"Two People. The Lonely Ones" by Edvard Munch

She stands alone, draped in white, a lantern placed firmly at the water's edge.

He approaches and breaks through the waters at a height equal to hers. But he is dark as the sand and rocks of the landscape, and so quiet as a whisper.

Maybe she wants his company. Maybe she doesn't.

"Woman's Head Against the Shore" by Edvard Munch

The sounds of waves sloshing against rocks mingle with a pervasive howling wind. There is a noisy hum here that imitates quiet.

The past is only the world we think we know. The ground where we formally crawled, then toddled, stepped, and raced dissolved as quickly as we moved beyond it. This is why we cannot help but fix our gaze forward on the traquil-yet-terrifying and seemingly infinite unknown.

NAKED JULY: Four Versions of Edvard Munch's "Man Bathing"

Here are four versions I found of the same woodcut by Munch. First I tried to put them in order from my favorite to least favorite, but I kept changing my mind and eventually came to the conclusion that each one has aspects I find uniquely captivating, but none captivates me the most in an overall sense.

Looking at these variations has reminded me why I rarely do different color versions from the same block. I look at one of these images and see aspects I enjoy and which evoke a particular response. But then I look at another and see different aspects I enjoy but in a different way. Looking at them all together, comparing and contrasting, I start to lose my sense of how each individual print struck me when I first lay eyes on it.

When there is only one, it is easy to pretend that it is pristine and brilliant in conception and execution. That it could only ever say what it is saying right now. That the muse has inspired some Very Important Message. Variations on a theme expose the artist as more of a seeker than a prophet. They display the versatility of the composition, and inevitably also its limitations (and by extension, the artist's mere mortal status.)

To put it more briefly, I avoid doing variations from the same block because I'm a coward.

"The Kiss" by Edvard Munch

This print reminds me of Brancusi's sculpture The Kiss. With their lips pressed together and arms around each other, the man and woman become a single form. In Brancusi's it is the eyes and overall symmetrical shape that cause the two to be viewed as one. Munch's is a bit more naturalistic; the man and woman maintain their unique sizes and shapes, but are visually joined when the black of their clothing and hair, and the grey of their faces run together creating a single shape. Munch's print is also more expressive in comparison to Brancusi's highly stylized, blockish forms. Here the man bends toward the woman and pulls her body into his embrace. Their arms curve in a lyrical sweep, where in Brancusi's figures the arms read more like inorganic bands fastened around the block. Through these characteristics, Brancusi's piece becomes more cerebral, a thought about or comment on the sort of kiss that shuts the couple off from the world, giving the two as close to a sense of oneness as separate beings such as we humans can reach. Brancusi's sculpture gets me to contemplate the role of physical love in romantic relationships. Munch's on the other hand causes me feel sentimental as I recall such kisses from my own personal history. Although perhaps the most profound difference between the two pieces is the couples' relationships to their environment. As sculptures of two figures joined by focusing in toward each other, Brancusi's Kiss separates them from the world. The sculptures become a sort of timeless monument. In contrast, Munch's couple is embedded in the grain of the space they occupy. At times when I look at this image, I see rain pouring down and the couple holding each other for some shelter and warmth. The streaks of grain move through them, making them transparent. Instead of a timeless monument, their kiss is a transient moment in time. Brancusi's figures are stylized so as to be universal, but the form of these two is simplified by the distance of personal memory.