In this first 'room' of the gallery, we focus on the work of the Norwegian artist and printmaker, Edvard Munch (1863–1944). To some readers this may seem an odd choice. In his mature years Munch did not claim for himself any explicit religious commitment and his pictures have little formal Christian content. Because he is best known for his image of The Scream, it is easy to assume that his work would offer little more than an anguished cry from the edge of insanity and quickly to dismiss him out of hand and mind. He is, however, extraordinarily well disposed to lead us on a first excursion into the territory where 'art' and the journey of faith visibly meet. This is grounded in his peculiar, indeed fearful, insight into what we now tend to call 'the human condition'.

We start by looking at some pictures which begin to map something of Munch's life and times. Then, map in hand, we seek to explore a wider web of connections which link Munch's art into other intellectual and cultural networks that are still determinative for many of the contexts in which we tread a journey of faith in our own day.

The Frieze of Life
The Frieze of Life -- what a wonderful title under which to gather the finest products of a life's work! Munch, it seems, rarely thought of his paintings as isolated artefacts. As early as the 1880s, he was gathering and exhibiting pictures in connected groups. These he displayed as 'friezes': whole walls, densely hung with a mosaic of canvases, their relative positions carefully chosen to lead the eye on a well-planned journey of discovery. This practice continued through much of a lifetime, during which Munch exhibited his gathered works in a great variety of patterns and combinations. Whilst it is true that much remained constant throughout those years, in reality it is now impossible to provide a unique definition of The Frieze of Life, just how many pictures it should contain or precisely how they should be displayed. As late as his 75th birthday on 12 December 1938, when Munch posed in his winter studio for the Norwegian photographer Ragnvald Vaering, he was backed by yet another immense wall with yet another variation on this now familiar theme. It is his struggle to 'tell the story of life' which, for me at least, creates an effective bridge linking his work to what others would more directly recognize as the journey of faith. After we have looked at the pictures and thought more deeply about their wider context, we will return to consider what we can learn from a detailed consideration of the way in which Munch's vision for The Frieze of Life actually developed over time.

Melancholy (1891) view image
There are a great number of pictures associated with The Frieze of Life from which we could choose. Munch produced several versions of all his most significant images, often exploring their potential through a variety of different media and styles. For the purpose of this chapter I have chosen two examples, both oil on canvas. The first -- the one which he painted later -- is a picture titled Melancholy, printed here (Plate 1) in a version that Munch painted in 1892 and exhibited at the 1893 Autumn Exhibition.

Immediately we are struck by its stylized form. Already Munch had departed a long way from the naturalistic style of his immediate predecessors, which many had thought to define 'the golden age' in Norwegian art. Melancholy offers a recognizable shore-scape, but with none of the near-photographic precision of the accepted tradition. Instead, we are struck by sweeping forms, bold areas of colour, and a strangely disturbing visual perspective. The eye is drawn by a strong feeling of movement along the shoreline: from the massive rocks in the foreground, through the couple and the man with the oars on a distant jetty, to the boat and back to the seemingly incomplete face of the man who, from the margin, strangely occupies centre-stage in this picture. We are almost inevitably drawn to inquire as to whether there might be some kind of narrative to accompany this painting, and we sense that we are invited to engage in reflection at something deeper than surface level.

This was not Munch's first painting in this style. There are clear resonances with an earlier painting called Evening, later renamed Inger on the Beach, which Munch had exhibited in 1889. Nor was it his first venture into the representation of profound 'life moments'. Our second example will be The Sick Child, a picture in not dissimilar style, which Munch had started to paint for the first time around 1885. Melancholy, however, was sufficiently striking in its own right for Munch's then tutor, Christian Krohg, to describe it as the first Symbolist or Synthetist painting in Norwegian art. His judgment appeared in an article, prompted by the Autumn Exhibition of 1891, entirely devoted to this one painting -- also at that time simply titled Evening.

