Critique #1

During the isolation of time, Edvard Munch expressed his feelings through his artwork. These emotions were from his past experiences. The paintings would be about the feelings that he found unacceptable in people, such as jealousy, hostility and depression. To release these painful emotions, Munch creatively showed it through his artwork. In the painting, “Envy,” Edvard Munch carefully uses vivid facial expression, severe realism and opposite composition in order to express jealousy and loneliness that people feel every day.

  In the painting, the man’s face shows how people distance themselves from others and society. The artist uses complementary colors to emphasize the man’s facial expression showing a strong feeling of both misery and jealousy. The shade under his eyes shows how tired he is. By feeling lonely, from the blissful couple standing in the background in a doorway, the man suffers from being distanced from everything else in the world. The dull skinny face symbolizes how lost and jealous people get from being alone. Jealousy makes people want to get away from everyone and be distant from society.

Munch uses severe realism in the painting to emphasize how jealousy is present in everyday life.  When someone is jealous of something else, such as love or a couple in love makes them take drastic actions. Some could cause destruction to their relationship or deal with it alone. Munch isolates the man from the couple and is left alone. As the couple continues to be happy and full of life, the man continues to feel lonely and hopeless. While the man continues to see them happy, it makes him feel worse than before.

Munch contrasts the couple’s emotions and the man’s emotions to make the painting balanced. In the background of this painting, the elated couple is showing their love for each other while the man is isolated and is jealous of their happiness.  The opposite composition of the couple’s and man’s feelings comes together to form unity. When couples are happy and enjoying life, others become jealous and feel replaced from their contentment. When people become jealous, they tend to take their anger or get revenge on the situation.

Munch realized that his artwork resembled unpleasant emotions that people see everyday. Most of his paintings represent painful experiences from his past. The artwork shows emotions such as anger, envy and misery. Edvard Munch uses vivid facial expression, severe realism and opposite composition, in the painting “Envy”, in order to show the feeling of jealousy and loneliness that people notice every day.