Munch's Colours

'Go to the billiard room. After you have looked on that intense green table- cover for awhile, look up. How strangley red everything is! Those men you know were dressed in black now dressed in crimson red, and the room-the walls and the ceilings-are red.'

'After some time, the clothing is black again. But if you want to paint an emotional mood like that, with a billiard table, then you must paint it crimson red.'

'I paint not what i see, but what i saw'- 40 years later he summed up his practice : 'I do not finish a work until I'm a bit removed from the vision of it so that my memory can clarify its emotional impressions. Nature confuses me when I have it directly in front of me.'

The Kiss
Munch Notebook

It rained a warm rain
I took her around
the waist-she walks
slowly after
Two big eyes against
mine-a wet
cheek against mine
My lips sank into hers
the trees and the air and
All the earth anished
And I looked into a new
world-I never
Before had known