Jacob Wheat's Art Blog

Two Women on the Shore

by Edvard Munch
Date: 1898 

Woodcut printed on Japanese Paper

Expressionism

Source 

Subjective:  

This artist is well known, but when I was looking through his pieces I noticed this to lack on quality and detail. For this piece, I would like to give more detail without losing the symbolism. Adding shadows and color variation would help bring out the picture and keep it from being simplistic. Adding color patches to the grass, or plants that draw your eye to the two women standing near the shore. Adding this to the ocean would help as well. Because the women both represent life and death, I believe keeping their colors white and black are appropriate, and elaborating on the demonic woman's face to show that is important. 

Objective:

This painting is made with oil paints and woodcut printed on cream colored Japanese paper. This was inked with blue, red brown, black, and white colors. You can tell that this was made first with simple shapes with basic line work, and then the color was worked into it. This print is very simplistic, but has a deep symbolic meaning. The artwork is Expressionism, which is using exaggeration and distortion to create an emotion when looking at the piece. If you look at the women in black, she has a demonic looking face which is a bit disturbing, especially with everything else being simple with little to no detail.The women on the left is a light color, and she represents life. The contrast of dark and light next to each other helps give understanding of the meaning.The space around the two women give a sense of being alone, which is also what is trying to be expressed in this painting.