Integrated or confrontational, the modern consciousness of Edward Munch's paintings

Edward Munch, "Woman in Blue Against Blue Water" (1891).

Whether the woman in Munch's painting is standing on the hillside of her moment or in the void that Munch has set up, we have no way of knowing. I don't know if Munch did it on purpose or for some other reason, but the woman seems to be independent of the background in our cautious eyes.

Perhaps, this is exactly why Munch named the painting woman in blue against blue water. Let's interpret the name and the meaning of the painting in a literal way. It's not necessarily right, but if you want to be right in art criticism, you're in the wrong place.

If the poet discovers poetry, then the painter discovers the painting.

What is discovered must also have a meaning independent of the painter's original intention, and this is the meaning of the existence of art criticism. From the point of view of art criticism, modernist painting is more worthy of criticism, and because of this, only modernist painting can allow us to more deeply touch the conscious (the germination of modern consciousness) that we humans hide deep in the unconscious through the metaphysical figurative expression of painting.

It was a little farther away, a little farther from Edward Munch's lady who was against blue water in the afternoon sun. We took a step back and went back to that afternoon when Munch used to be sunny and picked up his paintbrush.

Why did Munch paint? Why paint the lady against the blue water, rather than integrating the lady into the whole of nature. That's because Munch wasn't going to integrate the lady, especially herself, into the so-called nature from the start. So a lady is just a lady, and the background is only a background. They do not blend in with each other, and the result of not integrating is naturally against each other.

Munch painted the lady, the nature of the background behind him, just as Van Gogh painted his starry night, they painted himself, they painted a sunny afternoon, and the lady stood there gave Munch an unconscious or subconscious impulse from the heart, so he picked up the paintbrush. What he records is not an objective truth, he records his subjective truth, which is the true meaning of modernist art.