When
there was a lot of stuff loosely guarded, and Reidae Revold was the
trusted guard, the temptation to steal was overwhelming.
My
artist daughter Anne and I found ourselves in Oslo, Norway during our
two-month Eurails-pass art wandering that took us from Madrid and
Rome on the south to Narvik, Norway, north of the Arctic Circle. In
Oslo we marveled at the dramatic city hall, an exhibition of
resurrected Viking ships, and the Kon Tiki raft that carried Thor
Heyerdahl across the Pacific. We had not yet visited the Munch
Museum.
On
the map the museum didn’t look that far away from central Oslo,
where we were staying. We decided to walk. It was a lot longer
away than what we thought.
A
couple of decades later my wife and I were in Oslo. We and another
couple decided to take a taxi to the museum, after we had visited
City Hall. It was a wise decision, saving our energies for one of the
most impressive one-person museums anywhere.
Edvard Munch
Edvard
Munch was born in 1863, son of a moderately successful physician. The
early death of his mother and two sisters had a profound effect and
frequently inspired him to a theme of mortuary chambers.
His
father moved to Oslo, and Edvard enrolled in the Royal School of Arts
and Crafts. Much to his father’s displeasure, he was
influenced by an against-the-grain polemicist who said that suicide
was the ultimate path to freedom.
Edvard
exhibited some portraits of his friends and then, in 1885, went off
for a stay in Paris that had little impact on the young artist. He
did see a Paul Gauguin show at the Café Volpini.
He
received a travel grant allowing him to return to Paris. He and two
other Norwegian artists arrived at the time of the 1889 World’s
Fair (Exposition Universelle). The Fair included vast displays
of art, including one of Munch’s own, Morning, in the
Norwegian pavilion.
The
Impressionists were riding high, but Impressionism had no lasting
effect on Edvard. He was impressed by the work of Gauguin, Vincent
Van Gogh and Henry de Toulouse-Lautrec and the way they evoked
emotion through the use of color.
Munch’s
father died. The family was left destitute. Edvard was depressed and
harbored suicidal thoughts but returned to Norway to take care of the
family when rich relatives refused to help.
After
several shows in Norway, Munch was invited to exhibit in Berlin by
the Society of Berlin Artists. It was the Society’s first
one-man show.
The
exhibition “evoked bitter controversy.” Nonetheless,
Munch remained in Berlin for four years, a period that became the
most important in his career. By then he had assimilated and
discarded the lessons of Impressionism and was off on his own track
to a form of Expressionist Realism. A decade of instability
(1898-1908) followed that found Munch moving about between Norway,
Paris, Berlin, Italy.
Munch’s
life continued to be one of varying fortune, manic ups and downs,
creative bursts. In 1907, he painted The Sick Child, a work
showing his morbid interest in illness, agony, and desolation.
His
most iconic work was The Scream, which he executed in four
versions: two pastels and two paintings.
The Scream
During
his lifetime most of his work went unsold. When Munch died, he left
his estate to the city of Oslo.
Oslo
built the Munch museum, and that was what Anne and I and latter
Frances and I went so far to see.
Only
a part of the bequest can be shown at any time. Why? The museum owns
1,200 paintings, 18,000 prints, six sculptures, 500 plates (for
making prints), and 2,240 books. That’s why, in 2008, the city
of Oslo began planning for a much bigger new museum, which would be
located near the Opera House, closer to the center of the city. The
new Munch Museum is expected to open in 2018.
Before
the first new museum was built, Reidae Revold was the curator in
charge of the collection. I came across his name when I was writing
my book on art frauds. But my sources were all Norwegian newspapers,
which I couldn’t read.
Living
near Washington, D.C., has its benefits. I took my newspaper stories
to a cultural attaché at the Norwegian Embassy, and he
translated them for me. He also taught me how to pronounce Munch. Or
nearly so.
In
Oslo, on April 23, 1968, Revald was charged with selling abroad 100
of the collection’s paintings and graphics for his personal
profit. Revold had closed most of his transactions directly with
dealers in West Germany and Switzerland, to whom he had written on
official museum stationery.
Original
Munch lithographs are extremely valuable, for the artist wanted them
to have a rarity approaching that of his paintings and had printed
only a few strikes of each rendering. When Munch died, some of his
drawings were still on the stones, which remained in the hands of
Munch’s printer until Revold obtained them, apparently in
exchange for prints belonging to the museum.
Police
suspected that Revold had made and sold new impressions from these
stones. If so, the value of all Munch prints would have dropped
drastically, as no one could be sure which prints were made under
Munch’s own supervision. Not until the Norwegian government
completed an investigation and determined that no fraudulent
impressions had been made did the Munch lithograph market regain is
stability.
In
2004, two paintings were stolen from the museum by masked and armed
men. One of the paintings was The Scream. They were recovered
two years later.
There
have been a number of Munch forgers, including Casper Caspersens, but
this “Moments in Art” is not about them.
In
a 12-minute sale at Sothebys last May, one of the pastel versions of
The Scream sold for $120,000,000, the highest price ever paid
at auction for a work of art.
The
Wall Street Journal claims that the buyer was Leon Black, an
official with Apollo Global Management. Black reportedly is worth a
bunch of billions of bucks.
So
he didn’t have to go down screaming to get The Scream.
Lawrence Jeppson is an art consultant, organizer and curator of art exhibitions, writer, editor
and publisher, lecturer, art historian, and appraiser. He is America's leading authority on
modern, handwoven French tapestries. He is expert on the works of William Henry Clapp, Nat
Leeb, Tsing-fang Chen, and several French artists.
He is founding president of the non-profit Mathieu Matégot Foundation for Contemporary
Tapestry, whose purview encompasses all 20th-century tapestry, an interest that traces back to
1948. For many years he represented the Association des Peintres-Cartonniers de Tapisserie and
Arelis in America.
Through the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service, the American Federation of
Arts, the Museum of Modern Art, and his own Art Circuit Services he has been a contributor to
or organizer of more than 200 art exhibitions in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan.
He owns AcroEditions, which publishes and/or distributes multiple-original art. He was co-founder and artistic director of Collectors' Investment Fund.
He is the director of the Spring Arts Foundation; Utah Cultural Arts Foundation, and the Fine
Arts Legacy Foundation
Lawrence is an early-in-the-month home teacher, whose beat is by elevator. In addition, he has spent the past six years hosting and promoting reunions of the missionaries who served in the French Mission (France, Belgium, and Switzerland) during the decade after WWII.