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Michael F. Marmor
Disturbed Vision - Edvard Munch, 1930
In 1930, when Munch was 66 years old, an intraocular haemorrhage in his right
eye affected his sight. For several months, with methodical precision, he
attempted to render on paper what he saw through his affected eye as his
condition changed. Inside the eye, the blood had coagulated into shapes, spots
and smudges which were superimposed upon his normal vision. To him, some looked
like birds, others like concentric circles. A professor of ophthalmology, who
has studied the artist’s works and his eye condition, explores how the sketches
and watercolours of these ‘visions’ reflect a remarkable period of Munch’s
output late in life.
The exact nature of Munch’s haemorrhage is not known. However, we do know that
he consulted Professor Johan Raeder (1889–1956), who was one of the most eminent
ophthalmologists in Norway. Although no office records are available, Raeder
referred to the artist’s illness in some later correspondence:
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‘Munch… suffered from a period of over-exertion and of a generally reduced health… As a
consequence… there occurred a very serious haemorrhage in his right eye… The
haemorrhage brought about a very strong reduction in his eyesight, and this was
all the more serious as vision in his left eye has always been less good. As it
turns out, it was the eye he had always used when working that was affected.’
Raeder prescribed isolation and rest, and gave his patient the following note to
ward off potential visitors:
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‘Oslo, 10 May 1930. Herr painter Edvard Munch suffers from an acute eye disease caused by long-standing over-exertion. He
needs complete bodily and mental rest for a long period of time. Any
disturbance, oral, written, by telephone, or by telegraph, is to be entirely
avoided.’
The ophthalmologist’s correspondence shows that the artist had a similar
haemorrhage some years later in his left eye:
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‘Mr Edvard Munch suffered six
years ago from a very serious haemorrhage in his right eye. There now has
occurred a similar condition in his left eye.’
This strongly suggests Munch may
have had an underlying systemic disease that predisposed him to ocular
haemorrhage. However, there is no documentary evidence to identify such an
illness, and the second haemorrhage may not have bothered him visually since it
was in his ‘bad’ eye. We know that he returned to painting, photography and
correspondence after his 1930 haemorrhage, but Raeder may have been aware of
some residual damage or been worried about recurrence.
The Artists's Retina: Optical Illusion from the Eye Disease
Edvard Munch - 1930
Munch drew several types of images during his convalescence. A recurrent one is
a set of concentric circles, often vividly coloured, which resemble the aura
that one sees around bright lights on a foggy day. It is possible that these
represent a view through his resolving haemorrhage as he looked towards an
electric light or the sun. He annotated many of his drawings ‘electric light’,
‘sunshine’, etc, to indicate the conditions under which they were made, but did
not actually date them. The order of colours varies, so they don’t appear to be
illustrating a rainbow effect, which would be constant. Whatever else, they do
show that Munch must have been intrigued by the patterns of light and colour
that suffused his eye as the haemorrhage slowly cleared.
Other sketches documented the presence of a dense blind spot (scotoma) near the
centre of his visual field. In one he even drew an arrow to show his point of
fixation near the top of the dark shadow. In other diagrams the shadow was
superimposed on sketches of people or a room, appearing in the lower or middle
part of the scene. Sometimes it was simply an opaque shape, but in one striking
watercolour it became a skull covering the foot of the artist’s bed. In that
picture he portrayed himself with a hand covering his left eye, the better to
observe the nature of the scotoma on the right.
This configuration is interesting, because Munch is known to have painted
self-portraits using a mirror – in which case a hand over the left eye would
have appeared to be over the right eye in the picture. One may presume that
these sketches during convalescence were made to portray a subject, and were not
mirror portraits. In a particularly poignant sketch, a nude figure is obscured
partially by the irregular scotoma, expressing, it seems, Munch’s frustration as
an artist who cannot see the core of his subject.
The Artist's Injured Eye (and a figure of a bird's head),
Edvard Munch - 1930-1931
As the haemorrhage cleared further, he perceived misty, fibrillar shadows that
sometimes took the form of a bird’s head and wings. Writing with respect to one
of these drawings, he said:
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‘The distance between the bird’s beak and the new
beak beneath seems longer – I can make out two letters while earlier just one –
the bird’s neck seems longer – I am clearing up on the left side.’
As the
healing process continued, he described the debris within his eye:
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‘There are
dark spots which show up like small flocks of crows far up when I look at the
sky – can they be blood clots which have been resting in the periphery of the
damaged circular part – which by a sudden movement or by the effect of sharp
light are moved from their origin – when they suddenly disappear it looks as if
they fly down to their first place.’
Munch was deeply frightened by the ocular haemorrhage. He feared for his life,
as well as his sight. This is evident in the portrait of the artist in bed with
the death’s head scotoma, and in a drawing where he himself is portrayed with a
skull-like visage. In another drawing his hands are held to his head in the same
pose of fear and anguish as the famous subject of 'The Scream'. The ominous bird
appeared in a number of sketches, sometimes migrating from its inferior
scotomatous position; in one image it was superimposed against a huge luminous
sun. Munch was so worried about whether a return to painting would be possible
that he spent a great deal of time during his convalescence working with
photography, which he thought made fewer demands on his vision. However, by 1931
he was again painting regularly, and the strange images of birds and blind spots
disappeared forever from his work.
The Artist with a skull: Optical Illusion from the Eye Disease
Edvard Munch, 1930
A careful, almost compulsive observer, Munch documented the conditions for his
photographic work and was very interested in the optics of that discipline. He
also drew sketches of the shape of his blind spot, including one that shows
exactly how words and letters were broken up and distorted by the scotoma.
Accompanying this was the notation: ‘In the shadow of full sunshine after the
eye has been covered, reading distance, spectacle lens #5.’ Others carried
details such as: ‘Bedroom, electric light, no glasses, ½ metre.’ He measured the
scotoma relative to a distant pole: ‘40 metres, eye fixed on top of pole but it
is invisible.’ This precise and almost clinical interest in his disease led him
to develop a grid technique for measuring and monitoring his scotomas.
Munch recovered from his ocular haemorrhage and produced some poignant portraits
of himself as an old man, which show the same style and surprising colours of
his earlier work.
Self-Portrait:
Between the Clock and the Bed
Edvard Munch, 1940-1943
His eye disease in 1930 represented only a brief interruption
of his long career, unlike Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, or Georgia O’Keeffe, all
of whom eventually stopped painting because of poor vision. However, although
the effects of ophthalmic problems such as macular disease and cataracts can be
seen in the works of artists such as Degas and Monet, Munch was unique because
he gave us scenes from within the eye itself. As ophthalmologists, we can
recognise in his sketches not only the characteristics of floaters and ocular
haemorrhage, but his efforts to document and measure the impact of his disease.
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Edvard Munch - Inside the eye of the beholder
Michael F. Marmor
1 May 2012
Tate Etc. issue 25: Summer 2012
27.Out.2016
Publicado por
MJA
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