Harpy 1895

Editor: Here we have Edvard Munch's "Harpy," a print housed at the Harvard Art Museums. The stark lines and ghostly figures definitely give off an unsettling vibe. What do you see in this piece? Curator: This work points to Munch's experimentation with printmaking as a means of mass production. The process allowed him to disseminate his anxieties about the relationship between the sexes, and the print medium makes those anxieties accessible. How might its circulation affect its interpretation? Editor: That's a good point. Knowing it was widely available definitely shifts my perspective of it. Thanks for sharing your insights! Curator: Absolutely. Thinking about art in terms of its material existence opens up a whole new way of understanding it.