1890 began to create the most important series of works in life, Life Group Painting. This set of paintings has a wide range of themes, with the basic theme of eulogizing "life, love and death", revealing the worries and fears of human beings at the end of the century by means of symbols and metaphors. 1893 Monk's oil painting "Scream" is the strongest and most wonderful painting in this group, and it is also one of his important representative works. In this painting, Monk depicts a deformed and screaming figure with extremely exaggerated brushstrokes, showing the extreme loneliness and depression of human beings and the fear in front of the infinite universe to the fullest. Monk himself described the origin of this painting: "One night I was walking along a path-one side of the road was the city, and the other side was the fjord under my feet." Tired and sick, I stopped to look at the fjord-the sun was setting-and the clouds were dyed as red as blood. "I felt a shrill scream resounding through the heavens and the earth; I thought I heard screams. I drew this picture-I drew clouds like real blood. Those colors are screaming-this is the "screaming" in Life Group Painting. "
In this painting, there is no specific image suggesting the horror that caused this scream. The image in the center of the picture is creepy. He seems to walk past us and turn to the railing that stretches out into the distance. Covering his ears, he could hardly hear the footsteps of two pedestrians in the distance, nor could he see two ships and church steeples in the distance; Otherwise, the whole loneliness wrapped tightly around him may be slightly relieved. This lonely man, completely isolated from reality, seems to have been completely conquered by his deep fear. This image is highly exaggerated, and the deformed and twisted screaming face is completely comic. Those big eyes and sunken cheeks are reminiscent of bones related to death. This is a ghost call. "This can only be painted by a madman," Monk wrote in the sketch of the painting.
In this painting, the colors used by Monk are related to nature to some extent. Although blue water, brown land, green trees and red sky are all exaggerated and expressive, they have not lost the general authenticity of their colors. The color of the whole painting is depressing: the thick blood red hangs on the horizon, giving people an ominous premonition. It conflicts with the purple in the darkness of the sea; This purple is getting darker and darker because it extends far away. The same purple, repeated in lonely clothes. His hands and head were pale and dull brown-gray.
There is no place in the painting that is not full of turbulence. The twisted curve of the sky and the current is in sharp contrast with the thick and straight diagonal form of the bridge. The whole composition is full of rough and strong rhythm in the dynamic rotation. All the formal elements seem to convey that shrill scream. Here, the painter can be said to use visual symbols to convey the feeling of hearing, turning the terrible scream into visible vibration. This technique of visualizing sound waves may be related to the visualization of force and energy in Van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night. Here, Monk transforms the extreme inner anxiety caused by screaming into a convincing abstract image. In this way, he almost pushed his emotional expression on the screen to the extreme.
1890, Monk devoted himself to creating his large-scale Life Group Picture. He called this group of paintings "a poem about life, love and death." The oil painting Dance of Life, painted on 1899- 1900, is the core of this large group painting. A series of works in Life Group Painting and some related prints can be freely related to each other, and there is no clear narrative order. It can be said that they all converge towards the image of a pair of lovers embracing slow dance in this "dance of life" center. They also involve the themes of youth and simplicity, aging and sadness. Besides dancing, they also involve the themes of life and death, greed and reproduction, melancholy and jealousy. As a result, "life group painting" has become a picture scroll that reveals the psychological state and life state of modern people.
In the oil painting "Dance of Life", the painter depicts a group of people dancing drunk on the grass by the river. Three female images occupy the main position in the picture. They symbolize three different stages of women's career. The one on the left wearing a white skirt is a virgin, and her rosy cheeks are smiling like flowers in full bloom. The white color of its long skirt symbolizes the purity of girls. In contrast, it is the image of a woman on the right. She folded her hands and looked lonely. Her long black dress symbolizes her inner gloom and sadness. These two female images face the man and woman immersed in dance music in the center of the picture. They danced aimlessly, and the woman's long curly skirt entangled her boyfriend. The man's black clothes set off the woman's red dress more dazzling, making her look extremely enchanting and full of temptation. The red color of that dress symbolizes the short and happy life here. In the background, two pairs of dissolute dancers symbolize a more humble life. A full moon (maybe the sun) hangs in the sky, reflecting its long and wide reflection on the water, like a ghost's eyes. This is also a symbol of men. This theme shows its symbolic significance more clearly in Munch's other works.
In this women's trilogy, the clear meaning is strengthened by symbolic images and colors. The theme, form and symbolic connotation are coordinated and unified here, which indicates the road of women's life from innocence of girls to mature spring breeze, and then to disillusionment of their ideals after their youth.