Restless innovator …

… Edvard Munch: Beyond The Scream | Arts and Culture | Smithsonian Magazine.

Munch believed that a painter mustn't merely transcribe external reality but should record the impact a remembered scene had on his own sensibility. As demonstrated in a recent exhibition of self-portraits at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, much of Munch's work can be seen as self-portraiture. Even for an artist, he was exceptionally narcissistic. "Munch's work is like a visual autobiography," McShine observes.