A connection is commonly made with the so-called Synthetist paintings of Paul Gauguin (1848–1903). Gauguin along with others had contributed to the 1889 Brussels Synthetist Exhibition in which they clearly demonstrated their rejection of Impressionism, with its close attention to surface lights, as still too naturalistic; instead, they asserted their belief in 'expression' through painting of ideas, moods and emotions. Gauguin's first Symbolist/Synthetist work was Vision after the Sermon of 1888. In it he uses similar areas of colour to those we can see in Munch's Melancholy, though even bolder and more evidently separated by heavy black lines. Gauguin's work is Synthetic in as much as it juxtaposes a group of Breton women in traditional costume alongside an abstract representation of the familiar biblical story of Jacob wrestling with the angel (Genesis 32:22-32). It is Symbolist in that the various elements of the picture, each created in its own distinctive style, are not designed to represent 'things as they are' at all; but rather to evoke a particular mood, to point beyond themselves, from the material to a deeper immaterial reality. This is what many of Munch's paintings from The Frieze of Life also achieve with such extraordinary success.

So what can we discover about the narrative suggested by the structure of Munch's Melancholy? The full title of the earliest known version of this picture, also from 1891, was Melancholy, Yellow Boat. The model for the figure in the foreground is known to be Jappe Nilssen, Munch's twenty-one-year-old friend, who had recently been victim to a passionate infatuation with a married woman, Oda Lasson. Oda was the wife of Christian Krohg, the artist already named who had played such a significant role in Munch's own development as a painter. Oda was ten years older than Jappe, and prominent in the so-called 'Bohemian' community of Kristiania where all these artists lived and worked. The scene shows Jappe, consumed with jealousy, alone on the beach, while Oda and Christian prepare for a trip in a yellow boat on a light Nordic summer's eve. In fact, other versions of the same painting are variously titled Jappe on the Beach and, even more tellingly, Jealousy.

Further exploration is greatly helped by the fact that Munch left us a wide range of scrapbooks, journals and articles as additional lenses through which to view his original works. Typical of these is the so-called 'Moss Ledger', which it is thought Munch created around 1915, and into which he inserted pages with notes written at various earlier dates. Many of the entries follow his unique method of writing, characterized by the frequent use of dashes -- or 'thought lines' as the Norwegian idiom has it. Two texts stand out for special attention in connection with Melancholy. The first reads as follows:

Suddenly we have crossed a boundary into another world, which stands in synthetic tension alongside the story of Jappe, Oda and Christian. The second paragraph is thought to recall Munch's memories of his own passionate love during his youth for one Millie Thaulow, elsewhere simply referred to as 'Mrs Heiberg'. Out of the tension there begins to emerge a strange evocation of a mysterious, almost numinous depth, which is the goal of all effective symbolism. A second text reads:

Now we begin to recognize more fully the measure to which we are engaging with a picture of unusual depth, in which stories and shore-scapes, colours and even smells, are conspiring together to prise open fresh insight into some of the most profound experiences in a human life.

Let us consider more carefully what is happening in the transition from Naturalist to Symbolist styles. Whereas the Naturalists looked 'out there', to the 'object' of study as the only truly appropriate measure of quality in a picture, the Symbolists look 'in here', into the 'subjective life' of the painter for an additional, even primary contribution to the impact of the whole. We will examine this transition in more detail later in the chapter; for now we note that we are looking at art which, discontent with the mapping of 'things', also sees as its task the mapping of 'mind'.

Let us look again at the picture. The incomplete blankness of Jappe's face transfers our attention to the shore-scape in search of a fuller understanding of the distressed man's mind, which cannot be read from its sur-face (literally: 'on the face') expression alone. It never can. The arc of the bay, the rhythmic patterns of light and shade, and the swirl of rock formations in the foreground impress on us his inner turmoil. An almost musical rhythm in the sweep of the strand is echoed along the horizon, created by a distant peninsular. The whole effect is charged by a minor but significant distortion of conventional perspective. There is something uncomfortably odd about the size of the couple in the distance, which gives them a far more prominent presence than the formal mathematics of perspective should demand. This is further reinforced by the whiteness of the woman's dress, and we feel acutely her impact on his troubled mind. In all this, set as he is looking out from the corner of the picture, we also feel Jappe/Munch's own marginality and impotence to change what is happening around him.

