Train Smoke 1910

Curator: Edvard Munch's "Train Smoke," residing here at the Harvard Art Museums, presents a landscape dominated by impasto and evocative color. Editor: It feels melancholic, doesn’t it? The application of paint seems hurried, almost desperate to capture the fleeting moment. You can sense the artist’s hand in its making. Curator: Precisely, the visible brushstrokes are integral to its expressionist form. Note how the composition leads the eye, from the trees in the foreground to the distant islands, all anchored by that horizontal horizon. Editor: But what about the labor of it all? The mining for the pigments, the crafting of the brushes, the industrial process that creates the scene itself with trains. Curator: Certainly, industrialization is present, but the train smoke, as the title suggests, is less about industry and more about the subjective experience of modernity, its alienation and ephemerality. Editor: Perhaps, but to ignore the means of its creation is to ignore the very material conditions of its being. Still, an evocative piece. Curator: Indeed, a compelling convergence of form and feeling.