別離

In the 1890s Edvard Munch was building what he called the Frieze of Life, a cycle of paintings about love, anxiety and death that he returned to for years. Separation belongs to its unhappy end. A woman in white drifts toward the sea, already turning away, while the man stands rooted in black, one hand pressed to his chest. Look at her long pale hair. It streams back across the gap between them and brushes against him, still tying the two together even as she leaves. Munch said much the same about a related print, describing the hair as a kind of wire that keeps the parted couple connected. Below the man's hand, a small red plant rises from the ground, the colour of the wound he seems to feel.