What might at first appear to be the simple picture of a man thinking on a beach now becomes a possible focus for deep exploration into the experience of all those who know the agonizing intensity of a broken relationship. Set in its wider context within The Frieze of Life, we have a significant contribution to our understanding of the whole human journey from youth, into maturity and ultimately towards life's end.

This takes us back, then, to one of Munch's earlier pictures. In it we now recognize that it is most crucially the exploration of death that is for Munch the central and all-controlling focus for his insight into human life.

It is difficult to think of another artist who lived so long and experienced so much. Born into a poor Jewish family living in the town of Vitebsk within the borders of the Russian Empire, Marc Chagall (1887–1985) discovered early on what it was like to be part of a community constantly struggling to preserve its religious and cultural identity in the face of oppression and discrimination. Frequent pogroms -- government sanctioned attacks by Christians against Jews -- were a fact of life for those who lived in the area known as the 'Pale of Settlement'. Later Chagall would welcome the political revolution of 1917 led by the Bolsheviks that brought to an end the power of the Tsars and promised a measure of freedom and tolerance.

By the 1930s Chagall was living in Paris, and once again he experienced the full force of human brutality. He watched as the Nazis came to power and began to implement a policy designed to eliminate Jews from Europe. The task of rounding them up and despatching them to concentration camps was well under way when arrangements were made for Chagall to escape from France to America in 1941. He went with a mixture of relief that he was safe and guilt for those he left behind. He continued to follow the progress of the war, including news of the destruction of Vitebsk and of the terrible reality of the Jewish Holocaust.

Thus, in a life frequently overshadowed by the upheaval and conflict, fear and unrest, war and suffering that scarred the twentieth century, Chagall worked as an artist. He created paintings, etchings, murals, stained-glass windows, and set and costume designs, so giving expression to the world he knew and experienced. It would hardly surprise us, then, if his art was dominated by a sense of the world's darkness. But though, as we shall see, Chagall does indeed use paint to convey something of the dark and terrible events that took place in Europe under Nazi rule, just a brief glance through a selection of his work reveals a man in love with colour. His paintings, with their unique language and imagery, are a glorious celebration of life and love, and despite encountering so much pain and despair, he filled his world with mysterious, playful images designed to provoke us into laughter.

It is this ability to concern himself with both the tragic and the joyful that makes Chagall the kind of guide who might help us on the journey of faith, not least because human life almost invariably requires us to deal with these opposites. We know what it is to be surprised by joy and to be torn apart by despair, and our lives are often a struggle to make sense of these conflicting experiences. In Chagall we will discover a person who gave powerful expression to the universal experience of suffering, but who never let go of the faith and the hope that could dream of a deeper reality. He serves as a bridge, holding together opposites within his own life, and so encouraging us to search for a wholeness that is truly life affirming.

The two pictures to which we shall give particular attention are very different. They will serve to introduce us to the twin themes of tragic suffering and joyful play, enabling us to explore how these weave their way throughout Chagall's life and work. We shall then seek to show how they might be described as two sides of the same coin, providing us with the kind of 'language' that can nurture and enrich the journey of faith. One of the recurring motifs to emerge will be the way in which Chagall employed a gentle, almost mischievous, irony in his painting -- and, indeed, recognized an irony in all of life and faith. Irony, of course, relies on a clash of opposites, as expression is given to different levels of meaning, one or more of which is invariably hidden from those who think they know it all. I do not believe Chagall had any desire to make us the victims of his irony, but he does invite us to open our eyes and to see.

