Analysis

With her back turned to her mother, toneless, lifeless, practically inanimate in bed, the young
girl, eyes wide in disbelief, holding her hands to her ears as if to block out the reality and the
stillness. Suspension lurks, incomprehensibility ensues, and an unearthly silence begs the
question, is she truly calm, or screaming on the inside?

At an early age, Edvard Munch had already experienced the trauma of losing two important
people in his life, thus his arts are well-known to depict universal emotions and experiences.
Aside from his most widely recognized work, “The Scream”, he also has another strong
expressionism artwork which was “The Dead Mother”. The artwork has two versions which
are quite different from each other. The first one entitled “The Dead Mother and Child”
depicts Munch’s perspective as a child when he came to his mother’s deathbed, the first
version of the painting includes the relatives mourning at the background distinctively away
from the child. The facial expression of the child at the first version is said to be similar to his
famous artwork “The Scream”; the child wears a red dress which is an eye-catching color
that emphasizes the child, the eyes can be seen wide, mouth slightly open like a mid sob or
mid-scream, and hands-on the ears that seem to be blocking the sound or the reality of the
situation, all in all, the first version’s child expression depicts the horrified expression of a
child going through a traumatic experience.

Compared to his previous work the “The Dead Mother and Child”(1897-1899) wherein it is
more focused on the mother and the child, the viewer is now up close. Immediately, the
primary focus of attention goes to the child, visually positioned as the tallest, standing
vertically, with ears, still clasped with her hands, looking less horrified and more defiant in
contrast to the horizontally resting lifeless mother. The girl dons a less emotional expression,
as implied by her blue dress making it more composed. The dark outlines osurrounding her
emphasizes her stillness. The discernible The girl’s hands and eyes remain the same,
except her expressions look less horrified yet confused and disoriented. Often painful things
at first are recalled with intense emotion, and as that pain we experience, continues to play
over and over again in our minds, retelling things, while still significant, the initial emotional
response can lessen. The colors used on “The Dead Mother” were very different from the
first one, cool colors were used, unlike “The Dead Mother and Child” which is more likely
composed of warm colors. This implies that Munch might be working on through a memory
of his past, lamenting painful memories which evokes an intense emotion when it is first
recalled, but as it keeps on a continuous never-ending loop, the emotional response could
change which might be the reason for the distinctive differences among the two paintings.

Edvard Munch’s art attempts to explain life and its meaning to himself. Throughout his life,
he and his siblings were under the oppressive religious milieu of his father. He inherited the
seeds of madness, the heritage of consumption and insanity. His art lies in the unparalleled
way it pierces through exterior appearances to reveal the reality of the mind. He had a good
reason to feel cursed. Growing up in 19th-century Norway, he was surrounded by illness and
death. Rejecting interest in depicting the observed world, he looked into his memories and
emotions, relying upon the interrelations of color and shape to describe the world around
him.