive the painting in terms of the sublime? Munch closely studied and applied the intuitive color systems of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as well as more mystical and astral theories of the occultists to his color compositions (Steinberg, 11-12).