“The Kiss” by Edvard Munch
Kisses are fairly well represented in art. Antonio Canova had Cupid reviving Psyche with a kiss. Courbet and Banksy showed us a different love. “The Kiss” is when Gustav Klimt’s style reached its zenith. And I think James Cameron may have shot a kiss scene on a ship's bow as well.
And then there’s the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch‘s oil-on-canvas, “The Kiss.”
It’s one of the most passionate kisses you’ll ever see—but don’t expect to see lips locked. Because Munch, being a symbolist, paints not what he sees, but what he “saw.”
Each of his paintings are half-rubbed-out sketches drawn from memory. They are filled with raw emotions. Munch called them his children. And “The Kiss” which is part of “The Frieze of Life” is when Munch's signature style was about to reach its peak.
Just like the “Scream,” there's not one but 5 versions of this work; plus more lithographs. Each of them depicts a couple kissing so passionately that their faces have fused into the shape of a gigantic ear. They are “deaf in the ecstasy of the blood,” as the author Stanisław Przybyszewski said.
Munch had an earlier variation of this work titled “Kiss by the Window.” The window takes half the canvas, and the two are on the corner. It’s as if they’re hiding from the outside world.
Also, there’s a certain coldness in this picture. The heat of the moment is not there.
Well, why fear? They're committing adultery of course. It's a sin. Munch’s religious father told him that. Oh, and did I not tell you that this is Munch and his cousin's wife?
Munch finished painting a second version of this painting 5 years later in 1897. Here the window is fully covered; except a small portion from where the outside world is allowed to peek. Their clothes are darker. And those hands!
The hands give the painting a movement. Without them two look rigid and artificial in the first version. “There must be a battle between men and women to call it love,” Munch wrote (paraphrased).
In the first work, you can also see a few impressionistic elements. Presence of the window, for example. (He admired both Monet and Manet.)
But a Munch is incomplete without a hint of death. Their fused faces are not just to represent love. Art historian Reinhold Heller said it represents death from the “loss of one's own existence and identity.”
Unfortunately, Munch's affair didn't last more than two years. And he never married.
