So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch

by Karl Ove Knausgaard

Overview

A brilliant and personal examination by sensational and bestselling author Karl Ove Knausgaard of his Norwegian compatriot Edvard Munch, the famed artist best known for his iconic painting The Scream

In So Much Longing in So Little Space, Karl Ove Knausgaard sets out to understand the enduring and awesome power of Edvard Munch’s work by training his gaze on the landscapes that inspired Munch and speaking firsthand with other contemporary artists, including Anselm Kiefer, for whom Munch’s legacy looms large. Bringing together art history, biography, and memoir, Knausgaard tells a passionate, freewheeling, and pensive story about not just one of history’s most significant painters, but the very meaning of choosing the artist’s life, as he himself has done. Including reproductions of some of Munch’s most emotionally and psychologically intense works, chosen by Knausgaard, this utterly original and ardent work of criticism will delight and educate both experts and novices of literature and the visual arts alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143133131
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/26/2019
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	1,054,721
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s first novel, Out of the World, was the first ever debut novel to win the Norwegian Critics’ Prize and his second, A Time for Everything, was widely acclaimed. The My Struggle cycle of novels has been heralded as a masterpiece wherever it has appeared, and the first volume was awarded the prestigious Brage Prize.

Editorial Reviews

…an elastic exploration of Munch that combines three elements, each of which is freely woven into the text: details about Munch's life and painting; the writer's private and public experiences with the art…and finally, philosophical musings about art and literature…Knausgaard's ambition is to whittle away at the legend to arrive at insights about the genesis of the art itself, and not only Munch's art, but all art…Knausgaard never underestimates the painter's labor and study, and this book stands as a sincere, often lyrical and penetrating attempt to enter the world of another artist.

The New York Times Book Review - Siri Hustvedt

11/26/2018
Norwegian modernist painter Edvard Munch, whose masterpiece The Scream is one of art’s best-known depictions of an unhinged psychological freak-out, is a prosaic yet mysterious figure in this knotty aesthetic-biographical study. Norwegian novelist Knausgaard (My Struggle) ponders many Munch paintings (he includes reproductions), delves into his lonely life—the deaths of family members in early life left him gun-shy about relationships and perpetually alienated, Knausgaard writes—and conducts lengthy interviews with artists about Munch’s influence and legacy. The results are uneven, by turns illuminating and obscure. Knausgaard’s analysis of The Scream shows how it evokes a world subsumed in a crazy, distorted perspective without any sane vantage point to shelter viewers, an example of Munch’s ability to visually capture emotions. Often, though, Knausgaard lapses into murky art-crit pensées, as in his assessment of The Sick Child as “a picture which at one and the same time comes into being and is destroyed.” Knausgaard inserts his own droll, hang-dog psychic travails—asked to curate a Munch exhibition, he feels like a failure for showcasing subpar paintings—as a much-needed relief from high-falutin’ theory. Unfortunately, his sometimes turgid and baffling passages on the art exemplify how difficult it is to convey in words the visceral impact of images. Photos. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

“Fans of the author's acclaimed autobiographical novels will find this book to be of Rosetta Stone-like importance as he delves into Munch's exploration of memory and how the artist rendered the past in a way that still feels both intimate and universally relatable . . .  An immersive, impassioned history that illuminates both subject and author.” – Kirkus, starred review

From the Publisher

★ 2018-11-07

Although a fine primer on Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944), this book is more about the experience of wandering into the world of art and being consumed by its confluence of history, narrative, and sublimity.

Munch, who created more than 1,700 paintings, is the perfect match for the prolific Knausgaard (My Struggle: Book Six, 2018, etc.), who teases out a history and critical reading of the artist that resonates with his own literary work. Fans of the author's acclaimed autobiographical novels will find this book to be of Rosetta Stone-like importance as he delves into Munch's exploration of memory and how the artist rendered the past in a way that still feels both intimate and universally relatable. Munch was a painter of the realm between depiction and feeling; his work simultaneously re-creates a representational vision along with the emotions associated with those memories. "The space in which the story unfolds is as important as the story," explains the author. Munch's paintings capture both a likeness and an essence and are often imbued with inescapable themes of longing, nostalgia, and anxiety. His work "invites reflection about what painting meant" to him and prompts contemplation on not just the depicted image and the artist's history, but the empathetic connectivity between the two. Knausgaard admits he is not "in favor of a biographical approach to art," and it shows: He jumps among paintings, biographical fragments, and interviews with other artists with disregard for traditional narrative flow. A section following the author's curatorial foray at the Munch Museum is followed by an interview with filmmaker Joachim Trier. This all may seem baggy and misdirected, but it is in fact appropriate when discussing Munch, who saw patterns in his own chaos and assembled a body of seemingly-unrelated work into what became known as his celebrated "Frieze of Life." Knausgaard's chaos, too, finds a striking vitality.

An immersive, impassioned history that illuminates both subject and author.

Kirkus Reviews