Pretenders: Ordeal by Fire II 1927

Edvard Munch made this woodcut, Pretenders: Ordeal by Fire II, and the marks have this scratchy, urgent quality, like he's trying to dig the image out of the block. It makes you think about how Munch saw artmaking as a kind of struggle, a wrestling with feelings. The way he’s carved the wood gives the figures a shadowy, ghost-like presence. Look at the dress of the central figure; it's all these little white dashes, like sparks. It's as if the figure is both consumed and illuminated by this fire, like some kind of emotional combustion. Munch reminds me of Paula Modersohn-Becker, both artists pushing at the boundaries of representation to express something raw and internal. Ultimately, Munch's images aren't about telling us exactly what to think, but about opening up a space for feeling, for questioning, and for letting the ambiguity of life in.