White Crucifixion (1938) view image
The systematic extermination of the Jews had not yet begun, but clear signs had already emerged of Germany's intentions. Since coming to power in 1933, the Nazis had carried out street attacks on Jews, declared a national boycott of all Jewish shops, and brought in laws denying citizenship to German Jews. In his home in Paris, Chagall was all too close to these unfolding events, and visits to Vilna in Poland and to Palestine increased his awareness of the widespread anti-Semitism that was forcing so many Jews to flee for their lives. Added to which, his own work had been vilified in a Nazi exhibition of 1933, 'Images of Cultural Bolshevism', and in 1937 a large number of his paintings held in German public collections were confiscated. Chagall reacted by reasserting his Jewish origins, but he could not help but be fearful for the future.

Then in 1938 came waves of vicious attacks, culminating in the infamous Kristallnacht of 9 November -- the 'night of broken glass' -- when tens of thousands of Jewish homes, shops and synagogues were destroyed. It provided the immediate context for Chagall's magnificent painting, White Crucifixion (Plate 3).

This is typically 'Chagallian'! The immediate impression is of a profusion of disparate images that do not appear to belong together or to have much order: figures float in the air, houses are at odd angles, a boat appears from nowhere. The sense is of everything in motion, in a state of flux and turmoil. The style is 'primitive', displaying the kind of naïvety that might lead us to describe it as some kind of icon, and there is clearly no sense in which we could call this a realistic painting. The rules of perspective are deliberately ignored and there is no horizon. Instead, we are given the impression of entering another world, free from normal constraints, and yet this other world is never too far removed from the one known and experienced. Here, as elsewhere in his work, Chagall included numerous references to what he saw, but did so in a way that is intensely personal rather than formal. He wanted to evoke feelings, memories and sensations.

White is the colour of sorrow. It appeared strongly in other paintings of this period, most notably one titled Solitude (1933) that portrays a Jew sitting alongside a white heifer, cloaked in his white tallith -- the traditional prayer shawl -- lost in a deep and profound sadness. In White Crucifixion it is also the dominant colour, contrasting with small patches of brightness (particularly the flames of fire) that give life and balance to the composition. Around the central cross Chagall has placed a number of scenes reminiscent of the way many traditional images of the crucifixion include the various participants in the story, and these provide us with a particular historical context for the painting while enhancing the sense that this is iconography.

On the right, a synagogue has been desecrated, its contents scattered on the ground outside before the building is set on fire. It is clearly a German soldier who is responsible as he wears the uniform of a Brownshirt with a swastika on the armband, though this is not as prominent in the painting as was once intended and Chagall has avoided placing a similar swastika on the flag. In the foreground distressed figures seek to make their escape, fleeing in different directions. One of them is familiar from some of the artist's other work: the man with the sack on his back appears in Over Vitebsk painted in 1914 where he is most obviously the archetypal Wandering Jew. In White Crucifixion he might also be the prophet Elijah whose presence was awaited at each Passover meal as the one who would bring news of the Messiah and the promise of freedom. In his somewhat idiosyncratic autobiography, My Life, Chagall recalls childhood Passovers:

In White Crucifixion, Elijah steps over a burning Torah scroll; the very basis of the community's identity and practice is being destroyed, and there is no sign of a white chariot.

On the left, an army is entering the picture waving red flags. Some critics have suggested that this should be seen as a liberating force -- the Red Army -- arriving in time to help save the village from destruction, so reflecting Chagall's committed involvement in the Communist Revolution. The argument, however, is hard to sustain. It is true that Chagall had hoped the Revolution would bring in a new era of toleration that would allow artists like himself to flourish, and he did agree to take up the position of Commissar for Art in Vitebsk in 1918. But by mid-1920 internal politics had forced him out, and from then on his standing with the Soviet authorities rapidly declined. Chagall's own disillusionment set in early. My Life tells of how he gathered together the house-painters in Vitebsk to make copies of his own sketches in order to decorate the town for the first anniversary of the Revolution. He writes:

The year before painting White Crucifixion, Chagall produced his only major composition dealing explicitly with the Russian Revolution. Divided into sections, The Revolution (1937) offers two contrasting ways of seeing and shaping the world. On one side the revolutionary masses are gathered, painted in reds and purples with their weapons of conflict and their tombstones; on the other side musicians, acrobats and lovers create a scene of joy and harmony where the dominant colour is a gentle blue; in the middle Lenin does a handstand! 'I think the Revolution could be a great thing,' wrote Chagall, 'if it retained its respect for what is other and different.'3 But clearly it had failed to do so, and the idea that just a year later he would depict the Red Army as the bringer of freedom is impossible to accept.

