LONDON — Retrospectives of long-dead artists are not merely an opportunity to examine how their philosophies and aesthetics match up to the modern day. They are often explicitly sold on the notion of enduring relevance. Such is the case for the British Museum’s Edvard Munch: Love and Angst, which promises visitors a deeper look at an artist many likely know solely for “The Scream.” “Munch’s idiosyncratic expression of raw human emotion reflects many of the anxieties and hotly debated issues of his times,” the opening gallery text reads, “yet his art resonates powerfully to this day.” With the title and the opening words, the exhibition establishes its focus on Munch’s passions and pains. But what remains unspoken — and addressed with far less critical capacity than one might expect of a 21st-century show at a major institution — is the ways these dark emotions frequently came to target the women in his life.
A THEME FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE