Status Updates From Historien om Edvard Munch (...

First Munch stops off in Copenhagen, sees Paul Gauguin’s Aux roches noires, or Life and Death, two naked women, one of them with her hands over her ears and gaping mouth, just as Munch will later paint the protagonist in The Scream. Inspiration, reminders, revulsion.

The disappointment in his father’s face comes back to him. Why hadn’t he embraced him, as he sat there in the corner of the sofa beside the window in a bluish cloud of tobacco smoke, with the sun shining on his silver-grey hair? When he glanced up, when he spoke to him? That gentle, questioning, nervous look.