Fantastic beasts and where to find them (David Yates, 2016)
"I think there's much more to you than meets the eye."
We join John Berger to find him writing a book about the life and work of Edvard Munch (1863-1944). John has been here before, and not just with Munch, but with many artists. Looking at the work they created throughout their life and weaving a visual narrative into it. A story written in words based on a story written in pictures. But John has a problem: he prefers Munch's early work.
It's been many years since John gave up smoking, but the inner turmoil he's going through with his book on Munch means that at several points he finds himself sitting with a pen in his mouth, as though he were a smoker again.
John knows full well that an artist's life's work is a conversation. One that grows and develops as it continues. But he keeps finding himself staring far longer at The Sick Child (1885-86) than any of Munch's other works. John knows that as Munch went on he became more and more interested in simplicity; something that resulted in the Norwegian artist finally turning to woodcuts and lithographs in a quest for reducing an image, a feeling, an emotion, to the barest amount of visual information. He knows that the intention here is to get away from realism, and to find something far more universal and poetic in the image. He knows this, and yet his eyes fall once more on The Sick Child.
John likes to classify the concept of 'realism' into two opposing ends of a spectrum: it begins with Ingres, and his quest to create a canvas surface that was '...as smooth as the skin of an onion', and at the other with the fragile, broken forms of Claude Monet, that lightest of impressions of the world around us. And he knows that Munch wilfully turned his back on this 'quest for realism' and instead cast his eye at something that burns bright inside us, rather than around us. John knows all of these things, and yet he looks once more at The Sick Child and its effortless grasp of a real place, and real people, and he *feels*.
For a brief moment John thinks about leaving his cold home to travel to the corner store to buy cigarettes, but it's late, and a wind picks up outside, so he decides against it and goes to bed.
That night, John dreams. He dreams that he is walking around an exhibition of Munch's Frieze of Life, the collection that the artist himself said has a musical note running through it, and John is trying to hear that note. It's difficult to focus though because there's a large group of people at one end of the room listening to a speaker. As John draws nearer he sees that the speaker is none other than Munch himself, and he steps closer, hoping to catch Munch's eye and to talk to him about this topic that troubles him so. But Munch seems to not notice him. That is... until the very end, when Munch spots John Berger in the crowd and smiles knowingly. In a flash, John knows that Munch is somehow aware of his situation, despite the fact that he hasn't uttered a word. And with a soft, sad look in his eyes, Munch reaches out and holds firm to John's shoulder, leans in and whispers "Dere har mistet noe." And then John wakes up.
We join John Berger to find him writing a book about the life and work of Edvard Munch (1863-1944). John has been here before, and not just with Munch, but with many artists. Looking at the work they created throughout their life and weaving a visual narrative into it. A story written in words based on a story written in pictures. But John has a problem: he prefers Munch's early work.
It's been many years since John gave up smoking, but the inner turmoil he's going through with his book on Munch means that at several points he finds himself sitting with a pen in his mouth, as though he were a smoker again.
John knows full well that an artist's life's work is a conversation. One that grows and develops as it continues. But he keeps finding himself staring far longer at The Sick Child (1885-86) than any of Munch's other works. John knows that as Munch went on he became more and more interested in simplicity; something that resulted in the Norwegian artist finally turning to woodcuts and lithographs in a quest for reducing an image, a feeling, an emotion, to the barest amount of visual information. He knows that the intention here is to get away from realism, and to find something far more universal and poetic in the image. He knows this, and yet his eyes fall once more on The Sick Child.
John likes to classify the concept of 'realism' into two opposing ends of a spectrum: it begins with Ingres, and his quest to create a canvas surface that was '...as smooth as the skin of an onion', and at the other with the fragile, broken forms of Claude Monet, that lightest of impressions of the world around us. And he knows that Munch wilfully turned his back on this 'quest for realism' and instead cast his eye at something that burns bright inside us, rather than around us. John knows all of these things, and yet he looks once more at The Sick Child and its effortless grasp of a real place, and real people, and he *feels*.
For a brief moment John thinks about leaving his cold home to travel to the corner store to buy cigarettes, but it's late, and a wind picks up outside, so he decides against it and goes to bed.
That night, John dreams. He dreams that he is walking around an exhibition of Munch's Frieze of Life, the collection that the artist himself said has a musical note running through it, and John is trying to hear that note. It's difficult to focus though because there's a large group of people at one end of the room listening to a speaker. As John draws nearer he sees that the speaker is none other than Munch himself, and he steps closer, hoping to catch Munch's eye and to talk to him about this topic that troubles him so. But Munch seems to not notice him. That is... until the very end, when Munch spots John Berger in the crowd and smiles knowingly. In a flash, John knows that Munch is somehow aware of his situation, despite the fact that he hasn't uttered a word. And with a soft, sad look in his eyes, Munch reaches out and holds firm to John's shoulder, leans in and whispers "Dere har mistet noe." And then John wakes up.