The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch: The Vivian and David Campbell Collection (Hardcover)

by Associate Professor Elizabeth Prelinger (Author), Michael Parke-Taylor (Author), Peter Schjeldahl (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The artwork in The Symbolist Prints of Edvard Munch is so beautifully reproduced that one might be tempted to tear out pages, frame them and hang them on the wall. Munch's work, which constitutes some of the 20th century's greatest printmaking, is presented through the lens of an extraordinary private collection that includes almost every one of his prints along with alternate versions and early sketches. Elizabeth Prelinger's essays provide background on Munch's life, printmaking techniques, and the development of his symbolist aesthetic. An exciting element of the book is an evocative essay by renowned critic, Peter Schjeldahl, who, in inimitable style, likens Munch's effect on the viewer to that of listening to the early work of a favorite rock-star. Published on the occasion of an exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in early 1997, this book provides excellent documentation of an artist whose work remains vital more than fifty years after his death.

From Library Journal
Published as the catalog for an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, this is an attractive and thoughtful consideration of early prints by the Norwegian painter and graphic artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944). The 59 exhibited prints, all from a private collection, provide the armature for three essays. Prelinger's essay on Symbolism and graphic techniques explores a theme also found in her Edvard Munch: Master Printmaker (1983. o.p.); Michael Parke-Taylor discusses the reception of Munch's sometimes difficult work in America; and art critic Peter Schjeldahl provides a poetic appreciation. Somewhat narrower in scope than the catalog for the 1990 exhibition at the National Gallery ("Edvard Munch: Master Prints from the Epstein Family Collection," National Gallery of Art), yet with accessible text and excellent illustrations, this is highly recommended for general collections as well as for specialists.?Jack Perry Brown, Art Inst. of Chicago Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 246 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (September 10, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300069529
• ISBN-13: 978-0300069525
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,558,591 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Print and the Darkness, August 14, 2001

By A Customer

He was bound determined not to paint people reading and women knitting, but instead to show people who breathed emotions into his darkly suggestive prints. "Death in the sickroom" showed family members at the ages when they were painted, not when his sister Sophie died; it expressed unity in grief as one of death's longlasting effects by seemingly overlapping planes flowing together across bleakly empty areas, starkly B&W contrasts, and stiffly posed mourners frozen in misery. "The mirror" heads of a disembodied man and woman was his first woodcut to give up the Japanese method of printing each color with a separate woodblock; instead, he jigsawed blocks into pieces according to compositional design, linked each piece with a different color, and put everything back together into a multicolored print. He considered his "Sick child II" his most important print: his first color lithograph, it focused on the diseased upper chest and the head in profile facing right against a large pillow in order to gaze with tragically meditative resignation into the flatly patterned looming void on the far right. However, his "Scream" became the most compelling image for the late twentieth century: it expressed terror before the universe by powerfully decorative lines reverberating through the starkly opposed black lines and bleakly white voids of pulsing land and sky. Elizabeth Prelinger and Michael Parke-Taylor have applied reader-friendly illustrations and text to their catalog of the Vivian and David Campbell exhibition. Their SYMBOLIST PRINTS OF EDVARD MUNCH goes down good with PROGRESSIVE PRINTMAKERS by Warrington Colescott and Arthur Hove, PRINTS AND PRINTMAKING by Antony Griffiths, EDVARD MUNCH by Josef Paul Hodin, and THE PRINT IN THE WESTERN WORLD by Linda C Hults.

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars La douleur, la couleur et le criard, December 18, 2003

By A Customer

Il montrait sa soeur Sophie qui mourait jeune, entouree de toute la famille. Mais il montrait chacun a l'age qu'il avait a l'epoque de la peinture, et non pas a la mort de la jeune fille. Car la douleur durait a jamais et unifiait toute la famille pour toujours. Puis avec des tetes d'une femme et d'un homme, gravees et multicolorees, il cessait de suivre le style repandu des japonais de faire une seule couleur d'un seul troncon de bois. Son prefere de tout son oeuvre etait Sick Child II, en tant que sa premiere lithographie en couleur. Mais son Scream est le plus reconnu, en tant que l'image la plus frappante du 20eme siecle.