It is more likely that this scene in White Crucifixion has echoes of the past and Chagall's dark childhood experiences of pogroms. The little group of houses was his familiar way of recalling with fondness the simple structures that filled the town of his birth. Now burning, they lie at strange and impossible angles, just as Chagall was now living in a world that had been turned upside down and had itself lost any sense of rational coherence and meaning. Below the houses a boat carries refugees who are shouting and gesticulating.

While some have used this painting to point to Chagall's political commitments, others have seen in it evidence that he had very little interest in politics of any description, even wanting to distance himself from current events. The two figures running away in the bottom left corner are seen as illustrative of this. One is carrying a scroll, while the other wears a piece of white cloth over his blue smock that in one preliminary sketch for the painting carried the German inscription 'Ich bin Jude' [I am a Jew]. Why did Chagall remove the wording? Was it because he wanted to avoid any clear political statement? Would it have tied him too closely to the plight of the Jews when in fact he had ceased to care much about the Jewish faith? We shall return to such issues in due course, though to try to distance Chagall from a concern for contemporary events or his sense of Jewish identity is no more convincing than the idea that he was actively promoting communism. This complex man makes us deeply aware of Jewish suffering while at the same time giving expression to a wider vision of reality.

At the top of the painting are several floating figures, perhaps prophets and teachers from the Old Testament, who lament the fate of the Jewish people. Two are wrapped in a tallith, or prayer shawl, while one wears tefillin, the small leather box on the forehead that contains passages from the Old Testament. Chagall repeatedly painted figures in the air who are both distant from and yet also part of the world. At the bottom a menorah burns as it would in Jewish worship, and appears to be the only solidly upright object in the painting.

In the centre of these swirling scenes of terror and destruction is, of course, the figure of the crucified Christ. He is very clearly a Jewish Christ, for the loincloth he is wearing is unmistakably a tallith, but there is also no doubt that this Jewish martyr is also the Christian redeemer of the world. Above his head are the Roman letters INRI and the Hebrew inscription provided by Pilate, 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews'; surrounding his head is a halo affirming the holiness of this victim of violence.

As we give our attention to this great painting, and particularly to the figure of Christ, it is clear that we have to begin to work with it at a number of different levels. We have noted that White Crucifixion is Chagall's response to specific events that took place in 1938, and yet we have also become aware that there are references to other times and places including, of course, the death of Jesus in first-century Palestine. The picture makes significant political comment on what was going on, but at the same time this is not allowed to become too obvious or too dominant. It is evidently a work of art that is about the darkness of pain and suffering. There is a deep sorrow and anguish here that is unprecedented in the rest of Chagall's works, and has led to the painting being compared and contrasted with Guernica, a frightening and fearful work of art executed a year earlier by Picasso in response to terrible events in the Spanish Civil War. Yet in the midst of suffering the figure of Christ conveys a deep peace and tranquillity. A shaft of light enters the painting and we are led to believe that there is a path of hope to be discovered amidst the wreckage of this world's events.

But undoubtedly the central issue to be faced is the fact that Chagall, a Jew, has painted a Christian symbol -- the crucifixion -- in order to express the suffering of his people. Here was a man who had himself experienced persecution at the hands of Christians, who now saw it happening once again, and who nevertheless dares to use the tradition of the oppressor to give a voice to the oppressed. We are left with a sense of deliberate irony, not least because the finished painting could so easily become an icon for use in Christian church worship. It is an irony that deserves to be explored in greater depth.

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